At the beginning of 2020 (and I mean literally the beginning, like January 1st), it seemed like this year was going to be a great one. It has certainly been great, a great big mess. There is one obvious thing to blame this on: Peter being chosen as the bachelor, not Tyler or Mike. Now, this isn't the only thing that has caused this global downfall. We are currently braving the elements of a pandemic. This was something nobody was ready for. I mean, the whole entire world didn't exactly have a crisis communication plan prepared and it shows.

Enough about the obvious. It's safe to say we're all struggling right now. When we first started quarantine, it didn't seem too serious or stressful. It was just a nice break for everyone to be a homebody and relax. Things got a little more serious when our professors had to go through training to effectively teach us over Zoom. Even then, we were thinking this was only temporary and we would be back in-person in no time. Clearly, that was not the case. Being taught online was quite difficult, but I can't say it was as difficult as it is now.

Not every school is online, there's some who are in-person and some that are hybrid. I will say, my school took the hybrid approach so not all of my classes are online. Let's get into why this semester is so much harder than last. Last semester, we at least had a normal first half. We also had a break from school through Spring Break and to prepare for online classes. This semester, we have all lost our Fall Break. Fall Break would be happening around this time and let me tell you, everyone is drained without it. I think we really took Fall Break for granted. Those couple days off gave our brains much needed rest. Fortunately, some professors took it upon themselves to give students a small mental break from work, but others are still trucking through.

It's very obvious some of these classes were not meant to be taught online. There's also a reason some of us decided to not take the online college route, it just doesn't personally work. For most of us, we had to relearn how to learn. Halfway through the semester we're still trying to learn how to retain information in a way we didn't sign up for. What really makes this semester hard is the lack of separation from school and life. Normally, you have your classroom setting and then maybe your desk that is dedicated to school work. Now, your bedroom is basically a 4-in-1; lecture hall, study room, library, and place of sleep. I'm no neurologist, but I don't think our brains are wired to be able to deal with such a cluster of things.

When this semester is done, I can't confidently say next semester will be any better. It's already been decided that there will be no Spring Break. Spring semester already burns everyone out due to the lack of breaks, so who's to say next semester isn't going to bring everyone to their breaking point? On the bright side (not really bright, just moderately lit), we are all in this together. We can all collectively complain to each other because we are all faced with a never ending unknown.