Losing community
When I started my leave of absence from my PhD program a few months ago, one of my ideas was to use the time to change my dissertation topic altogether. I used to love school and going to class, until we made the switch to primarily online synchronous course delivery in 2020. The word synchronous does a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Before 2020, there were two primary ways to deliver a course in the higher education institutions I attended as a student and worked at as an employee (and reluctant adjunct): face-to-face or online asynchronous. F2F is your traditional in-person class time. Online asynchronous was the type of course where you submit work online, participate in discussion boards, maybe have an online call or two with a professor or a small group, but generally did your own thing for the duration of the course. My first taste of an online synchronous course in my higher ed journey, where you attend a live class at a specific time via Teams or Zoom, was in the sudden switch in Spring 2020. I was halfway through my coursework in the spring 2020 semester. I took one online, asynchronous class during the first half of coursework. I took one (official) F2F class in the second half of my coursework1. It was such a dichotomous tale of two different experiences, and the effect of the second half of coursework still wears on me today…to the point where this might be my new dissertation topic.
Consider today’s post a brainstorm for a possible autoethnographic dissertation.
I’m not great in online classes. I’m fantastic at keeping up with deadlines when I’m in a face to face class and have a physical reminder of the course on a regular basis. Online classes are easy for me to forget. I took one online asynch class in undergrad, one in grad school round 1, and one in the first half of my PhD coursework. I had the same struggle in all three — forgotten and missed deadlines because I was more focused on the classes I physically went to every week. I’m a planner queen and calendar freak, but even the most ingrained habits couldn’t overcome the blind spot I have with online classes. I knew this about myself, so I avoided online classes as often as I could. As with most ways I had my life set up, this served me well until everything changed in March 2020.
I was more than willing to deal with the initial switch to synchronous remote classes at first. We were all fumbling around, muddling our ways through the messy switch. I wasn’t thrilled about my increase in screen time, spending 9-10 hours staring at my work computer only to turn around an hour later and spend another 3-4 staring at my personal computer for classes held on Zoom, but, again, I was willing to work with the circumstances at hand. I was annoyed when one of my professors in Spring 2020 essentially ended the class on March 13th, giving us all As without any further work needed, but an A is an A and I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and yadda yadda yadda, so I let it go. I wasn’t thrilled about my options for summer classes that year, but, again, I knew I didn’t have a choice so I did what I was told.
There was a palpable vibe switch between those two semesters. In the spring, we were all doing what we could to get by and saying “Hey, yeah, this really sucks” wasn’t frowned upon. But in the summer saying the same thing wasn’t taken as nicely. Describing my professor that summer as “technologically challenged” would be an understatement. She could barely operate email, let alone run a highly interactive, conversation based course online with minimal andragogical2 training in this form of course delivery. Classroom discussions and small groups don’t just simply move to online seamlessly. It takes a different skill set to effectively facilitate these kinds of activities in an online environment, and my experiences with early synchronous remote courses were filled with professors who did not have these skills. Online classrooms are easily dominated by one or two individuals because it’s a lot harder to read the non-verbal cues that allow the flow of dialogue between people. It wasn’t just the professors; students also brought challenges in the synchronous remote environment. Many found it difficult to focus in their homes or keep distractions to a minimum3. Kids interrupting classes were cute at first, but as one semester rolled into a second rolled into a third rolled into a whole ‘nother year it got old fast.
Beyond these more immediate issues that made synchronous classes painful, I also noticed the elimination of the informal community that forms in on-the-ground classes. Casual discussions before class with others were nil, as students and professors chose to keep their cameras off until the start of class. I felt this hit hard as I was switching out of my core classes with my cohort and into my electives as the switchover happened. Tactics I relied on to meet and develop relationships with others fell flat in our new synchronous online world. Conversations during class were easily dominated by one or two voices, with any chance at dialogue shut down by them. I really enjoy learning and going to class, but by the end of the summer semester, I started crying at the thought of spending another evening sitting in front of a screen for class.
It wasn’t just the community of the classroom that got lost in the early days of synchronous online delivery. I also lost a communication line with professors I didn’t take classes with. My department chair reached out to each one of us individually towards the end of the spring semester, checking in with us and asking if he could answer any questions. I responded to him and…never heard a word back. At some point I was accidentally removed from the department listserv, and I wouldn’t find out I was missing so much important information until I took an in-person class in spring 2023…three years after the fact! I would have figured out something like that in mere weeks pre-pandemic, just from the word of mouth conversations you get walking around the hallways of the department. Emails went unanswered left and right from the people I needed support from the most. The community just wasn’t there anymore. I was all alone while never truly being alone.
People I expressed my frustrations with, both fellow PhD students and friends and acquaintances in my daily life, were agreeable in the beginning of it all, but by the end of summer I found those in my non-school life, in particular, telling me to “just deal with it” and “not ruin it for others.” It felt like my experience was shut down because others wanted this kind of life: Your experience doesn’t matter. What works best for you doesn’t matter. You don’t matter anymore. It sounds so histrionic to put those thoughts out to the public today, with four years of hindsight and being in a much better mental health space, but it was yet another place in my life where it felt like expressing an opinion that went against the norm was forbidden, like I was trying to ruin this for everyone else. I felt like I was, yet again, a problem, that I was someone to shut down and shut up. To express any frustration with synchronous remote class delivery in the early era of the pandemic was a hard no. If you did that, you were the enemy, and we didn’t tolerate enemies in 2020.
As with most things in 2020, it felt like a Calvinistic, good versus bad, black and white view had taken over yet another part of my life. As someone who lives in the liminal gray areas of life, who studies the nuance in words and numbers for a living, the switch to hard delineations of “good” and “bad” with no middle was something I struggled with. A HUGE part of my life, the community and fellowship I found through classes during a time of my life when I couldn’t participate as much in my non-school, non-work community, was ripped away from me overnight, like so many other things and for so many other people. The callousness to just expect someone to “shut up and deal with it” was so cruel. I did shut up, turning inwards more and more as I started to question if I was really a selfish cunt of an asshole, no better than the people who were protesting to get a hair cut. Why can’t I just get with the program, I would ask myself time and time again. Other people want this, so why can’t I do it? I felt like I had no one to talk to anymore, at least about anything deeper than a superficial, surface level conversation.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when I started keeping everything to myself, not letting my true feelings about what was going on known. By the end of summer 2020, I was back to calling myself a horrific monster, someone unworthy of existence, again, just as I was earlier in the year. The cruel, uber critical voice in my head never really went away in 2020, just quieted down a bit. When it came back, though, it came back screaming.
I took one class in spring 2023 that is not counted towards my official coursework because I was desperate to find community in academia again. I was already admitted to candidacy and did not need the credits.
Adult learning, versus pedagogy or child learning
Informal survey I did for one of my classes later into my coursework