So, it’s finally been a year of COVID. I don’t know about you, but for me March has meant going through my social media memories from a year ago – the last times I could go out, live a normal life, not knowing what was coming. I even saw Snapchats where I had hoped for lockdown as I “wanted a break from university”.

Well, I mean, I got that. I got that and some more. 

Personally, I don’t feel like listing all the things I feel like I’ve lost to COVID in the past year. We have all heard the lists of social reclusion and cancelled plans and all that before, we have all lived through those. To me, at least, it’s getting quite tiring and redundant to keep hearing the same thing over and over again. Yeah, lockdown sucks. Complaining about it all the time doesn’t help, at least for me. It just makes me feel more lifeless. What I would like to discuss, however, is how much this situation has affected university education.

A year ago I didn’t have any lectures for the rest of the spring, just… some rather strange homework. I distinctly remember having to watch a video in Korean of two huskies meeting a life-sized panther plushie for the first time, and writing a short essay based on that. Though university isn’t as bad and unorganised and dishevelled anymore as it was a year ago, and I haven’t had to spend three hours of my day dissecting huskies yelling at a panther plushie, I don’t actually feel like the quality of teaching has drastically perked up. Now I instead spend the three hours a day watching Zoom lectures and then another three times three hours doing extra course work.

But, like, I get it. I understand why we are in lockdown, I understand why I can’t go to real, in-real-life lectures. I do get it, and I agree with it. I haven’t lost my mind enough yet to think COVID doesn’t actually exist and the New World Order is just turning us into sheep cyborgs, or whatever the conspiracy theory I’ve been seeing on my social medias suggests.

Ok, New World Order might be a bit extreme of an example, but even people who believe in COVID and have been abiding by the rules are growing tired of the situation. Otherwise that demonstration a few weeks ago would not have been held, and all the Instagram posts I’ve seen shared around about how the Finnish government are making shit decisions wouldn’t exist.

I might not be that off-the-wall just yet, but I have been keeping an eye on our government, and how they are helping students. I mean, over the year that we have been in distant learning and lockdown, there’s really been no help at all. I was personally super excited about the COVID info for students at the beginning of March, as I thought it would finally be our turn to get some answers and concrete help for our situation. Instead, what we got was a lot of pats on the back and beautiful words about how this is SUCH a special situation, and a generational experience.

Thanks, I guess. I hope this special generational experience will pay my bills too.

Truth is, lockdown has affected all people. Of course. But I feel like the situation of students is not really talked about much, if at all. I feel like an afterthought and if I don’t just manage as the afterthought, no one will care and I will just get left even more behind. Behind everyone and everything else. And if I do, it’s on me, it’s my fault. How could I NOT manage in this situation?

I have been talking about this situation with my student friends, especially after the infamous info from our government. It ended up inspiring a rather intense conversation on my Instagram story, and I ended up noticing I’m actually not that alone, even if I physically constantly feel like I am. Due to this, I felt it was important to see how life as an afterthought has affected SUBers, and with BTSB we put together a questionnaire where people could tell about their feelings regarding the situation, and how it has concretely affected them. In the end over 60 people answered in the span of only a couple of days, which to me speaks volumes about how much students want to be heard and to voice their concerns. We asked SUBers how COVID-19 has affected their general well-being and financial status, and whether or not they felt the university or the government had taken enough action and given enough support for students during this time.

General Well-Being

The reason why I wanted to ask SUBers about their levels of exhaustion and how they are doing was because I’ve seen many people wondering how students can find this time to be so exhausting, and if we even do. The University of Helsinki had conducted a study in 2020, where they found that 60% or their students who took part in the research felt exhausted. That number is rather high, and unfortunately the numbers we got correlate with that – and are actually even worse. Out of the SUBers who answered our quiz, 66,2% said they feel more exhausted during distanced learning than in in-person learning, and 16,9% said they maybe do or do not. This means only 16,9%, or 11 people, said they do not find themselves feeling more exhausted in distanced learning. 

I personally definitely find myself with the majority in this vote, in the yes-category. Not only do I feel generally more exhausted due to a lack of other things to do – other than study all of the damn time – I also find myself having to teach myself a lot more. To me, the quality of teaching has gone down significantly during the year we have spent in distanced learning. Maybe I’m not writing essays about huskies howling at panthers anymore, but rather I teach myself the courses I would normally otherwise have someone teaching me. Not only am I teaching myself the material, as the quality and amount of teaching has in my experience gone down, I have significantly more school work to do in the form of essays, or lecture journals, or weekly shorter texts, or group projects, or a combination of all of these. Which is fair enough, but when each of your courses requires this much work put into it, you quickly run out of time and find yourself doing schoolwork constantly, whilst feeling guilty you aren’t doing more. SUBers seemed to share my experience somewhat, as again only 12 people or 18,5% said they do not find the quality of teaching to have gone down during distanced learning, and the rest either answering yes or maybe. One SUBer put it well:

”Distance learning also makes me sit in front of my laptop for 8-10h/day for at least 5 days a week. My breaks are minimal as there's nothing to give me a real feeling of a break (the social aspect of them missing). This leads to me working more while not seeing any difference in my grades. I'm just more exhausted.”

 Finances

Okay, so the majority of SUBers seem to be exhausted and tired and not that happy with the teaching they have been receiving during the past year. COVID-19 has on a global level affected everyone  financially, that is no secret. I wanted to ask SUBers how they have found the situation, and whether they have been negatively affected or not.

 It was genuinely nice to see the majority said no, however, only three people said maybe, and 25 outright said yes. We asked those who answered yes to explain their situation further, and I thought I’d summarise what they had to say a bit.

Many people said they had either been put on furlough, or just completely lost their job. Currently the job-hunting market is very oversaturated, and it’s hard to get even some of the “easier jobs” to get, such as working as a clerk or whatnot. Students usually work as temps or "rented employees ", and there just aren’t hours available, and some have been laid off from their agencies because of this. Many also pointed out summer jobs are currently almost like a shiny Charizard card—nearly unattainable –which I for sure have found to be my experience as well. There just isn’t any work to be done, for students or not-students aka. ordinary people, which stresses people out further.

SUBers also pointed out their mental health declining in general has affected their ability to work. Some said they just feel alone and abandoned, and they spend all their time in the same one space or room with no resources or something to take their mind off all the work they have to do. Even if they had the time to work, they either do not have any work lined up, or they simply don’t have the mental capacity to do any work.

Like we already discussed earlier, distanced learning is rather different than normal in-person learning, and some pointed this out in the context of work as well: distanced learning takes up so much time, they just don’t have the time to go to work anymore. One SUBer said:

”Distanced learning takes up so much time that I wasn't able to keep up with both studying and working anymore. Previously I was able to work 10-15h a week and have 4-6 courses per period, now I can barely manage 3 courses per period even though I'm studying full-time.”

They were not alone with this experience, as many reported they were going through similar situations: “Even though I'm not working at the same time as I am studying, the distanced learning takes more effort and time from me”; " –now distance learning is taking so much time out of my weeks it would be really hard to even fit any work there”. Not only does distanced learning seem to affect how much SUBers can work and thus affect their financial status, some haven’t been able to keep up with their studies as intended and as normal, and have now found themselves in situations like this:

”I’ve run out of time I’m qualified for benefits and I have to return money to Kela because I haven’t managed to progress my studies.”

Support

Lastly, I wanted to know how supported SUBers felt, from both a governmental and a university point of view. The only contact I’ve had with university this year has been my teachers giving some lectures, and then sending me a million emails about all the work I have to do. Government on the other hand I have not heard from – other than the bloody info at the beginning of March.

These results really startled me. Even if 12 people felt like distanced learning hadn’t really affected their own studies that much, only seven people felt our university has given us adequate support. On top of this, no one seems to think our government has supported students. Honestly speaking, I don’t really even know what to say about this, as it just genuinely really worries me.

I wanted to then propose possible solutions to the hardships students are currently facing. I personally don’t think these issues have emerged only due to COVID-19 – rather, the pandemic has just brought these issues under a spotlight, and worsened them. For the questionnaire I had a multiple choice question with different solutions offered by different organisations, as well as a possibility to write down your own suggestions:

The first five of the solutions on this list are the ones already given by me. They are, in the order they appear on the graph:

1.     more resources in healthcare
2.     concrete financial assistance for students
3.     extending the target times required for a student to be eligible for student loan compensation
4.     establishing free and accessible psychotherapy training
5.     lessening the annual credit requirements for financial aid and students benefits.

For SUBers, the top three solutions are, in order from the most voted to the least voted:

1.     more resources in healthcare (52 votes)
2.     extending the target times required for a student to be eligible for student loan compensation (52 votes) 
3.     lessening the annual credit requirements for financial aid and student benefits (51 votes). 

I will now include all the suggestions SUBers offered themselves to this question:

“Libraries. Please. To be able to get out of the house even for a couple of hours daily would do good. Vaccinations should be directed to those municipalities with the most cases, too.”

“A public forum for students to exchange experience and to hang out. I have not seen my peers in ages.”

“I just want to emphasize the need for mental health services! I 've heard so many fellow students feeling so much worse mentally during these times :(“

“Teachers should take the situation into consideration whilst planning the amount of work and content required for passing courses.”

“Raising the amount of opintotuki considerably”

“Directing funds specifically towards mental health services”

“Readjusting the paradigms we have regarding mental health in general. It is not as stigmatized today, and that does not matter to me personally. However, healthcare and assistance from professionals and friends alike are narrow in view, too general, and sometimes worsen the situation. Also, the lack of competent therapy has been a topical issue in Finland.”

“Resources for lecturers so they can modify the courses better to fit online teaching.”

So, what I personally took away from writing this article, is the fact that the pandemic has not affected all of us in the same way, but even then we all seem to think some assistance is needed. And more importantly, so far this assistance has not been given to us, by neither our university nor the government.

Even though writing this article made me feel a little less alone in the afterthought-life, I’m still there. I guess it offered me some validation for how I feel, as in a way it made me realise I am not alone. But it did drill the reality into me. And it made me feel exhausted and honestly, kind of hopeless. Though I have some hope from seeing I’m not alone in how I’m feeling, that doesn’t result in concrete… well, results. Maybe we just need to start making more of a ruckus, and demand for actual changes to be made. Make our voices heard somehow.

At the end of the day, right now… I’d just want a break from lockdown.