I was just reading my blog post about my first year of university, and my second year seems quite bland in comparison. It is a huge privilege to do school online, but it did come with struggles I did not imagine.
1st Semester: 7 Course Overload
At the start of the first semester, I thought this would be the only online semester of my university career so I overloaded my schedule with courses. I loaded a total of 7 courses which is 2 more than the recommended 5 courses for full-time students. My plan for this semester was to blitz through coursework so I could have a lighter 2nd semester, however, this did not go as planned. In the end, I dropped one of the seven courses.
My First Experience with Student Burnout
I was feeling burnout in November from the weight of 7 courses. My brain was struggling to absorb knowledge, and I was at the computer every single day for more than 9 hours. I did not take breaks on weekends, although I did take breaks on weekends at the beginning of the semester. In the beginning, I was able to complete all work assigned on Friday in the evening, but slowly the work kept piling up, thus I had to leave a lot of it to the weekend.
I remember my hands aching from doing hours of math and physics homework on end. I did teach myself to do my math and physics homework with LaTex, but nothing beats the classic way with paper. Paper allows my brain to slow down, carefully absorb the knowledge and take extra notes. On the computer, I get tempted to copy and paste, moreover, it's harder for me to remember what I typed rather than what I wrote.
On Knowledge Retention and Online School
I think the biggest disadvantage of online schooling is that I cannot retain as much information. When I studied in the library in my first year, I was fully focused. I studied in complete silence physically surrounded by students with the same goal I had. At home, I had to constantly fight against temptation.
2nd Semester: A 6 Course Overload More Difficult Than Last Semester
The coursework of this second semester was excruciatingly difficult. There were assignments I would be stuck on for more than twenty hours. I constantly had to scour the internet for resources to help me understand the homework. The second semester was way harder than the last semester, and sometimes I felt like giving up on assignments. I would work for hours on a coding project, and it would not work unless I restarted and changed my approach. I felt the stress of computer science, but I kept going because I knew that this was the career meant for me.
