Online Classes

Starting college, I never thought I would be taking online courses. Before covid, I always had an image in my head of attending all of my classes in person and that online classes were just for people who had families and/or had a full-time job. I think the past me hated online classes as I didn't know how to manage my time with assignments and studying. It was until my second year of college, that I started learning how to balance my online classes.

My first year of college I was attending Winona State University with all of my classes online, that I took from home because I didn't see the point in staying on campus if I was just going to be in my room most of the time. It was a hard first year as it was not what I expected college to be. I then transferred here, to NDSU, to get a fresh start in fall of 2021. 

By that time, I was able to take in-person classes and 1 or 2 online classes. Disciplining myself to have a schedule was hard but definitely worth it. I made sure to have study time for both in-person and online classes while also balancing work and activities. The online course gave me more freedom to move around assignments during the week as most of the assignments were due by Sunday night, for most of my past online classes. I was able to fix my procrastination and had better time management with my classes. Of course, I still have procrastination from time to time, but I know I am doing a lot better than I used to.

I think a couple of things that I found difficult in my past online classes was that it was hard to follow where assignments were posted sometimes depending on a few professors. It was also easy to forget an assignment is due. Sometimes the assignment simply just slips out of my head and before I know it, it was too late to do anything. With that said, every week I now go through every class and check the tentative assignments, announcements, and just over all double checking to see what is due for the week or upcoming week that I haven't yet written down in my planner.

A couple of things I did appreciate my past online professors, was when they had a very good tentative schedule that rarely never changes. I also appreciated professors who was able to respond in a timely manner when I was confused about an assignment or a question about a chapter we were on. I think what also helped was that most of the assignments was always due at the same day and time.

Overall, I think online classes are great and can help you develop time management skills along with giving you a little bit more freedom of completing assignments.