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WHAT IS THE IN-PERSON EXPERIENCE AT PITT LIKE?
Jack Troy
Opinions Editor Over the course of my first year at Pitt, I had a grand total of one in-person class. Even then, it was only partially inperson — more lectures were held over Zoom than not. Based on the couple hundred times I’ve heard people say how bad they feel about my first-year experience being virtual, this is a tragedy. Honestly, I didn’t mind it. You simply can’t beat rolling out of bed two minutes before class and still making it there on time. Assuming we’ll be in person this fall, accounting for the time it takes to go to and from class is going to be a brutal adjustment. But I can’t deny that my tiny slice of ordinary class was enjoyable. Or, at the very least, it reminded me that I was missing out on something — not that I can reliably pinpoint that something. I struggle to articulate what I was missing because, even though I am entering my sophomore year, I still don’t know what the Pitt experience is like. Most glaringly, I haven’t survived a full schedule of in-person classes. Are these harder than Zoom classes? My guess is that, in some respects, yes. Unfortunately, you can’t turn your camera off, put your feet up and scroll through Twitter when everyone is physically sitting in the same room. Nor can you duck out when the time comes for breakout rooms, or whatever the in-person equiv-
alent of those may be. Or maybe you can, how would I know? I’m not even sure if I’m comfortable offering advice about the classes I have taken, albeit virtually. Some of my professors were extremely sympathetic and likely went easy on us. Many opted for essays and smaller assignments over high-stakes tests, whether out of the goodness of their hearts or an acknowledgment that every remote test can easily be made open note. Others were struggling to simply put one virtual foot in front of the other to make it through the extremely online year, so I can’t help but wonder what effect that had on the quality and difficulty of the course. My guess is that they were both lowered. Dining was also a very unusual exSee Troy on page 40
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