THE COVID STORIES
A Bright Side of COVID-19: One Student’s Second Chance
On Thursday, alone in her bedroom, she flopped on her bed and opened her laptop plastered with stickers. The clock read 11:58 a.m; it was almost time for her 12 p.m. zoom class. She had not left her home in California for a week, yet had attended class seven times at the University of Oregon.
Amelia Kennedy received a 1.8 GPA in the winter quarter of her first year of college. Along with a 1.8 GPA, Kennedy was placed on academic probation. She cried. Little did she know she would soon be sent home due to a pandemic.
Kennedy’s first year consisted of sub-par grades and fraternity parties. She said a lack of understanding of college courses’ difficulty and the “exciting new social aspects” hindered her academic performance. Kennedy explained how she got caught up in the fraternity parties because they were “fun, new and free.”
Not only did Kennedy’s academic performance struggle, but so did her mental health. She said, "Being a freshman came with a lot of change and that brings a lot of emotion.” She added she felt immense stress from school and grades, finding a social group, and learning to be a college student. “I felt stuck. I did not know what to do.”
On March 9, 2020, Kennedy remembered walking from the university gym to her friend’s dorm. She noted the sky was overcast and there was an “overwhelming energy of homesickness.” After arriving at her friend’s dorm, she received an email from the university announcing spring break was extended by two weeks due to COVID-19. “I felt a sense of relief. It was like I was being given a second chance at college,” she said. Later, the university would announce that all classes would be held online for the remainder of the year. Kennedy was home for good.
Kennedy spent the spring term prioritizing her grades and refraining from socializing. She said something “clicked for her” academic-wise. She told her mom, “What am I doing? I need to fix this,” and she did. Kennedy received a 3.8 GPA and a spot on the dean’s list during the spring term of 2020.
She began seeing a therapist after having time during quarantine to reflect on her mental state. She said that having a “mental guide” during the struggles of quarantine was beneficial to her mental wellness.
Today, Kennedy’s GPA is 3.5 and she made the dean’s list three other times. She joined student organizations such as Allen Hall Public Relations and Align Magazine, where she holds an executive position. She said her “study habits developed over quarantine and classes being back in-person” helped her get to where she is today.
“I am doing much better mentally,” said Kennedy wearing a black and white chunky sweater. She explained how she learned to manage her time more efficiently during quarantine. “I learned how to get good grades while still having fun.” Now, she can participate in social life without the severe stress caused by school.
How COVID-19 Helped One Professor Have a Technology Breakthrough
As the sun rose on another day in lockdown, he woke up, got dressed, and made the 20-step walk from his bedroom to his home office. He would spend the day lecturing on zoom, creating Canvas modules, and pondering other ways to best support his students in this time of unknown.
The day the University of Oregon announced that classes were to be held online for the remainder of the school year, Chris Murray, Professor of Education and Associative Dean for Faculty Development, remembers being unfazed. “I was not that worried,” he said wearing a grey v-neck sweater. “I have experience delivering online learning for rural communities and trainings prior to the pandemic.”
The College of Education, he said, is full of proactive staff members, “We are good at helping each other and motivated to get it to work.” He added the College had already helped set up work-from-home offices for its employees. He said he and many of his co-workers already had VPN and laptops or desktops. “My at-home office has all the same things my office in the clinical services building does,” he said.
Despite Murray’s confidence and his resources, the pandemic caused challenges. The main learning curve: technology integration. “To be honest, I used Canvas very little before the pandemic. I used it for the syllabus, readings, and grading,” said Murray. He said he knew that to best ensure students’ success, he would need to make some changes.
The university, he said, was pragmatic in helping professors with technology, “The university did a pretty good job setting up Zoom and explaining Canvas in the context of online learning.” He said he began to understand how to use technology to best support his students in this unfamiliar time.
“With the university’s teaching, I began utilizing tech in ways I have never thought about before,” he said. During the beginning of the pandemic, he used break-out rooms to foster student interaction. He held live class sessions so students were able to ask questions. He started making modules on Canvas for every class session and attaching any related readings and assignments.
Murray felt students adapted very quickly to the changes he made. “I'm a little in awe of how flexible students were and that the vast majority of students attended class. So, I’m not a big stickler for grades,” he said. “If I see students are making growth, I don't mess with them for the small things.
“Looking back, it is pretty radical how much I changed my classes throughout the pandemic to be more accessible.” He said his classes now are “a lot more flexible and accommodating” due to those changes he had to make during COVID.
While he thinks these changes are beneficial, he revealed that sometimes he thinks school now may be too easy for students. “I don’t want to say spoon-fed, but students need to figure out how to do things on their own — there is something valuable there that students have lost.” With information so clearly laid out and detailed, students do not have to go find information and plan ahead, and therefore they are losing those abilities, he said.
The Curse of Technology Knowledge During the COVID-19 Pandemic
On Monday, he sat in his office, wearing jeans and a flannel, and awaited calls for help. His phone buzzed. He checked the notification. It read, “Hey again. I can’t seem to get the projector to work.” In a building full of media professionals, he said he seems to be the only one who knows how to work a projector.
Matt Schmidt, Academic IT Manager at the University of Oregon, compared his job to a “really shitty chore,” as he paused and marched across the hall to a classroom to help fix the projector.
He said he is constantly on call for “very trivial things” while being undervalued by those who call for him. Schmidt said he feels stuck in a job where classes are making or breaking because of his involvement. “Without my help, many class sessions would be canceled due to technical problems. I would rather be teaching the class than helping fix the projector,” he said with eyes still on the classroom across the hall.
Schmidt explained how instructors spend countless hours researching their subject area, but will not educate themselves on basic technology functions. The result: 15 minutes of instruction time wasted as Schmidt is called for help. He said this is not an uncommon occurrence, pandemic or not.
The IT Manager “oversees the instructional and academic technology services for the School of Journalism and Communication,” Schmidt said. He said his first two concerns the day the university switched to online learning were whether all students had access to a computer and creating socially distanced computer labs for those who did not.
Schmidt is one of three people at the SOJC who are considered frontline workers, requiring him to be on campus when campus is closed. During quarantine, he said his daily routine remained unchanged. However, the pandemic required more technology support than ever before, so the demand for Schmidt inflated.
He said his biggest challenge was finding work for full-time SOJC tech employees who were used to engaging with people face-to-face. He added he felt responsible for the safety of his employees and explained how some of the decisions he made impacted their and students’ safety, such as deciding how to share and clean microphones.
“While technology has been a vital part of the pandemic, it has also created immense stress,” Schmidt said, “I’m not ready to handle another pandemic-like crisis. The flexibility we had and the amount of work we did, it’s not something I want to do again.” He explained that preparing teachers for online teaching was one of the hardest things he has ever done. “Making sure every teacher understood Zoom and Canvas was exhausting.”
While his job is primarily to support faculty, he said the reason he is still working as the UO is the students. As a parent of kids who attend the UO, he says he “goes the extra mile for students.” But after 23 years, the stress, time commitment, and invalidation from instructors have him thinking about different career options, he said. “I would love to do more services work or teach at a high school,” Schmidt said, “that is what sits in my heart.”
