SJU Junior Discusses Learning Styles & Stress

A Saint Joseph’s University Junior shares his experience with hybrid and in-person learning while transitioning back to Hawk Hill. He also discusses the stress that has been placed on students throughout the pandemic.

Start Talking SJU is a social media impact campaign that encourages members of the Saint Joseph’s University community to engage each other by discussing difficult, yet important topics, that are vital for a healthy, open, inclusive campus. Our current topic is The New Normal?

More videos like this one on the topic of The New Normal can be found at http://transition.starttalkingsju.com. You can also see our prior campaigns: Living in Fear, Striving for Hope (http://livinginfear.starttalkingsju.com), Attacked (http://attacked.starttalkingsju.com), Belonging (http://belonging.starttalking.com), and Mental Health (http://mentalhealth.starttalking.com).

This video was co-created with the person depicted who reviewed and signed a consent form granting permission to share this story online.

If you are experiencing any personal or social effects due to COVID and/or a return to campus life, the university has resources that can help, including:

The Office of Student Outreach and Support (https://sites.sju.edu/sos/); the SJU COVID website (https://www.sju.edu/hawk-hill-ready); if you are experiencing food insecurity, HawkHub (https://clubs.sju.edu/hawkhubclub); The Bias Activity Review Group, which connects to Public Safety (https://sites.sju.edu/oid/bias/); CAPS (610-660-1090); TitleIX titleIX@sju.edu; REPP (*confidential support) 610-733-9650 (24 hr. Peer Helpline); or SJU Public Safety 610-660-1111.

A complete transcript of the video reads as follows: I’m a Junior, English major. I think on Zoom it was really hard, to focus. I think when skipping class is as easy as not opening your laptop, it gets really hard. It’s very, interesting because I really haven’t enjoyed my experience, not just because of Saint Joe’s, just with school, school’s always been something that like I have not been necessarily great at and with the kind of environment that a school is, its hard sometimes to get back on track. Like when you fall down, it’s really, nobody’s there to just like help, help you pick yourself back up. I think people put a lot of stress on themselves when it’s really just like, you know, it’s okay to like lose your grip sometimes. And especially like with Covid, I mean, you could just, some teachers have implemented like because students are like getting sick with like you said, like sinus infections, and stuff like that. So, they are adding like a Zoom feature now like I know two of my classes have opened up to like halfway Zooms so some kids go online, some kids don’t. I think that like as soon as it all happened, teachers were rushing to like fix their whole agendas to teach differently. And, I think that they were trying to get us more engaged but, I think they did it in a way that just felt like more work because it doesn’t have to be like some disconnect. There are administrators that are more pushing on the teachers, to get better results, you know, for stuff like that so I think that it might not be on the teachers per se, because I know that they are probably being like pushed on like, you know, having more participation and stuff like that so I think it is very possible that teachers are doing this not because they want to do it but because they feel like they have to do it or else people just aren’t going to be engaged, like, at all.