My three year old daughter can’t pronounce coronavirus or quarantine. She can, however, in her own toddler way, lament the way the world has changed around her. Since lockdowns were put in place in March she has had to put up with no more impromptu playground trips, no more cavorting in the streets with neighbor kids, masks that muffle snack requests. With all that, I really don’t blame her for the uptick in tantrums. In fact, many days I want to join her, kicking and yelling about the unfairness of it all.
 
Toddlers aren’t the only ones that are adjusting to enhanced safety measures, many Aggies that were enjoying the security of an on-campus experience are finding it difficult to learn how to learn remotely. Instead of spacious lecture halls they are cramped in bedrooms, listening to lectures through ear buds instead of in spite of them, and testing with online proctors in place of harried TAs. These changes, implemented even in the best of circumstances, would still leave students disconcerted and, in the public health climate we find our selves in, it’s down right upsetting (tantrums, I’ve heard, can help).
 
Due to these changes it is my guess that many students are probably calculating their ROIs instead of their GPAs. It’s not difficult to understand why; does it make sense to continue to pay tuition when students aren’t on campus getting the face-to-face instruction that they are used to?
 
Distance learning is not easy. As someone who has worked on a Master’s degree exclusively online, I can be the first to attest to that. I know how frustration can manifest when a carefully worded discussion board question whooshes over your professor’s head, or how much planning and studying can be undone by the smallest technical glitch. I could write an entirely separate post simply detailing the horror stories that have been my proctored exams (talk to me after you’ve nursed your infant during a midterm in a glass enclosed library cubicle), but that wouldn’t give an honest or whole account of my distance experience.
 
To be honest, I’ve had more interaction with my professors during my time as a virtual student than I ever did while I was sitting in their classroom three times a week. The effort that I have seen put into my distance learning classes by my dedicated lecturers is a testament to their commitment to their field and their students. It takes time to prepare the endless powerpoints, video lectures, and Q&A sessions. You think those dreaded discussion board prompts were easy?! Wrong! All of those took time to create and monitor. Online professors don’t get to fake meetings to avoid students like they could in previous semesters. Virtual lecturers don’t get the luxury of being inaccessible to students, especially in this time of instant gratification.
 
It can be difficult to remember sometimes that scholarship isn’t limited to the young, the single, the childless. Distance learning is a tool that has enabled many persons that would not have otherwise had the opportunity to go to school a chance to enrich their careers through education. For me, online learning has afforded me the flexibility to raise my girls, work, and support my soldier in a way that traditional education could never do. Since beginning my Master’s degree in 2018 I have moved cross-country, had a child, suffered my husband’s deployment, worked, cried, and  generally have done everything but sleep. But the important part is that I did it; I AM doing it. That is because Texas A&M University realized the value of distance students and invested in their futures. It’s impossible to completely understand the Aggie experience through a 13 inch screen, but without that gateway I wouldn’t even have the opportunity to get my degree at TAMU. I have great pride in this school--MY school--and although I have studied in Kansas and now Alabama I can still be an Aggie.

Chelsea is a master's student in the Department of Statistics.