It's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring
Marilyn Monroe
The Global pandemic coronavirus has made a huge difference in the lives of all of us. The Rapidly developing coronavirus has resulted in schools shut all across the world. Globally over 1.2 billion children are out of the classroom. As a result, education has changed dramatically, with the distinctive rise of e-learning. Most of the students are teenagers and in their opinion, the coronavirus epidemic has changed how they worked, played, and learned. The general flow of life has been broken and as a result, a huge number of people are asked to work from home on digital platforms.
Around 42 million children continue to be affected by COVID-19 school closures in Bangladesh, leaving students with little option but to rely on remote learning. However, not all students have access to digital technology and in many cases, students find virtual classes fall short of their expectations. We recently spoke to some typical Bangladeshi students and asked them to express their views on online classes. They sadly tell us exactly how much they miss their classroom and their friends. They also expressed what it's like to learn online and how they’re dealing with the uncertainty. They said often their classes are affected by poor internet connectivity, data expiry, and power outages. Some of them said online classes are also harming their physical well-being as they have to pay heed to the devices such as; PC and mobile screens for a long sphere of time.
Besides the dichotomy of chance freedom from school and yet the discombobulated feelings of helplessness and loneliness plague their home time alone. They try their best to stay sane with blasting music and shows. Even then, schoolwork seems increasingly pointless.
They are naturally driven, passionate learners with intense intellectual curiosity. But amid chaos, they couldn’t help feeling like all the assignments from their classes were just busywork. As a student participating in the home-learning program, the online school was confusing to adjust to as they had not been prepared through simulations or practices beforehand. Students also reported that the home-learning programs are even more stressful than regular classrooms.
We asked a student how he was dealing with his daily work during quarantine. He made it explicit that “I have to do 1-2 hours of work a day instead of the usual 5 hours (including homework), and it feels more tiring somehow. I'm in the comfort of my home all the time but have to do this for a few hours, and it feels much more monotonous than 5 hours in a classroom. But in that sense, it also feels a lot calmer not being around people constantly having anxiety. The coronavirus affected me because now having to do school virtually is kind of hard because l don’t have strong internet connectivity, and it is nerve-racking to know about what we're going to do about the tests we have to take to pass because I do care about graduating and going to the next grade”.
It may sound weird, no matter which student we asked this question, often we got more or less the same answer. Yes, there were a few exceptions. But to be honest, that’s what every student has been doing amid the pandemic. This virus has completely changed their day-to-day living.
This epidemic has led to some students deviating from their studies and becoming addicted to social media. Most of the students are wasting their entire day just by scrolling their Facebook timeline, watching anime/tv-series/Youtube videos, or uploading filtered photos on Instagram. Yes, these activities are necessary, especially in this tough time where we aren’t able to meet our near and dear ones in person. But doing the same thing, again and again, is called addiction. Research shows that “Social Network Addiction” has increased dramatically in the lockdown period. Due to which students are not involved in any productive work and their creativity is decreasing day by day, they are not concerned about practicing effective habits or extracurricular activities. Thus their life is becoming monotonous which ends up becoming sad, angry, and demotivated day by day. Following the same routine for a year makes us frustrated as well as depressed.
On the contrary, some students have taken immediate steps to utilize their time and activities productively and efficiently. The students are indeed going through a stressful period during the pandemic but there are some students among those who chose some ways to get rid of stress. In general, they chose one of these nine strategies to cope up with their daily stresses which are:
- Spending time in nature
- Saying prayers daily
- Practicing Yoga
- Spending quality time with family
- Doing exercise
- Managing time
- Practicing an Extracurricular activity
- Reading books
- Thinking positively
To remove their boredom, productive stuff helped them to be motivated, cheerful, and most importantly happy and healthy. Here is an example: Exercise doesn’t have to be long or be grueling to be effective. We now understand that short bursts of exercise are beneficial, and often serve as motivation to exercise more. If you have a busy day, schedule two or ten or fifteen-minute workouts or make it a habit to do a round of push-ups while you wait for your chance to speak during online meetings or classes. Let’s face it! Just adding a few things like this in your daily routine helps you to reduce stress and leads you to feel more comfortable at work.
Besides physical exercise and yoga, there are a lot of extracurricular activities in which students of Bangladesh can be involved. Some examples can be Coding, Public Speaking, Debating, Painting, Social Works, and many more!
We will describe these activities in our next article. We will also notify you folks of some important updates about our community. So stay connected with us.
At the end of this article, we would like to say that, sometimes things might be difficult or painful. And all of us are going through that time in this pandemic situation. But we all know that " time and tide wait for none". We all have to move on and start a new journey in life. There’s no value in beating yourself up. COVID-19 has forced everyone to make changes. Staying always motivated can be tricky, but you can make it easier for yourself by creating a realistic schedule and taking time to care for yourself and your family. Though this pandemic feels endless, we can believe that it will eventually come to an end and we will be able to freely interact with our near and dear ones. But before that, we need to change our mentality and think of the pandemic as an opportunity for us to learn and grow more and be the best version of ourselves.
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An article by The AS8 Organization
Credits:
- Research - Arko Chowdhury
- Content Writing - Marzia Mehzabin Fiha
- Editing - Audrija Dhar
- Cover Image - Ahammad Shawki
Special thanks to these sources which helped us a lot to write this blog post:
- The Covid-induced stress factors impacting our students
- Pandemic prompts changes in education
- What Students Are Saying About Living Through a Pandemic
- Challenges of home learning during a pandemic through the eyes of a student
- 10 tips for staying motivated during the pandemic
- The rise of online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic
- Bangladeshi children share experiences of remote learning and the challenges they face