By Claire Leibowitz, EIC
The Class of 2024 started their college experience online three years ago after a disappointing GW COVID-19 decision to delay in-person learning for an entire year. While some students came to stay on or near campus, many were at home, taking courses from their childhood bedrooms. After an entire year passed, several important classes pertaining to each major lacked the necessary in-person instruction and authority to adequately prepare students.
The senior slump in knowledge has manifested itself in many ways across many different GW schools. Whether it’s technical skills or the foundations of a topic, the missing information created a hole for many students. There were obvious pros to being online, like taking classes in a comfortable setting, leniency, and getting general education requirements out of the way easily. However, cons like knowledge gaps, isolation, and a lack of a true college experience overpowered the wins.
Aleena Fayaz, a Political Communication student in The School of Media in Public Affairs, felt behind in general. “I’m playing a constant game of catch up in quicksand. Seniors are learning fundamentals in our respective practices that we should’ve known years prior. The gap between expectation and reality is stark,” she said.
In SMPA, many introductory classes cover topics around using professional cameras, conducting meaningful interviews, and learning what it takes to write a news story. These practices were all adapted for COVID-19 – students used phones as opposed to the professional equipment, and foundation topics were briefly covered online with the promise that more context would be provided once students were in-person. Oftentimes, professors did not teach these breezed-over topics.
Additionally, students in numbers-based majors, like the GW School of Business, had difficulties in courses like calculus and accounting. Mathena Jencka, a GWSB and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies double major, took her financial accounting course online.
“When I took Managerial Accounting during my sophomore year, I realized that I was lacking a decent amount of basic knowledge that I should’ve learned,” she said. “I truly believe that if my first accounting class would have been in person, I could have been much more successful in the accounting courses that followed.”
Not only was there a lack of informational knowledge, but there was also a lack of motivation, said Kiran Sharma, an International Affairs student in Elliot.
“My motivation was lacking while taking college classes at my bedroom desk, and that has certainly come to impact my baseline knowledge of those concepts post freshman year,” he said.
Jack Palaian, a student in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, concurred and spoke of the difficult transition.
“Online school was very difficult for me to stay focused and make connections with the material, and so I’ve had to do some backtracking now in my current classes more than I think otherwise,” he said.
Some of the falling also stemmed from a lack of school-wide support. Jontae Burton, a Political Science student in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, feels out-of-touch with the school.
“CCAS has not engaged with me at all besides an occasional email. Without a proper introduction in my first year, CCAS has felt like just a name with extremely lackluster advising services,” he said.
However, not all schools have a lack of support. Grace Pedersen, a student in Milken, found that due to the school’s smaller population and concentrated majors, she does not feel behind.
“Milken is really engaged with their students in a way other GW schools aren’t. The Public Health program is incredibly structured, most of the classes required for the major are predetermined. The professors are incredibly caring and engaging, and up until this semester they had a pretty good team of advisors,” she said.
Further, Alex Horowitz, an Interactive Design Major in Corcoran, felt that the layout of her year provided positive communication for students—everyone took the same foundation classes at the same time.
“Since we had every class together, we had a great community and everyone was really chatty, always messaging,” she said. “So that’s where I made my friends freshman year, and we’ve been able to maintain that community for the rest of college.”
Despite this pro, Horowitz still felt that she did not have an adequate amount of learning. For a drawing class, students had to order hundreds of dollars in art supplies that they only used half of.
“It’s hard to draw over Zoom. It’s half of the experience we could have gotten, instead of having an instructor there to walk you through things. We were only able to present final products instead of getting help,” she said.
While some students feel that GW schools did an adequate job of educating students, even while online, most left students behind, with little advising or catch-up work to help aid in the transition. As a result, seniors are entering the workforce after having to teach themselves some missed basics for the last four years.
