Madison Lasso
IA Reflection 3
4/22/20
International Perspectives on the Coronavirus Pandemic
I watched the Zoom session on the international perspectives on the coronavirus pandemic held on Wednesday, April 22nd. It was really interesting to see how people around the world are responding to the pandemic, first-hand. Niklas, the student from Germany said his university is most digital but they’re already thinking about re-opening the universities slowly. I thought this was surprising since there are some universities in the U.S. who are still unsure whether students will be returning to campus in the fall. While I think it’s still too early to tell whether or not we will be able to return to campus in the fall, I was surprised to hear that there are universities worldwide who are trying to regain that sense of normalcy. Of course, the parts of the world that are hit harder than others will need more time to re-open in order to protect their citizens.
For Ivy, the Chinese student, she discussed the difficulty in going digital for schools for high schools, college-aged kids, and herself as a graduate student. There are definitely majors that fit online learning better than others, which Ivy mentioned since she can read and write papers easily from home. It’s been interesting to see how my sister’s middle school and my other sister’s university has handled the situation and digital learning. I know my sister Meghan, the middle schooler, despises e-learning even though she barely has any work and completes it in an hour. My sister Morgan, a freshman at Kent State University, still has a live lab but, like me, mostly just has papers and projects that can be worked on from home to finish out the semester.
This pandemic has greatly affected the way we interact with other people and my parents even fear it will permanently alter large gatherings and human interaction in general. I have hope that a vaccine will be developed and that the world will go back to normal within a year. There are rumors of European countries, like Italy, shutting their borders for an entire year. I hope that we are able to come out of this strong and preserve the globalized world that we live in, rather than becoming isolated in our home countries.