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Being Over Being Overwhelmed:<br />
Transitioning to Online Learning<br />
By Jay Janca<br />
4/12/2020<br />
If you’ve been checking your emails or at least watching the news lately, you know<br />
that essentially everyone has been told to stay home and everyone is trying<br />
to get used to life as it is now versus what it used to be. (God, that sounds<br />
like a line in a zombie apocalypse survival movie.) Regardless of dramatics,<br />
whether it be working from home or taking your classes online, everyone<br />
has to start from scratch in some way. <br />
My first thought when Dr. Miller announced that TAMU-CC would be transitioning<br />
to online learning was, “Oh, I did this in high school! How bad<br />
could it be?” If I could go back in time, I would slap myself. For some reason<br />
– and I swear I’m not alone in this – it feels like there’s a lot more work<br />
to be done online than what we used to do in class. But they deleted some<br />
assignments, or did they? It feels like I’m drowning in papers, presentations,<br />
and memes, (thank you, social media!), but before we were all quarantined, I<br />
was working an almost full-time job closing at a restaurant and even training<br />
to be a trainer. But now, I have all this time on my hands, and it’s so hard to<br />
find the motivation to do my work – to do the bare minimum. My mom likes<br />
to say that “school is my job,” so if I look at it that way, I’m doing a good job.<br />
However, that somehow makes me want to do my work even less.<br />
It’s hard to find the motivation to do things, but it helps to take things<br />
slow and start off with just one class, so it’s less overwhelming. Some<br />
people might think that the list (on the next page) is a no-brainer, but I<br />
have ADD and anxiety and this is how I cope with change! If you’re anything<br />
like me, everything is all jumbled together right now, and it feels<br />
like you’ve been thrown into the deep end of a pool. It never hurts to<br />
break things down, especially if none of the pieces make sense with<br />
the bigger picture. For most of us, this means forming new habits.<br />
Here’s what I did – and what worked:<br />
174 WINDWARD REVIEW | Vol. 18
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