It has now been five weeks since the University of Michigan-Flint made the decision to transition all of our courses to remote coursework. While this sudden change proposed challenges and opportunities for faculty and students alike, we asked some of our Graduate Student Ambassadors how they are handling their newfound remote learning environment.
My soccer coach once told me, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” There have been a lot of punches thrown these past couple weeks. I moved back in with my parents in Medina, Ohio. I lost my job at the Recreation Center and will be living at home until September; I have not lived at home for longer than three weeks in five years. I lived in Idaho the past four years, so I was rarely home. I am very close with my parents so this transition has been smooth. I was able to set up a desk in our spare bedroom, so I have a great workspace. The recreation center has been very helpful and I will be getting paid for two more paychecks even though we are not able to work. When I come back in September, they said I will still have a job. The University has been very helpful to make sure we are successful.
The transition between in class to online has been handled extremely well by our faculty. Right away we had classes ready to go online and syllabus were updated. They emailed us right away with updates and announcements to make sure we knew what was going on. My professors have been great with communication. We have sent a lot of emails and they have always responded in an appropriate amount of time. Dr. Milligan sends out weekly letters on updates to our program and ongoing events.
All of my classmates have said the same thing: we do not love online classes. We all miss seeing each other and having hands on activities in the lab. Our professors have figured out Blue Jeans quickly and Dr. Case helped the other professors who are struggling with the transition. We had to make modifications to our site visits. Youtube has been extremely helpful to make-up for our site visits. We are able to all watch videos during class and talk through what we would do as OTs. As of right now our Neurorehabilitation lab is postponed until next semester. All of our other labs will be done through Youtube and we analyze and create treatment plans.
Our program is still continuing on this summer. We are still on track to graduate and will continue this same set up. We access Blue Jeans during our scheduled class times and the professor shares their screen and goes through the Power Point. The professors have more time to prepare for the next semester, so it should run smoothly. Our program is constantly communicating with us about accreditation and we are still on track! We have an awesome staff that have made this transition somewhat comforting. I cannot wait to see my classmates in the fall, but until then we embrace the new changes.
