My Experience with Online Class Fatigue

I seldom go into detail about personal issues going on in my life, however I have to vent to someone about this. So, naturally, my number one choice is a bunch of strangers on the internet.

First off, being in front of your laptop for most of your day truly sucks the life out of you. Here’s how it usually goes for me:

The first thing I feel about an hour in is eye strain and dry eye. Then, my attention span depletes over and over. With a million distractions at home, even in the quietest of rooms, this one is so incredibly hard to avoid. This is when I decide to walk around the house, as if the class is a glorified podcast. Stretch every now and then. Attempt to participate in class. Accidentally interrupt the professor because of the godforsaken lag. Long, uncomfortable silence.

Repeat.

It’s a cycle of tedium. I would rarely take part in class when it was face-to-face; a mix of anxiety and wanting to fully digest the topic before talking out of my ass in class. However, now I feel a need to participate.

I try my hardest to combat the intense shaking and heart rate increase that comes along with it—unsuccessfully most of the time—just to prevent myself from falling asleep in class.

The only days I don’t feel this perpetual tiredness and fatigue are the days I have to give a presentation. The adrenaline and intense nerves keep me wide awake. I can barely sleep the night before. Boy. One would think presenting at a distance like this would be beneficial for those of us with social anxiety, but it’s somehow gotten worse for me. Last semester I straight up skipped two presentations during finals. I kept having anxiety attacks, which up until that point, hadn’t happened in months.

On days where I don’t have this level of nerves, I think the only things that keep me awake in class, albeit still perpetually groggy, are the body aches and soreness.

Never have I had such sharp pain on my neck and lower back. And my poor ass! Standing up from my chair hurts like hell, makes me wonder if I’ll walk out of this pandemic with a completely flat ass. I try to be conscious of my posture, stretch every day and exercise at least twice a week, but it doesn’t seem to want to go away.

Every article I read gives the same trifecta of advice regarding these aches caused by screen time: yoga, stretches and general exercise.

I do all three! I’ve mentioned it to other students, and we all seem to experience this in varying degrees.

At this point, it must be stress and our declining mental health taking its toll on our bodies. The days when a class gets cancelled — for whatever reason, I cannot emphasize how much I don’t care—the relief is unquantifiable.

I swear, suddenly, I can hear the birds sing. The grass looks so green. The air is no longer heavy. Sure, there are a gazillion things I probably need to do, but I got a break from the tedium.

Don’t get me wrong, I am passionate about my area of study—literature — but this online format has truly sucked the fun out of it with its increased workload.

Reading and writing have been ten times harder. Pieces that would take me a few hours, now take days or weeks, as I’m much more critical of myself. There was a point where I hated literally everything I would write; academic essays, creative works, hell even my journal entries and to-do lists. You name it.

Staying indoors has truly made dealing with negative self-talk much harder. Even though reading and writing are activities I enjoy, it’s getting more difficult to get myself to do them.

There is no separation of work and home. At least before, we could regularly attend the campus libraries and do our work wherever we wanted. Change of scenery is so important. Now, with everything meshed into one space, the stress is overwhelming. I can’t separate work from home. Work is home. A space that would originally be reserved for hobbies and leisure, is now also used for work and study.

I have no conclusion to wrap this up nicely, as this is a situation in progress. Maybe some readers can relate to these struggles and we can open a discussion.

It always helps to feel seen by others.

Thank you for reading.

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