COVER STORY
Day 239 Since School Closed A day in the life of a virtual student BY HIBA KHAN
7
:40 a.m. I woke up late today. I slept through three alarms, with only 20 minutes until my first class started. I jumped out of bed and walked across the hall to the bathroom. It was chilly in the morning, and I was not interested in switching my fleece-penguin pajama bottoms for a pair of blue jeans. Nobody would see them anyway. I headed back to my room and threw on a school hoodie. I hurriedly made my bed and opened the blinds in my room. 7:49. I sat at my yellow desk and opened up my sister’s old laptop. The keyboard is plastered in Rutgers stickers, and the screen glowed pure blue. I traced my finger along the trackpad, and sure enough, the cursor had disappeared. I decided to restart it. The screen, after going black for a few minutes, started up again. I opened up my school and personal emails, catching myself up on any last-minute messages. 7:53. A Google Hangouts notification alerted me of a classmate’s birthday Zoom call in the evening. With two minutes to spare, I raced down the stairs to grab a glass of water. Breakfast would have to wait. I joined my first class’s Zoom meeting, Arabic, and greeted my teacher and five classmates. Three students had their cameras off, causing our teacher to spend a few minutes lecturing us on class participation grades this year. He continued the lesson with a Kahoot on grammar and a Quizlet on vocabulary. His microphone echoed quite badly, so he ended the class early. We have a 10-minute break between each class, but teachers will usually go over time. In the rare case of today, I realized that I had about 23 minutes before English: just enough time to pop two Eggo waffles in the toaster, eat them and get another glass of water. So I went back downstairs, drizzled syrup on the scrumptious frozen waffles and enjoyed my little breakfast while my mom sipped her tea in front of the news. Record Number of Cases Yesterday, blared across the headlines. I glanced at the time and rushed back upstairs. I had to be early for English,
but not too early, or else I’d be alone in the meeting with my teacher. My English teacher let me into the meeting a minute early. Her screen was shared, and on it she wrote, “Menti Presentation Activity.” She had us all enter a code on menti.com, where she prompted us with a question. “Write a quote you noted down in chapter 7. Why?” She projected the responses from “Lord of the Flies” on the screen, and once again informed us of how this would affect our class participation grades. The rest of the class was spent going over the new vocabulary lesson. Next was geometry, one of my favorite classes. We had a quiz, which meant that our microphones were on and our workspace would be visible in our cameras. I entered the meeting right on time, and so did the rest of my classmates. Our teacher had us open an application that tracked our activity on other tabs. I opened up the PDF and started. Throughout the test, younger siblings cried, lawn mowers roared, and reporters on TV argued in the background. I completed all of my answers on two sheets of loose-leaf paper and borrowed my sister’s iPad to scan my work. Once my photos uploaded to our
26 ISLAMIC HORIZONS JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021
school’s testing platform, I was free to leave the meeting. Right before our lunch break would be biology. I find the class interesting, but at the same time there’s an overwhelming amount of information thrust at us during every class. Today would be tiring; we had two periods of the class. We started off with individual work in an online lab, phospholipids and mitochondria scattered across the screen. To be fair, the website worked well. The lab was interactive enough, and students continued to unmute and ask our teacher questions. She said something along the lines of “If we were in-person, we would have…,” and everyone groaned. It’s hard enough staring at a screen all day. It’s even worse when we’re reminded of what could’ve been. Lunch and office hours started at exactly 12:30 p.m. I finished up my biology work, prayed and went downstairs. I called out for my mom, and there was no response. I assumed she was out for groceries. I shoved on my sneakers and opened the garage door. This was my little routine of getting myself out and in the sun. Except
