Zoom School (minus lockdown)
Posted November 19, 2025 by Michaela O'Gara-Pratt
When I first toured SLIS in February of 2024, I remember my student ambassador asking me how I felt about online classes.
At the time, I felt my stomach drop.
When the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, I had just started my freshman year of college. After taking a gap semester in the fall of 2019, I was new to undergrad in January 2020. In retrospect, it was the worst time to start a four-year degree program. While my peers had gotten a “normal” fall to meet each other in-person, I was quickly swept up in online classes before I had made any lasting connections.
It is safe to say that undergrad got off to a ~rocky~ start and I began to associate the difficulties I experienced socially with Zoom school. Eventually, I adjusted to the “new normal” (to use a buzzy term from the time), and by senior year I felt like I had attended meaningful classes, participated in as many clubs as I could, and made lifelong friends.
Despite this, when exploring my grad school options, the idea of returning to an online format did not sit well with me. Ultimately, I learn better in-person and I was scared I would not get as much out of this degree as I wanted if I was taking online classes.
Now, almost a year and a half into my degree at SLIS, I am happy to report that online classes have been as fulfilling as in-person classes. I still prefer to learn in-person; there are fewer distractions and I like the feeling of being on campus, but I have been able to find enjoyment and get to know my classmates in the online space as well. I love that online classes make the material accessible to a wider population of students and I like logging on with classmates across the country. I have found new appreciation for banter in the zoom chat and I have learned how to participate in a Zoom class without being worried about how it is different from an in-person experience. I think one of the greatest aspects is that I am not confused by online classes anymore. At the start of the Pandemic, everything was new to me. There was the additional challenge of learning how to learn online. Now that I’ve been in practice for so many years, it doesn’t feel like there is the same barrier to learning that I experienced in 2020. I am relieved that I can engage with my graduate degree fully, despite the hybrid format.
There are always going to be pluses and minuses for both in-person and online classes, but as someone who experienced disruption to my undergraduate degree because of going online, I am grateful for this new perspective on online learning and I am glad I have experienced mostly joy instead of woe taking online classes today.