What it's like to represent students virtually on a pandemic battlefield?

I haven't had an experience in my life of how it felt to be at lockdown, or even feel that your life is in danger constantly for an enemy that is completely invisible or how the rhythm of our lifes and plans despaired in a blink of an eye. Every economic area had to experience changes but education was not left behind, EAFIT University had to confront this changes just in one week... teachers went into a rough week trying to adapt to a virtual education.

Most of students and including me, said goodbye thinking that we would have one week of vacations and then our lives will go back as usual. Then the communicate 32 was sent and the university closed its doors and the cases of infected began to grow. At the start in my own opinion I felt a relief but monotony started to win in my life, I had the same routine everyday.. wakeup, go to the desk, participate in classes and go back to bed. 

Comunicado n·32: EAFIT prepares to virtualize its undergraduate and graduate classes

Teams, Zoom and WhatsApp seemed as our saviors to try to interact, trying to belief that we were feeling closer to your friends, but this platforms failed constantly because of the high demand or software renewal. It seemed like a tornado with no end. One day an opportunity call at my door, the question was... Do you want to be part of the student council of the Business School of the University? when the elections finished I got the news that I was elected, I knew that a great challenge was coming. 

Sadly, at the start of the new semester lots of my classmates had to take the decision to not study or not take all the classes that they used to take per semester. It was big challenge because the university had to take a decision with its budget in order to help students. The students representatives decided to find a possible solution that could help with the situation, so the initiative "Sigamos Juntos" was created to help to pay the tuition fee for 2021-1 with an amount of 1'500.000 - 2'000.000 COP, where lots of students were benefited. 

Sigamos Juntos Official E-Card 

                                        

Besides the money to pay the tuition fee, still other challenges existed that were highly important to give and find a sooner solution... some students where in the need of computers to study or even had difficulties with the internet access, at the end we could find the solution to lend the computers of the university of the most highly priority cases. Is difficult! wanted to help when the situation was critical, we weren't used to a virtual model, well.. we are in a country where we are not used to that kind of technology, and school dropout was a daily issue. By "august more than 100.000 students dropout their studies in Colombia because they were going to work to help financially in their homes and not being able to connect to the internet to receive classes" (Semana, 2020). 

Still the representatives students are working on daily cases.. by my point of view is just a completely different experience because its a bigger challenge and is very important understanding the real necessities of the students. Because of that, right now a campaign of mental health that is called "Alcemos la Mano" was dropped the last week in order to help students with situations like anxiety thanks to the pandemic and the confinement. A WhatsApp line was created as a proposal to give the students a sooner response. 

"Alcemos la Mano", Mental Health Campaign

As a personal experience I can only said that it has being a great experience! you learned to see the world from other people perspective and put necessities of the others as a high priority. Is not only to use the T-shirt of "Repres"... are the meetings in order to solve specific cases of students that are in trouble, that feeling of satisfaction that you can help to provide justice and equitable solutions and have the opportunity to lead things that need to be improved!

Have you felt yourself lonely or anxious  during virtual classes?

Have you sought help from students representatives?

If you could change one thing of virtual education, what would it be?

Let you response in the comments and I'll keep them in mind for the next meeting! :)

Source:
Semana. (2021, January 12). Deserción escolar, un problema que ya supera LOS 100.000 estudiantes en 2020. Retrieved March 26, 2021, from https://www.semana.com/pais/articulo/desercion-escolar-de-estudiantes-en-colombia-durante-el-2020/307215/