Life as an online student
By: Eva Laarmann
Tags: Study, Students, Online, Life, Student Life

By now we all know what is going on in the world and if not, you probably life under a rock in the middle of nowhere.

However we don’t know how different people in different countries with different jobs and so on deal with this situation and how it effects their daily life.I will tell you how the pandemic effects the life of a normal university student in Cologne, Germany.

Before we get started I’m studying Banking & Finance in my third semester.

At the beginning, about March or April, I really enjoyed having online classes. I mean, who doesn’t like having more time in the morning before you attend classes and don’t being worried about how you look like, because no one is going to see you. Furthermore I didn’t had to take a full bus to university and I could spent more time with my family. When I think back about this time I could consider myself really lucky and thankful that the start of the first lockdown in Germany didn’t affect my life that much due to the fact that I lived and still do now live at my parents house and they completely financially support me.

Like this, enjoying and relaxing, the start and first month of this semester I attended my classes regularly and I also really liked the subjects I had. However I about half way through this semester I noticed something. I felt alone. Not in my everyday life, because I still had my family and friends from school which luckily also study in Cologne just in different universitys. With them I played online games on this app called Houseparty or after the first lockdown we often hung out in parks or went out to eat. No, I felt alone in my uni life. I had no one to talk to because after my first semester my two friends, really lovely girls, decided to change university and study something different. Before it was announced that the universitys will close I thought: “Okay, I know some people briefly it won’t be that hard to make new friends.”But I was wrong. Due to the fact that everything was now online it was almost impossible to get to know new people. It hit me when a girl in my internal accounting class said: “ I and some other people tried to do this task…”and I thought to myself WOW, there are people talking to each other over tasks and I felt so alone, because I had no one to talk about my studies or someone to ask when I have questions.

Soon the semester came to an end and so the exams came. In my university you write your exams directly the week after classes had ended, so there is not much time to study and you have to start while having classes. During my first semester (which was before the pandemic started) I couldn't study that well because I had classes and than had a way from about 30–40 mins. to go home and I think we can all agree, that after coming home you are just exhausted and don’t really want to do anything. The exams turned out to be okay for a first semester but not much more. However being at home anyways (during my second semester) I had more time to study and I had more energy to study. Since we had to write our exams from home, the university allowed us to use our notes from class, because they couldn’t control if we cheat or not. Through this my exams turned out really well, for which I am really greatful. However I heard from some of my friends that they didn’t do that well in online exams.

Looking forward to my third semester (eventhough I don’t have friends in university) I started it in early November. Quickly I noticed that this time online classes are not as enjoyable as they were the previous semester and that I get really annoyed and exhausted sitting in my room for such a long time and looking at my laptop at someone reading from a presentation. I think the reason for this are the winter months. Sitting in a dark room and freezing eventhough the heaters are on is not something nice.

I am looking forward to my exams, starting at the end of January and if I am still annoyed of having online classes next semester.

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