I finished my freshman year of college sitting in the bedroom I share with my fifteen-year-old sister.

It was more than a little anti-climatic. I hit 'send' to send the email containing my last final to my professor and that was it. None of the bittersweetness of the last day of a year, none of the relief of having achieved something. I just closed my laptop and went on Twitter.

I've had it pretty easy. I have three years of college left, I'm not missing graduation, and I was already planning on being home this summer. Still, with the semester over, can I just say that online school is exhausting.

There's a couple of reasons I, and so many other people, have found this last half of the semester so much more draining than the first. There's the obvious, of course; it's very hard to concentrate on your studies when the world feels so scary and uncertain. Between final exams, I was getting emails discussing how much money my university has lost as a result of the COVID-19, cuts they have to make, and whether or not we'll be able to return to campus in the fall. At the same time, there are the constant news alerts of what seems like a never-ending string of bad news, which makes it difficult to concentrate on what you're supposed to be doing.

But there are the other, less obvious things too; the increase in busy work as lesson plans have to change, the fact that work can be due at any time on any day, and the monotony of sitting alone in front of a computer all day. There's none of the change of scenery of moving from class to library to lunch to another class, and none of the chance to see friends along the way.

I'm grateful for professors who have been understanding and done the best they can during this time. And I feel awful for those who spent their last semester of college at home in front of a computer.

Online classes were unavoidable and necessary. But now that my semester is over, I can also say that they were utterly exhausting.