The Pros And Cons of Online College
A large portion of any college student’s life will be spent online; researching essays, sending emails, and occasionally looking up the fastest way to drop out and go travelling the world because you are just sick and tired of your lecturers.
But this college year will be completely different. Now nearly all college classes will be virtual, all work submitted will be done online and most students wont get a chance to get onto campus for a while.
But it isn’t all bad, as amazingly there are some pros and some cons of online college…
The pros
1. More time in bed
Possibly the best thing about online learning is the fact you don’t have to travel anywhere, except from your bed to your laptop. You get to spend all that travel time in bed.
All those awful nine a.m.’s you used to have to drag yourself out of bed, in the ungodly hours of the morning, for are no more because you can stay in bed until the last possible second and then pull your laptop up to you and get going with your day. No matter if your travel time was 10 minutes or two hours, the extra time in bed is a godsend.
2. You can do college in your Pj’s
There is no more outfit pressure with college such as which one will I wear today? I can’t wear that skirt again everyone will know. Good God, why don’t I own any nice clothes?
There will be no more of this, instead you can dress as up or as down as you wish and go to your classes with zero social pressure.
3. You can pause your lecturers
The best thing about pre-recorded lectures is that you can pause them in their tracks and make sure you really get every piece of information out of the class. There will be no more stressed out crazy writing, trying to get every word the lecturer says onto paper. There will be no more pages and pages of scribbled notes and frustrated figuring out what the hell you wrote down in that lecture because you can stop them where they are and tell them to “shut-up” while you collect yourself and process what they just said.
The cons.
1. The obvious lack of college
Online college can be a bit of a downer, because it can feel like you are not actually in college at all. There is no social interaction across a screen, not really. No college pub or college coffees between classes. So, that’s not the greatest.
You can try Facetiming your college pals while you watch your pre-corded lectures and Facetime them after a zoom class, to help bring a little of the social side back.
It’s also incredibly hard for first year students trying to get use to college and make new friends. If the lack of new college friends is stressing you out – we put together a little guide with some advice on how to make friends over Zoom.
2. The wifi connection
It can feel like life has turned into one big lagging Facetime call, except now it’s with your lecturers.
Wifi can be slow and bad, and classes can pause and lag. It can be hard and frustrating trying to learn this way. Making sure that you let your professor know that there’s problem is essential, otherwise they might not know that no one can hear them and no one is learning anything.
3. Lack of resources
As another obvious one, the college resources are no longer right at your fingertips – unless you are quarantining in your college.
The printers, the libraries and even the head of your departments are no longer right there where you need them. Its hard to find a solution to this, but most libraries have moved their resources online, and emailing your Head of Department can help – and I suppose most college printers are always broken anyway so that’s not bad.
This year is a strange one, and it’s going to continue for a while. The best thing to do is to just roll with it and make the most of a bad situation. The time will come when we can all be together again. It will be worth the wait.
Are you experiencing any pros and cons of online college? Let us know over on our Instagram!