The Balance of Roles: Graduate Student Perspectives during the COVID-19 Pandemic
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COLUMN: GRADUATE MEMBER MUSINGS
The Balance of Roles: Graduate Student Perspectives during the COVID-19 Pandemic Irene A. Bal 1 & Okan Arslan 2 & Kiran Budhrani 3 & Zixin Mao 4 & Kae Novak 5 & Pauline S. Muljana 1
# Association for Educational Communications & Technology 2020
Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted personal and professional lives. Graduate students juggle a variety of roles and had to quickly adjust. In this article, six graduate students share their reflections regarding the influence of the pandemic on respective stages in their doctoral program. They provide unique personal and professional perspectives that depict their abrupt shift to remote working and remote learning. The intention of this article is to garner an understanding of graduate students’ challenges during the pandemic, capture their strategies for success, and provide a space for further conversation and support about how the pandemic has impacted graduate students. Keywords COVID-19 pandemic . Doctoral students . Emergency remote learning . Graduate students . Graduate student roles . Higher education . Remote work
Introduction After the COVID-19 outbreak, education shifted to remote learning, and daily and professional lives quickly changed (Daniel, 2020; Liguori & Winkler, 2020; Zraick & Garcia, 2020). Within this change, graduate students had to juggle a
* Pauline S. Muljana [email protected] Irene A. Bal [email protected] Okan Arslan [email protected] Kiran Budhrani [email protected] Zixin Mao [email protected] Kae Novak [email protected] 1
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA
2
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA
3
University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA
4
Fordham University, New York, NY, USA
5
University of Colorado Denver, Denver, CO, USA
variety of professional and personal adjustments beyond their student role. This paper focuses on the experiences of six graduate students on the effect the pandemic had on their lives. The students are at various stages in their programs— some are completing their coursework and some are working through their dissertation. Each student brings a unique professional and personal perspective of COVID-19 and their abrupt shift to remote working and learning.
Parent Perspective by Pauline Muljana Who would have thought that Friday 13th, 2020 would be the last day of ‘normal?’ I am a parent of two school-age children, and on that Friday the 13th, I received the announcement from the school district—schools would be closed starting Monday with students learning at home. I immediately asked myself, “How will I complete my coursework with the kids staying at home?” During the first 3 weeks, I was struggling and my kids were confused. Instructions from the school kept changing and my own tasks were neglected. I needed a strategy. I started by identifying my essential tasks to complete the semester successfully. I chunked those tasks into bite-size tasks and created two categories: tasks that needed deep concentration and those that did not. I al
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