Amanda - The University of Texas at Austin

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I am a senior at the University of Texas at Austin, and I am majoring in advertising at the standard rate School of Advertising NPR, which is the number one advertising program in the country. I am currently in the Texas media and analytic sequence, which helps me navigate my influence or marketing. Everything kind of went online right after spring break. Basically the Friday before spring break, I woke up to a text message that all of our classes were canceled. While we're on spring break, the University of Texas at Austin actually released that we would not be returning to campus for the rest of the semester. It was quite the transition because all of my classes became zoom lectures and I was still required to participate in all of my group projects. Literally all of my classes had a group project, and we were responsible for communicating on zoom and still presenting in real time via Zoom, which was an experience in itself. The day in the life of an online student looks quite different. I would wake up, log in the class on Zoom, mute myself, and then go cook breakfast while in class. Then the rest of the day was kind of just jumping between the living room to the kitchen to the outside patio, Teoh the office and then to my bed. I would literally just do homework everywhere and anywhere, to spice up the locations to keep my brain stimulated. All day my classwork was switching between zoom lectures, zoom meetings and homework online and Google docks. This semester, I was able to live with my grand parents who helped take care of. So living with them really just kind of spiced up my motivation. With that being said, I motivate myself with to do lists. There is nothing like crossing off things for my to do list, and I still kept up with my grades. I did not take the pass fail option as an incentive for myself, and I would practice self care as much as I needed. There was so many situations where I just felt like I needed to make intentional time to get off of my screen, because now I wasn't going to class. I was going to cost online and I was doing homework online, and I was still creating content for my own stuff all online. Another pro tip is to stay in touch with your professors and your classmates because it helped me hold myself accountable, and I know it also helped them as well. They're definitely pros and cons to this new virtual college experience, but I would say some of the pros presentations were not as daunting. That screen barrier made it a lot more comfortable, obviously, and then sleep right until I Miyata logging video. The other thing is, we are all gaining this valuable skill of working remote, so I definitely think that was a pro, because now, in future job interviews, I'll be able to use this as an experience that made me stronger. It's been up and down for me this entire time, as I'm sure it has been for you I really made it my priority to journal and check in with myself while practicing self cares that talked about the number. One thing I would say is not to be too hard on yourself right now because we're all navigating this new normal. I would also recommend starting in quarantine journal that is dedicated to the experience of Corona virus. Have a whole page dedicated to what the semester looked like in terms of Corona virus for school. This new normal has actually changed all of my plans for the fall. I just found out recently that I will not be returning to campus. All of my classes personally at UT Austin are going to be remote. So instead of moving back to Austin like I had planned, I am just going to stay and live at home pretty crazy that I'm saying that Zoom University, baby. My advice to prospective college students about this new virtual era of college is to look at as a challenge that you can overcome. Every company going forward will want this skill of being ableto work remotely responsibly, as we now all know something like a pandemic can happen, and we can all be forced to stay home and have to work from home. My advice to you guys that are applying to the University of Texas at Austin to use this experience of quarantine and Corona virus in your essays and really diving into the challenges you overcame during all of this will really help set you apart. It will probably be something that resonates with the admissions team that reading your essays because they're going through the pandemic to And if you are enrolling for classes in the full already, I would just suggest that you reach out to your professors and via email, zoom, etcetera. You really try to establish a relationship, since you may not have this face to face ability anymore. It is so valuable because all the professors at UT Austin are so amazing and amazing connections to network with you might be wondering, Is it even worth it? With everything going on to go to college right now? And my answer to that is, it depends. I believe that continuing your education will also keep your success momentum going. If you ask Gary Vaynerchuk what he thought right now, you would tell you stay home and save your money. I hope you all stay healthy, happy and at home if you can.