Students find it more difficult to balance school with work and their personal lives when they take online classes compared with in-person classes, they said in March.

In an informal Campus Current poll of 10 students, six said it’s more difficult to find a balance with online classes because of constant distractions and a lack of structure when they study at home.

“[N]ow that I’m home doing schoolwork, there’s everything that distracts me, including work,” Kayleigh Katzenberger, a second-year transfer studies student, said. “So, there’s times I’ve just skipped out on schoolwork so I could go to work.”

AACC switched from in-person to online classes last March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, making it one full year that students have been learning remotely.

“It’s a different environment, you know?” Mary Beth Gibson, a first-year transfer studies student, said about online classes.

With online classes, second-year communications major Jazsmine Hill is learning from the comfort of her home. This makes it difficult to focus completely on schoolwork, Hill said.

“If I go to work and come home, sometimes I might forget something that has to do with school because I’m already in a mindset where I’m shutting down,” Hill said. “My day ends when I leave work.”

Architecture student Calla Adams had to reduce her work hours because of school.

“[N]ow, I am just subbing at my job and fill in for people and I do it based off of my school schedule,” Adams said. “Because [when we were in person] I would just have a set schedule and do those days. Now that everything’s online and we don’t exactly know anything for sure, I had to reduce my time so I can focus mainly on school.”

Out of the 10 students, three said it is easier to balance work and school with online classes.

“[I]t was easier for me to do online because … there was no specific time that I had to be in the classroom,” Kat Roth, an undecided student, said. “So, if I need to do something, it was easy to kind of work everything into the schedule.”

Although small business student Madison Black said she found it difficult to learn in an online setting, she finds online classes to be more convenient because “a lot of my classes that I’ve had online don’t have a designated meeting time.”