As we adapted to life in France, many of us noted how much more time we seemed to have, how the lack of homework and intensity in classes sometimes made us feel like we weren’t even taking classes. Compared to academic life at BU, UGA was a breath of fresh air, though sometimes surreal. Then, just as we finished a grueling week of midterms that brought us back towards the reality of classes, we got sent home.
At least for me, I have even less structure at home than in the low-pressure environment in France. The transition to online classes has led some of my courses to strictly assign individual reading and problems, with professors available to answer questions, but not having live lectures at all. Others still have live lectures but had to change the structure of the course in a way that leaves a lot of work to be done on students’ own time.
On campus in Boston, I appreciated a rigorous structure and routine. Classes at a set time, regular deadlines for homework, and scheduled times for band and taekwondo. Every week I wrote a list of my assignments and stuck it to my laptop, filled out my planner, and had a clear idea of how I would structure my week. Truthfully, I thrived on the constant academic stress, which was just enough to keep me motivated and focused, while still having clear times for hobbies and hanging out with friends.
Now that I’ve come home, I’ve quickly fallen behind in my courses, and struggle to focus in my house–a house that my family moved into at the beginning of the semester, which isn’t really ‘home’ to me and might not ever be. When we heard we were coming home I naively thought that I might be able to go to the library or a local coffee shop to do schoolwork. Instead, I am essentially in one room all day everyday trying to motivate myself to read textbooks, review notes, and tackle problem sets.
The unclear timeline of this ‘Coronacation’ as many jokingly called it at the start, only adds to the stress. Summer plans for jobs and internships or research are up in the air, leaving students with both financial and professional uncertainties, as well as more time at home with our families than we’ve spent since high school. As the situation worsens in the U.S., concerns about whether BU will reopen for the fall semester grow, which would extend this sort of limbo another four months.
Personally, I need some sort of structure and pressure, with outside responsibilities to keep me busy. I can make as many schedules and lists as I want at home, but without physically going somewhere, nothing seems real enough to motivate. Of course, some of this is just the way I function, but it’s also part of the academic culture at BU and the overall New England culture.
At BU, almost everyone is stressed and busy almost all the time, with classwork, extracurriculars, and trying to be a healthy living person with a social life and sleep schedule. Everyone is expected to work hard and give all of their effort to school while they’re on campus.
Much of New England operates in a very similar way–or at least that’s the way it’s stereotyped. As someone who’s lived here my entire life, the stereotypical New Englander is someone with a full schedule, fast-walking down the street with an iced coffee in one hand (Dunks’ of course) and a laptop bag in the other. New Englanders are always on the go and always working in one form or another.
New England culture is greatly attributed to the Puritans, who largely settled the area in the 1600’s, and believed in strong local communities that followed the Bible, and valued a strong work ethic.
This borderline-workaholic New England culture greatly contrasted with the French outlook, and it is hard to get back into that work ethic. Part of the Puritan philosophy was that idle hands are the “devil’s workshop”. While the religious aspect is not very applicable to me, I have always found my work ethic a little like treading water–if I stop moving I start sinking. In the three weeks that I have been home, this is certainly true, as I have started to drown in coursework and home responsibility.
Hopefully, the pandemic ends reasonably soon and everyone can return to their packed schedules in the fall–it will only get harder to get back to the surface the longer we stay at home.
Julianna Hill 