COVID-19: College students navigate post-pandemic life

For a lot of lecturers, who are actually of their eleventh time period of delivering schooling within the face of a pandemic, ‘regular’ nonetheless feels far-off. And with COVID-19 circumstances refusing to abate, regardless of the hotter climate, disruption continues to impression our college halls, sports activities fields, school rooms, and workers rooms.

Already this yr, faculties have battled waves of COVID alongside influenza and different viruses. Our lecturers and workers are affected, and college students are at occasions again at residence recovering. Just lately a scholar, caught at residence with COVID, emailed in to ask a legitimate query round how we must be managing sickness. She requested: how sick is simply too sick?

On this occasion, the scholar was attempting to determine if she was too sick to be on-line to review, or if she ought to go surfing and full her assignments regardless of feeling unwell. She wrote, “I personally don’t know the place the boundary lies between being nicely sufficient to do on-line studying, versus being too sick to go browsing”.

This can be a trendy dilemma not solely going through college students, but additionally the various workers who are actually working each in particular person and remotely. Collectively we have now proven we will work and be taught responsibly and productively from residence, and due to this, it’s simple to default into distant on-line codecs if you end up too unwell (or symptomatic) to be taught or work in particular person.

It was that should you have been sick, you stayed residence and didn’t work or examine. Now, being sick may imply you are taking a day or longer at residence, however you retain working since you proceed to have entry to colleagues, lecturers, and the required info required to get the job completed.

The fear is that some college students, educators and workers are reluctant to take a sick day and are as a substitute attempting to push by way of sickness and ship outcomes with out contemplating the remainder required to fight ailing well being and burnout. ‘How sick is simply too sick’ can now solely be answered by deep private reflection and self-understanding. It may solely be answered with an understanding of the significance of enough restoration and perception into private wellbeing.

As we put together our college students to enter the workforce, we should now additionally put together them to have the ability to distinguish when they should persevere regardless of an sickness and when they should take a break and give attention to each their bodily well being and psychological wellbeing. As an alternative of ‘how sick is simply too sick’ maybe we must be encouraging our college students to ask, ‘am I nicely sufficient in physique and thoughts proper now’?

This can be a high quality stability and one which we’re studying to handle in actual time. At Strathcona this implies we proceed to seek for the precise mixture of on-line and in-person studying to allow those that are absent resulting from illness to take care of their research. We proceed to supply schooling to VCE college students on-line, supporting those that are recovering at residence by offering entry to classes, supplies, and the help they require ought to they really feel capable of examine. We promote the significance of taking the time essential to get better after an sickness.