Ready or not, MSJC students transition to online classes

Students are no longer on the MSJC campus, instead on their computers at home while classes transition to an online format. File photo

By Alyse Kiara Deatherage, Correspondent

No one knew quite what to expect Monday as instruction moved to an online format at Mt. San Jacinto College because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many of the campus resources, such as tutoring and counseling, have begun converting to an online format as well as all the classes that previously met in-person on campus. Though the students will have access to these and many other resources, many concerns and much anxiety has arisen from this pandemic, for both students' academic lives as well as their home lives.

Amy Ghironzi, a Human Resource Management major at MSJC, expressed concerns over how she would handle classes as they went online. Though she was glad that she wouldn’t have to commute from her home in Temecula to the Menifee and San Jacinto campuses for classes, she was still worried about how professors who had no prior experience with teaching in an online format would handle this transition.

“I’m mostly nervous because the professors weren’t prepared for this,” said Ghironzi. “Are there gonna be more assignments? How is the content going to be condensed? What are they going to do?”

This sentiment is one that MSJC sophomore Alvaro Arredondo also expressed. Arredondo is set to graduate from MSJC by the end of this semester, in May, and transfer to a university in August. Though he doesn’t think the transition will be more difficult because of these circumstances, he does worry about the professors’ abilities to cram the weeks of missed content into the remaining weeks of this semester.

“I am a little nervous due to the fact that we have missed out on three weeks of instruction and now everything is going to be crammed into a month and a half,” said Arredondo.

Both Arredondo and Ghironzi expressed concerns over how the future semesters would also be affected by this pandemic. The uncertainty of whether they would start their fall semesters online or in person was a concern to each of them.

“I like knowing, I like having a plan, and this just makes me stress because there’s not even a way to know what to expect next,” said Ghironzi. “It’s like, when this is over, what state is the world going to be in?”

Though there were lots of concerns about what going back to school online would be like, not all of the students were anxious over this change.

“I’m overwhelmingly grateful that MSJC, and many other colleges, have moved to online courses and online work as opposed to just closing everything down,” said Political Science and Drama major James Crawford.

Crawford is a student worker for the Supplemental Instruction program at MSJC and is grateful that his job, like many others, has transitioned to an online format.

Crawford has filled his free time over the break with personal reading time, binge watching television shows like “Scandal”, and household tasks like organizing and cooking. When the break began, he began to stray far away from watching news reports.

“I learned fairly fast too that I can’t watch too much of the news anymore. It’s all I used to watch, but with everything going on right now it has become too much of the same repetitive and depressing news,” said Crawford.

Stephanie Ortiz is a Child Development major as well as a mother. Her time away from school brought a new value for primary educators to her life.

“My daughter is in fourth grade, and I am now solely responsible for her education,” said Ortiz.

Ortiz has now been tasked with working, attending her classes online, and schooling her daughter from home -- tasks that have proven to be quite difficult to juggle.

She explained that the simple tasking of taking time to read at home has proven difficult, as her daughter has seen home as the place where Ortiz and her read together, and now seeing Ortiz read separately from her is not something she is used to.

“She wanted me to read with her, and ask questions, and draw with her, as I would have done when we were reading just for fun, when I wasn’t solely responsible for her development,” said Ortiz.

Trying to change the way her daughter sees their home environment is a struggle Ortiz anticipates she will continually try to tackle, but she is excited for the new challenges that being at home will task her with, whether it be for school, for work, or in her personal relationships with those she is at home with.

“If I can find a silver lining in all this, I would say this transition is throwing me way out of my comfort zone,” said Ortiz. “It’s a new challenge, and that is exciting.”