It goes without saying that this is a tough time for people. Parents are being asked to teach, discipline, and work at the same time. Teachers who rely on teaching by discussion or experimentation are being asked to teach via the internet. Students who thrive on in-person discourse, or who need to be able to speak to anther human and clarify points, are being asked to learn via email and video.
There are going to be an awful lot of students who "lose" this year.
As many of you know, I spent the two and half years before Elianna was born working in the registrar's office of small liberal arts university. Academia has always been important to me. I've also worked at a university library. I went to a very well-to-do-university. There was never even a question of whether or not I would go to college. But I also had it lucky.
I was the sort that really didn't need to study. I was very good at just remembering things. Except math and science. I was OK in math and science until I got out of the biology and geometry type disciplines and entered into chemistry, physics, and calculus. Once, during a high school physics test, I determined that the canon ball was traveling at -43 miles per hour. I knew this could not possibly be right. But I also looked back over my work and could not find where I had gone wrong. I left the calculation and answer, but added "I know this is wrong - sorry." Because my teacher was the type that gave partial credit if you showed your work on tests and homework and weighted homework heavily, I squeaked through this class with a good grade despite actually being pretty inept at the work.
My college calculus class was dreadful. I mean the work. I could not comprehend the problems. The homework - which was less than half a dozen problems per class - took me hours to complete. I was crying in class regularly. Fortunately, because I went to a school where a large class consisted of 25 people, and the professors were approachable and understanding, I was able to get help. Every night that the tutoring center was open, I was there. Every time my professor had office hours, I was there - usually crying about how I couldn't fail this class.
At one point, having already failed several tests, and with the final looming, I sobbed to him about how I knew I was going to fail.
"You're not going to fail this class," he said, gently exasperated.
"But I've failed all the tests!" I wailed.
"But you've also put forth far more effort than anyone else in the class," he countered. "You do all the homework. You show all your work on your tests. The tutors tell me you're there at every session. There are students who are failing this class - because they are not trying and they are not seeking help. You are not one of them."
Still, when grades came over Christmas, I opened the envelope with dread. I knew I had failed the final, and I had gone into it with a grade hovering right at the border between passing and failing. And I unfolded my grade report and found that my calculus grade was the lowest final grade I'd ever gotten in my life: C-. I screamed and laughed and jumped around the room. I had been praying to simply scrape by with a D-. To this day, I'm not entirely sure my professor didn't give me extra points simply so he wouldn't have to see my weepy face ever again.
I do believe at one point my adviser or roommates or friends suggested withdrawing from the class. The Hermione-like first year that I was, I was scandalized. Drop a class? Me? I might as well commit murder. There was also the (much more realistic) problem that as bad as I was at math and science that I had chosen to take math my second semester of senior year of high school, and my first semester of college so it would be "fresh" in my mind. I also had planned to take my lab science requirement second semester freshman year and get it out of the way. I was concerned that if I had to retake math it would derail that plan - I knew I couldn't manage both a math and a science at the same time, and I was concerned pushing biology too late would also be detrimental as I had last taken bio as a freshman in high school.
Once I got past calculus, however, I took a new outlook on dropping or withdrawing from a problematic class. My senior year, in a moment of panic just before registration for my final semester, my adviser and I realized we had misunderstood the science requirement. We had read the requirement as needing two sciences courses. I had taken a biology lab and a psychology class. But we realized the requirement was actually for two LAB sciences. Because my psych class had not had a lab component, it didn't count. So now here I was, a senior theatre major who, as previously established, was very much NOT a science person, now needed to find a lab science I was sure I could pass.
I went to college in the mountains of rural Tennessee. My university had an observatory and offered astronomy. "What a fantastic opportunity!" I thought. "I can do astronomy - that's looking up at the night sky and identifying planets and constellations, right? That sounds like fun!"
The first day of class, our professor put up an overhead projection that was just a sheet of numbers.
"This is a comet," he said, circling a cluster of numbers that, to my eye, looked no different than any other group of numbers. My eyes glazed over as he described to us how this group of numbers represented a comet, and then explained that a substantial part of our final grade would be using sheets like this to find and describe a hitherto undiscovered heavenly body moving through our solar system. I left the classroom and went straight to the registrar's office for a drop form. (For those of you wondering, I ended up taking forestry instead, as I remembered that my university was, as previously mentioned, in a rural area and we owned 13,000 acres of mostly woodland.)
I guess what I'm trying to say with this rambling tale from school is this: don't force yourself to continue something that is making you miserable. Drop what you have to drop to get by. (While I mean this academically, it applies to anything that you might need to stop doing to just keep yourself sane during this time.) While I can't say 100% that every school is doing this, the university that I used to work at announced that they were extending their deadline to withdraw without academic penalty so that students that are not adjusting well to online learning, or are stuck away from their families and worrying, or, heaven forbid, are dealing with the illness or death of friends or families, can release themselves from just one more thing that is weighing on their mind.
There are a lot of people that are not OK right now. And that's OK. If you are one of them, know that it is OK for you to let go of whatever you need to so that you can be OK.