What Day is it? Life as a Graduate Student in the Midst of a Pandemic

March has brought tremendous change to the lives of everyone across the globe with the spread of SARS-COV-2. With the implementation of social distancing, many universities across the U.S. have forgone in-person lectures and shifted to online instruction. When Tulane adopted this measure in early March, I was proud that the university took swift action to prevent the spread of SARS-COV-2 within the Tulane community. This shift brought many adjustments to the remainder of our semester. First, all of our instruction was shifted online through Zoom. I was nervous about how this shift to online learning would impact the quality of education professors would be able to provide. While Zoom classes are no replacement for in-person lectures, in my opinion, I have been surprised by the effectiveness of Zoom's ability to facilitate an online classroom and allow professors to give high-quality lectures. Second, all of our exams were also moved online. A consequence of this, one that I'm honestly not too upset over, was that the NBME shelf exam was traded for an optional cumulative exam at the end of April. We recently took our first exam using the online proctoring system and it went very smoothly. It was different taking an exam at home, but a change that I found favorable to the typical exam room. Overall, I've been pleasantly surprised by how smooth the transition to online instruction has been and am looking forward to the rest of the semester. 

One thing that has benefited from social distancing is my thesis writing. The outline I finished earlier this month is currently being transformed into an actual thesis. However, with the different lab closings on campus, I have had to shift to a complete literature-based thesis because of that. Additionally, the libraries being closed has definitely hampered my research efforts, but the extra time at home that I can spend looking through databases has aided in countering that. Hopefully, I can have a complete rough draft that can be revised by my advisors in the next couple of weeks. 

Finally, the spring middle school debate season has also suffered victim to the coronavirus. We were only able to fit in 5 practices before schools were shut down and service-learning was suspended. The students had made great strides during those first few weeks and I was disheartened that all of the work they had put it wouldn't get to come to fruition. 

March Service Hours: 6

Total Service Hours: 8