College During a Crisis: A Lesson in Self-Compassion
The night before I flew home from New York to Los Angeles, I frantically packed, unpacked, and repacked all my belongings, unsure if I would be going back anytime soon. At the time, NYU — the school I currently attend — had only announced remote learning was going to take place the week after Spring break. Coming home was something I had already planned for, so that initial week home didn’t feel like the world was crumbling.
In the first few weeks of quarantine, I was killing it. I did yoga almost every day, bought an ambitious amount of embroidery supplies, and reveled in how easy this was going to be.
Then, school started again — but virtually. Besides the fact that I could roll out of bed and log on to class without having to get dressed and walk across campus, remote learning has been detrimental to my educational experience and mental health. My motivation for school has never been this low, and I’ve resorted to putting in minimal effort, turning assignments in a day or two late, skimming readings, and doing work solely to get it done. The notion that we are somehow supposed to be super productive, learn new skills, and embark on projects we’ve always wanted to try all amidst a pandemic is bullshit. Not only am I supposed to stay on top of schoolwork, but I’m also supposed to become a master embroiderer and wash my hands 51 times a day?
The guilt for not being my most productive self led me to avoid asking for the support I needed from my professors. I put myself through a vicious cycle where I would put off asking for help, wait too long, and then decide that it was too late to ask for help and beat myself up for not doing it sooner. The danger of procrastinating this task manifested itself when, one Sunday, my computer crashed, making it impossible for me to do any of my work. I was forced to ask for extensions on an essay and presentation, but I felt like the fact that my computer stopped working was more validating than the effects of experiencing a pandemic had on my motivation.
As the last week of school wraps up, I have finally given myself permission to email my professors when I need more time without overthinking exactly why because it is simply what I need. If I’ve learned anything this semester, it’s that I deserve self-compassion and forgiveness, despite it not being an easy thing to practice. If that means taking a break to watch two different productions of Pride and Prejudice with my friends, then so be it. All of my sense of normalcy has been lost, along with that of the entire world, so I am over the idea that I need to come up with a more convincing reason for not doing work.
I talked to a few classmates and friends about their own experiences with adapting to remote learning, and they expressed similar sentiments. One of my friends, Isabel, articulated to me over text that attending college has felt like a burden because of poor Internet connection and being forced to adapt to the way that switching time zones after having studied abroad in Berlin has affected deadlines and class times. On top of those already challenging obstacles, she added, “I find it very difficult to concentrate and work just doesn’t seem important to me. School work just feels like productivity for productivity sake, and it is not my mindset right now.” The pandemic has completely shifted our perspectives on what matters right now, making it difficult to find the significance in keeping up with school.
Another factor that has made the stay-at-home order and switch to remote learning difficult is the compounding challenge that is managing a mental illness, such as depression or anxiety. My friend Morgan attested to this distinct challenge: “As someone who struggles with depression and anxiety, my motivation and ability to focus on my class work is already a challenge. All of the changes, especially going virtual with classes, has just exacerbated these challenges.” She added that focusing for hours at a time over a digital medium and motivation to participate and complete assignments has become increasingly difficult, ever simply that “it seems so trivial in such trying times.”
In a similar vein, my classmate, Jasmine, who also has struggled with learning at home due to her mental illness, relayed that “the one good thing about being away from home was that [she] had a reason to get out of bed everyday and [she] felt like [she] was working towards something.” She resisted the idea that quarantine is conducive to increasing productivity, adding, “If anything, I'm so overwhelmed by the political corruption of this country that I really just sit in bed, eat snacks while scrolling through Twitter, and think about how I'm wasting the best years of my life.” The triviality of trying to carry on with our work like “normal” is magnified by, like Jasmine said, the outraging news reports that bombard our screens. In addition to the guilt that unproductivity brings, another layer of complexity during this crisis is the added guilt we feel for feeling guilty in the first place — a cyclical emotion that does not serve to help us or the people we are comparing ourselves to.
It’s hard for me to come up with a sage piece of advice for other students who are undergoing the same struggle with remote learning because I certainly haven’t mastered it yet. And, while I hope I don’t ever have to, it is clear that there is way too much uncertainty to know what the future of our college education will look like. I find some comfort in the fact that we are all experiencing this simultaneously, albeit to different degrees depending on the level privilege we each hold, because I know it means that we will be extending empathy and understanding to others for not “performing” to the same capacity that they could before. I hope that you will extend that empathy inward, too, and avoid measuring yourself against a standard of productivity that is no longer sustainable — give yourself permission to be anything but.
About the Author
Lola Proctor (she/her) is a junior from Los Angeles, CA studying the Politics of Fashion & Journalism at New York University. She is currently an editor at NYU Gallatin’s magazine Embodied. She is passionate about writing, womxn in indie rock, fashion, and feminism.
