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By Thomas Gessner
I once went on a religious retreat through my High School, and like most retreats we had this enigmatic speaker; he played guitar, wore flat-billed hats, and kept trying to hide the fact that he was a smoker. Mr. Smoker had one throughline over this two-day retreat, and it remains terrible advice in my eyes. As I sat in the rec center of a summer camp that was hemorrhaging money, he said to myself and the other unlucky fellows, “If you aren’t going to do something 100 percent, it’s better to do it zero percent.” I do a poor job of hiding my emotions, and my mouth was wide open in a state of complete disbelief. The logic of Mr. Smoker had no place in my brain, and my mouth was acting as a door, letting it leave to return to where it came from. I left the retreat thinking that this guy was a complete jackass, and I still think that. I mean, 99 percent is better than zero percent, even 60-70 percent. Just imagine not turning in an assignment and telling your professor, “I knew I wasn’t going to put in 100 percent effort, so instead of attempting to do it at all, I decided that not doing it at all was the right thing to do.” You’d probably leave the professor’s office with a wad of spit on your face and a scarlet letter stitched on your ass.
While I just spent a fair amount of time ripping this concept apart, as well as this perfectly nice man who happened to say an idiotic thing, there is exactly one instance where this statement is not wrong. Just one. College. And when I say college, I’m not talking about students or even the teachers, I’m talking about choosing to even have college happen during the pandemic. If students can’t be in person, learning in the classroom, getting the opportunities to meet other students to talk and share ideas with, why are we doing this? There’s a lot you can only do once, and being a freshman in college is near the top of the list in terms of importance. All I ever heard in high school was about how college is this unbeatable experience, just pure ecstasy, where not only you have fun, but you grow as a person too. People talk about college the same way they talk about losing their virginity, and for some those events are probably related. I had teachers that acted as though college was the reason that they could become who they are today (which, for me, was a little off-putting because they were mediocre at their jobs which they often criticized and did not get paid well to do). Regardless, college is apparently the best thing ever, and that starts with freshman year. And in my case, I was dying to get to college since my senior year of high school, where I was tired of the lack of control in my life, not having classmates who shared my same motivations, and living with my parents at home, listening to them complain about my presence and asking why I go out so much. Needless to say, I had some pretty big expectations for my first year in college. I was excited about the whole process: I enjoyed filling out the Common App, I had fun answering essay questions and doing research and going on campus tours, and I hadn’t even gotten to the actual college part yet. But, as one could probably figure out, those expectations I had created were forced to adapt to the coronavirus. I think I did a pretty good job mentally preparing for some online classes, wearing a mask, giving up the handshake for the much less germy elbow bump. When I got to campus in August, I felt happy to be in a dorm, have a new bed, a new desk, new dreams, and even one in-person class. I was sure that by next semester I would be in an uncomfortable lecture hall seat, and, mask or not, I’d have an infectious smile from ear to ear. Well, here we are, and I could not have been more wrong. I cannot name a single academic building on campus, and I have no idea what the insides of these buildings look like. The walls could be covered with pictures of me naked and I wouldn’t know. It’s not only that most students at Chapel Hill, including myself, don’t have in-person classes, it’s that people think this is okay. Zoom is the worst way to learn, and the students are being affected by it in a way that society is yet to see. No one learns better online, no one. It is not an effective substitute for in-person instruction, no matter what way you slice it. I have been academically neutered, and I know, in my heart of hearts, that I'm not alone in that feeling. Everyone is becoming progressively dumber from all of this, and this is where my point about only doing things once becomes relevant. Society has decided to push through and educate everyone well below 100 percent of their potential. At this point, if school boards and deans continue to prevent actual learning, why don’t we just call the 2020-21 academic year a wash? No one is going to take this year seriously looking back. It won’t be measurable to the rest of college, or even life, and if we are going to have that attitude, we shouldn’t bother trying to force our way through an inadequate college year. I can’t be a freshman in college twice. Looking back, I think it would have been the right move for whoever is in power to tell all the 18-year-olds to just sit this year out and relax. Let’s wait until we can do this right, instead of having this hobbled school year where no student is happy or given a real opportunity to succeed, academically or socially. Maybe this is a defeatist view, and too much time has already passed for any of this to matter, but in retrospect it might have been better to just coast at zero percent rather than go through with this 45 percent crap that has taken up my freshman year. When everyone inevitably goes back to school for real, it’s going to be a massacre for us. When I’m bored in class, I can’t just pull out my phone because I don’t particularly care about the size of Rasputin’s penis, or mute myself so I can have a conversation with my roommate about the Charlotte Hornets, or cook myself brunch while the professor drones on and on. Instead, I’ll have to sit there and feel absolute pain. Things could be a lot worse for me though, and I especially pity the students who cheat. Life will not be so easy for them when they no longer have the internet and group chats to give them the answers to exam questions. When in-person instruction returns I won't know any of the buildings on campus, so as a sophomore I will have to deal with the soul-crushing embarrassment of walking into the wrong classroom and asking someone where I’m supposed to be. Because of online school, I do not have the strength to do that anymore. It would be far too taxing on me, and I enjoy talking to people! The adjustment period is going to painful, and while an argument can be made that this year has given us Gen Z losers “character”, I can only continue to think of the utopia we’d have if I didn’t have to have a debate with myself every morning about whether or not I will leave my Zoom video on. ● The Recommended Content Widget will appear here on the published site.
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3/2/2021
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