If you are here to read about what a conventional life in university is like, then you may be wrong. This is 2020 and a whole new university life perspective has emerged. The days are over when we used to get up early with groggy eyes and rush to university for early morning classes. Surprisingly, the technology oriented future which we used to fantasize a couple of years back is now knocking the door. Now forget about the mandatory campus presence; the classroom is just one click away.

The cornerstone of a typical university life has to be lectures. Mine for Instance, BBIS: which swings between management and information systems, has 5 courses this semester with 3 credit hours each. As a result, there are classes 4 days a week with 2 bonus holidays in addition to Sundays. University life has become a lot convenient due to the hybrid study when you only have to go to campus on odd weeks for classes and others via Zoom. Trust me we students could never expect this learning model in our lives but COVID-19 has done; the only good thing maybe for students... Interesting?

For me, first plus point of hybrid model is the flexible timetable. Not every week I have to be disciplined and be present on campus. Secondly, the class timings start from 11 a.m. The selection of such relaxed timetable has come in response to some legitimate concerns of mine which had aroused in the last semester when early morning classes were a bit difficult to manage. Now, I not only have time to enjoy dreams a bit more but also have room to contribute to household chores in my online week. For odd weeks, I spare this time for socialization and in self-development activities. Also in an online week, sipping the home-made tea and eating snacks during ZOOM class is the time of highest study concentration ever… trust me!

On the other hand, in my opinion, this hybrid model is also a bit worrisome which we should seriously take care of. My screen time over the weeks has risen staggeringly. Computer Based tasks, assignments and most importantly WhatsApp groups for each courses are a bit annoyance and disturbance in my personal and family time. Maybe I am not very adaptive to this tech culture or maybe it will improve itself with time. But for the time being, this thing is causing an unnecessary curiosity of WhatsApp messages resulting in a headache and lethargy due to sitting in still postures for longer durations in front of a screen. Although management related theoretical courses are easy to study online but for practical nature information systems related courses which we most of us study for the first are only best understood in physical classes. Also, the true essence of course is lost somewhere in online lectures due to sudden participants’ noise, distortions and other technical issues.

In a nutshell, I would say that university life is not the same as we used to have before COVID-19. The fun with friends, the classroom memories and daily university life struggles are being greatly missed. But let’s hope it’s not an end of it! Let’s embrace the fact that this is going to be our new journey and will lead to a better destination than ever.

  “Maybe it’s time we stopped conflating familiarity with normalcy and accept that now, new is normal.”  (Albert Camus)