As the world continues to rapidly change our day-to-day life in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there are university and college students complaining about having to complete their academic year through online learning.

With the coronavirus abruptly closing schools, college teachers and university professors are conducting classes remotely, uploading lectures and changing course outlines so students will not lose their semester… something that could not have happened 30 years ago.

As someone who graduated with a college diploma in the late 1980s and a bachelor of arts degree two years later, I am amazed at how post-secondary education has changed now that my own children are attending college and university.

It should seem effortless for students to finish their year online since so much of how post-secondary institutions conduct business is already online.

Students can access library books online, collaborate with other students through video chat, message their professors and hand in assignments without ever leaving home. Everything is online, including choosing courses, paying tuition and posting grades.

When I attended college and university, academic life was vastly different. Of course, my post-secondary path was not as straightforward as some.

Venturing to southern Ontario to complete by my first year of university, I became just a student number in a vast sea of 30,000 others at the school, a far cry from where I grew up in Wawa, with its population of 4,600. That student number from years ago is etched into memory and still easily recited.

Those were the days when you went to university before the semester began and lined up at long rows of tables hoping to sign up for your preferred courses before they filled up.

Doing research meant physically going to a library, looking though endless catalogue cards to find sources and hoping that book you wanted wasn’t already signed out. What I would have done to have Google and online libraries.

With first year classes of 400 or more, speaking to professors meant trying to catch them after class or going to their office and hoping they had time to speak to you. Email would have been so much easier.

Finding out how you did on mid-terms meant checking the posted grades outside your prof’s office where marks were identified only by your student number. My study habits were a work in progress that first year so I always started at the bottom of the list and worked my way up in search of my grade.

That first year on my own was very stressful but calls to my parents were limited to the weekend when telephone rates were cheaper. FaceTime or video chat would have been a wonderful help to combat homesickness. Going home for the weekend was not an option as flying was not in the budget and the Greyhound bus took 18 hours.

Fast forward three years when I took a year off and completed a two-year college program in which one of my teachers encouraged me to finish my degree.

Four months later, I was enrolled at Laurentian University only to have it, and all other Ontario universities, go on strike on the first day of classes. Not wanting to lose my year, I crossed the border and completed one semester at Lake Superior State University, before earning money seemed more desirable than being a starving student.

A few weeks into my job, a co-worker convinced me to take courses with her and complete my degree through Laurentian’s distance education program. At that point, I needed to earn 30 credits, the equivalent of one year, to get that elusive piece of paper as proof of completing my higher education.

Distance education involved ordering textbooks from the university and being sent binders that included all of the lesson plans. Self-learning required self-discipline, especially while working a full-time job, but having a study buddy helped as professors were difficult to reach and only meant as a last resort.

Home computers, which now allow for easy preparation and editing of school assignments, were a scarcity at the time and I was not fond of typewriters, having vowed never to use one again after suffering through Grade 9 and 10 typing class with manual machines. Since all of my assignments had to be typed or hand-printed, I chose to meticulously print out my reports by hand.

Due to time constraints from being a notorious procrastinator, I never mailed my assignments through Canada Post but rather sent my completed coursework from Wawa to Sudbury on the Greyhound bus, which assured overnight delivery. It was a great system until one of my reports ended up getting lost. Alas, making copies of my assignments before sending them out had not crossed my mind until that moment.

Others had warned me about how hard the statistics courses were and I shuddered at the thought of having to complete them without in-class lectures as mathematics had never been my strong suit. My high school yearbook described me as most often heard saying in math class, “This is so stupid.”

It came as a pleasant surprise when the school-provided course lessons were so well written and easy to understand that my statistics courses ended up being my highest marks. Mrs. Rice, my high school math teacher, would have fallen over in shock.

To expedite my higher learning, I took two courses each session and after 15 months, my perseverance paid off, I was a university graduate.

So to all those post-secondary students completing their last few weeks of school at home, grumbling that they’d rather be in a class … suck it up. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.

Camilla White-Kirkpatrick is a Sault Star district correspondent