The Current

September 1, 2020 | nsucurrent.nova.edu 10 Opinions Why must writing be so hard? My job mainly deals with writing and coming up with ideas for articles each week, but most of the time, I have no idea what to write about. Right now, I am sitting at my desk, two minutes before this article is supposed to be due, and I have absolutely no idea what to talk about. Water Your Thoughts is supposed to be an article that is simple and easy to do. You pick a topic and just ramble on for about 300 words. Normally, I can ramble on about whatever the topic is for hours, but now, that’s a lot more difficult. In today’s world, there is so much going on that figuring out what to talk about is difficult. It is supposed to be like catching a fish in a barrel. Only now, you are also in the barrel and the fish are piranhas. With that in mind, you can see my conundrum. Then, there is the issue of repetitive topics. We constantly hear about the pandemic and politics, so I doubt that anyone wants to read more into that. What about…No. Or maybe…Nope. What if we try a face-off? No one wants to write the opposing side. What if I talk about… We wrote about that last issue. How about… That is coming up in the next issue. Writing is hard, even when it is your job, and believe me, I love writing. However, some days, it can just be a bit too much. Sometimes, the ideas just don’t flow and you sit at your desk staring at a blank document until you get a small hit of an idea, and then, you lose your train of thought. Well, it looks like I figured out what to write and I’m only nine minutes past the deadline. By: Alexander Martinie Opinions Editor Stop trying to pretend like this is normal Let’s be honest. Doing things online doesn’t work for all of us, and that’s okay. Even under normal circumstances, online classes can be challenging and our country is anything but normal right now. That being said, many professors and school administration members are doing their best tomake their students feel as if this is a normal school year. While it’s comforting to know that many professors understand the stress and anxiety that comes with trying to earn a degree during a pandemic, it would be easier to just admit that this isn’t a normal school year. It is one filled with new struggles that many of us have never faced before. It is confusing, stressful and just downright scary. Speaking personally, it is hard forme to focus and keep up over Zoom, but I’m doing my best. I can usually use my laptop to take notes faster, but now my laptop is being utilized for Zoom lectures, so I’m taking notes the old fashioned way. However, every class, I always seem to miss something. In the past, when I’ve taken physical notes for my class, I have always enjoyed when professors posted their powerpoints online so I can go back over them and fill in anything I missed. This year, I think that is especially important, and some professors are already utilizing Zoom’s ‘recording’ feature to record their lectures and repost themin case studentsmiss themin addition to posting their powerpoints and even some lecture notes. However, there are some departments and professors already announcing that they will not be allowing the recording of Zoom lectures. I cannot emphasize how wrong that is. I understand wanting your students to show up and do the work for themselves and that it may feel like recording your own lecture and posting it online afterwards is giving students a little toomuch leeway, but there is an actual pandemic looming over all of our heads right now. It would be far better to say that you gave your students all of the tools to succeed in your class and they failed on their own than to say that you were “gatekeeping” the information they needed but missed because they only had access to it for a brief moment. While there are resources for students who may feel lost in class, many of them aren’t accessible to students dealing with other things in life like a full time job, family duties or even just the stress of a pandemic weighing on them. NSU offers supplemental instruction sessions, SI sessions for short, where a student who has previously taken the class can answer questions and go over the lectures. While I think that SI sessions are one of the greatest tools NSU has to offer, none of them are being recorded and many of them are only able to be attended if you’ve got nothing else going on. The Tutoring andTestingCenter is only available during business hours, which is when most students are working at other businesses. The only way some of us can keep up right now is by going over what we’re given by our professors, and while the powerpoints may be posted online, some professors go over specific examples during lecture. When students only have access to that information for a few fleeting moments, it harms us.What good does it do to keep information from students? The only downside would be helping us. By: Sofia Gallus Arts & Entertainment Editor PRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM C. MCLAUGHLIN It all has to start from somewhere PRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM S. GALLUS What good does it do to keep information from students? The only downside would be helping us.