Amerigo Adjusts to Online School

April 7, 2020

Amid all the chaos and uncertainty, I want to share with you some of our Amerigo students writing from the dorm. 

Amerigo students have been writing about their experiences during social distancing and online learning as part of their English Language Learning courses. The writing helps the students think about their experiences and helps them process the emotions they are feeling. 

The following are excerpts from students' writing:

Student 1: "Overall, my life in the past couple of weeks has been quite good. I don't feel isolated or bored while staying inside. Self-entertainment such as reading books or playing video games and online communication are working for me as a substitute for the real world. I consider the main difficulty of this lifestyle for me is that I need to take care of my sleep pattern on my own. The desire to stay up late is incredibly complicated to resist sometimes including the fact that I don't need to wake up the next morning to actually go somewhere. However, shifting the normal sleeping time just decreases my productivity and makes me feel exhausted all the time. Even despite all the difficulties, I am satisfied with the current situation as the main advantage of the worldwide quarantine for me is an opportunity to communicate with my friends more."

Student 2: "When the last trimester started, I realized that I have found more enjoyment in my life and everything has become much easier than the beginning of the school year. I had more friends, experienced more cultural and traditional values, as well as had better English skills. I'm very happy and proud of myself right now. I feel like every challenge and hardships I faced in the past promoted me to be better and to be myself today. My English skills have become much better when compared to the beginning of the year. I have improved a lot in almost all of them; for example, communication skills, teamwork skills, reading and listening skills, writing skills, and also critical thinking skills, etc. In fact, the improvement in all skills are different, but in general, I have overcome many weaknesses in learning languages that I thought they seem to be impossible to change or improve. Namely, my accent and intonation."

Student 3: "Since I do not need to go to school every day, I have more free time to do the things I like. Firstly, I watch three movies each week. Watching movies is one of my hobbies, but I was too busy to watch them before this break. So, this break gives me a great chance to watch good movies. Secondly, since the start of the third trimester, I really want to do a summary of myself. Since this school year has already passed two thirds, I really want to know what I made progress and what I still need to improve. This break gives enough time to do this work. I looked through my essays which I wrote in the last year. I surprisingly found that my writing skills improved a lot, such as better grammar, more long sentences, and more precise words. When I read my old paragraphs which I wrote in the first trimester, I can't help myself modifying many wordy sentences. Also, I found that I can use prepositions more properly than before. All in all, it is a fruitful year. Finally, I am learning how to cook during the break. Since Amerigo students need to prepare breakfast by themselves, it drives me to learn how to cook a delicious meal. Although my cooking is not good, I enjoy the process, which is very interesting."

We are proud of our Amerigo students for doing their best to adjust while being far from home and in a different time zone from their loved ones.