Advice: How to combat virtual spring semester

Some students at CSUSB are new to online schooling and therefore still adapting to this difficult transition. How can we make the most of it, you may ask? Think about it this way: if you have made it this far in online schooling, you will get through it next semester, too.

2020 has been a very weird year. I confess I did not expect it to be as bad and strange as it currently is. It is difficult to stay attentive in a virtual school, especially with all of the available and easily-accessible distractions in a house.  Some of the best pieces of advice I can give is to stay disciplined and motivated. One way to do this is to take about four or five hours a day and dedicate it to just schooling. If you must, go to your rooms and lock yourself in. Give yourself a 10 to 15-minute break in between each hour.

If your class runs a little short and you have extra time, get a good workout in. You will find that if you work out or get some sort of exercise in between classes, you’ll be more alert and focused on your studies. If your class is normally an hour and a half, and it ended up being only an hour that day, use that time and go for a run, do some push-ups or some burpees.

A good day of doing this workout would be a two-mile run, followed by:

Eight rounds of push-ups, squats, and sit-ups 

20 seconds work

10 seconds rest

Another good hobby you can get during this online schooling would be to read. Granted, we read a lot of material for our classes but, if you get tired of the same old stuff, take up 20 or 30 minutes of reading something different during the day. Find something that really interests you and read up on it. You will find that not only will you learn something different, but you’ll become a better reader and learn how to retain information better. This will greatly benefit you for your classes when you have a test and need to remember details from the textbook.

This situation has been hard on all of us, and some of us are still trying to adapt. It can be hard to go outside and not do the things we loved to do. Things like going to church, going to the movies, and eating out with friends are all things we greatly miss, but eventually, things will be back to normal, and will be able to have our most basic freedoms back. Not the “new normal” but the normal we all know and love.