Keeping Work and Play Separate During the Pandemic

One of the biggest changes in many students’ lives during the pandemic is having to do the majority if not all of our classes online. Starting from the spring semester of 2020, Zoom classes have become the new normal for a lot of us. This semester marks the third one since online classes have been adopted and many of us are no doubt feeling Zoom fatigued and disconnected. From awkward break-out room activities to being assigned way more homework than usual because some professors seem to think working from home gives us all way more time in the day to do school work than there actually is. The biggest struggle of online classes is finding the balance between school work and de-stressing when we are confined to our houses. With doing work all day at home, it understandably becomes harder to turn your brain off when it is finally time to relax since the space where we do work and the space where we relax have seemingly merged into one during the pandemic. So how can we maintain this divide between working and relaxing in the era of stay-at-home orders and isolation?

Throughout the past three semesters of online classes, I have been constantly trying new ways to keep my school work divided from my personal relaxation time. Firstly, I recommend creating a space somewhere in your house, apartment, or dorm room that is designated only for classes and homework. By limiting where you do your work at home, it helps create a physical space separate from the rest of your home which should be for relaxing. Also, I have found it helpful to section off certain times of the day such as mealtimes and after a certain time at night as my designated no-work times. Creating a relatively consistent timeframe of when working is prohibited (with some caveats of course for when midterms and big projects come around) can be really useful in dividing your day into times for work and times for relaxing, which can help you maximize both your productivity and your R&R time. Obviously, each one of us has different schedules, studying styles, and ways of relaxing, so adjusting these ideas to fit what you know will help you best is very important. At the end of the day, online classes and working from home can be draining so it is crucial that we all take the time and find ways to relax.