Katie: Remote Learning & Activities at UOP

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Hi. My name is Katie and I'm a two plus three pre pharmacy student at University of the Pacific. I am a sophomore, which means I started college in Fall 2019. So I've actually had experience with both being online and with being in-person. I said that backwards. You get what I mean, though. So today's video I'm going to be talking about remote learning as far as both academics go and non-academic activities that have been supplied by the school, I guess you could say. So to start off with academics, I just want to say that labs have been very different, and I think that's to be expected. It's kind of hard to do what you would do in the laboratory at your house, but one class that in particular has really helped with this would have to be physio. They sent an at home lab kit at the beginning of the semester, and that included all of the reagents and kind of tools that we needed to have in order to complete the experiments. This wasn't for, like, every single experiment that we needed to do, because it's not physically possible, but quite a few of them were included, so it was nice to kind of get back on that hands on aspect of learning. In addition to that, a lot of labs like this goes for both the Chems and the Bios. A lot of labs are doing simulations now, and so in bio actually we have this thing called Sim Bio, and we were using this in person. This wasn't something that was new that was implemented online. So this is something that I was already used to, and it's basically just you read this article, these pages and have, like, supplemental little simulations on the side that kind of further explain the concepts that are delved in upon for the reading. And there's also questions dispersed throughout and graded questions at the end of the simulation as a whole. Something that is new that has been implemented are called Labsters. And these are more fun, in my opinion, they're more interactive, and I kind of think of it as a game almost. It's very fun. Basically, you just click on whatever reagents you need to use, and you put them wherever they need to go, and I find that to be a really good alternative to not being able to physically be in a lab as far as classes go like, not lab wise. I think that a benefit would have to be that online learning has allowed for professors to record more of their lectures, and it's been kind of nice because I can go back and rewatch part of the lecture that maybe I was unsure on and kind of regather my thoughts on that. And that's basically all I have for the academic side of things. If you want a more in depth about academics at UOP, I would recommend checking out the video that I posted - my most recent one about the academics there. But now I'm going to move on to more like fun activities that the school has done in order to make online learning and this whole situation at home a little bit more bearable. And so to start off, I want to say that there were a lot of events in person, too, and I had so much fun going to these. For example. I painted this and I painted this bowl, and I also painted some succulent pots but those are not in my room, so I will just insert a photo of them. They're so cute. And, yeah, there's just a lot of events one in particular that I really loved would have to be the Destress Fest because that was so much fun. I went to both the one that was in-person in 2019 and the one that was online in 2020. This happens in the winter semester at the end of, like, basically right before finals. And so it's a nice little destress period. There's a lot of activities that you can do. For example, at school there was there were therapy dogs, there was a bubble wrap path where you can just step on bubble wrap walking through so satisfying. There was also a photo booth and also some other arts and crafts, and there was minigolf. Oh, in the human crane. How can I forget about the human crane? I'll have to insert a video for you guys to see about that, because that was a lot of fun. I got a blanket and a bag of like Famous Amos cookies out of that one. But online has been a little bit different. Um, the destress fest, basically the first few people to sign up got this like destress package sent to them. There was the hot cocoa one and the ornament making one. And so I chose the ornament making one, and it was like this watercolor set with a wooden ornament, and basically we got to just paint them and stuff, and it was really fun. I was on the Zoom and there was a bunch of breakout rooms with different activities like there was a Kahoot, there was the ornament, there was the hot chocolate, and there's other rooms as well. And I was also simultaneously on Facetime with my friends, and we were just talking and chilling and having a good time. And also throughout the semester, there's a lot of speaker events and Brickyard events and just competitions and all that stuff, like there's so many like it's crazy how many things you can do in your free time that the school has provided, and I think that has really helped get through the ruts of online learning. And so that's basically all I have for this video about remote learning as far as both academics and non academics. I hope it helps you sort of get an idea about the kind of activities that UOP provides to their students. And I will see you back again for my next video. Thanks for watching.