 These are strange times. We've been dealing with a global pandemic since March and 2020 has become a very complicated time to be a student. My name is Stephen Hayford. I'm serving the graduate assistantship and photography for the Ohio University Libraries. The pandemic has meant that we've all had to adjust to working online and it's odd to think that here in Florida I'm 1,053 miles away from most of my classmates. I was looking forward to long walks to Athens campus on my way to class, but thanks to the coronavirus my longest walk to school is now 10 feet from the living room to the computer. Lack of exercise isn't the only struggle with working from home. Trying to handle online classes amid distractions can be difficult. Pets certainly don't understand what class time is. I'm thinking the fifth is going to be hard because it's election week. We're all learning in a new way. I like your idea something to keep us interacting with other classmates has always been important to education. We're just doing it in a different way now. We still do critiques in our Zoom and Teams meetings, but it's not quite the same. Delays and awkward meeting issues kind of take the wind out of good feedback. I recently had an assignment for information design basics. Our goal was to create a digital promotion piece for an event. You can work with something that exists like redesign it or look at something that's upcoming. Instructors are doing great at showing examples for assignments, but if I was there in person I'd bounce ideas off other students in casual conversation. Does anyone have any ideas off the top of their head about what they might think they might want to explore? My idea was to do a promo piece for a PEZ convention rescheduled for next year. Had I been in Athens with other students I would have had an easy time asking others for feedback. I would have been able to see what other students are doing and get ideas on different technical approaches. And when you're casually working near other students you can see what they're doing and get inspired to take more risks. Now we have to make more concerted efforts to see what other students are doing. It's an adjustment. Nonetheless, I'm grateful that I'm learning so much. One of the most difficult aspects of pandemic school life is the isolation and the monotony. The days tend to blend together. I never thought I'd take five classes all from the same space. Sitting in front of a computer for hours on end, day after day, is exhausting. It would be very easy for morale to bottom out. But my instructors are good at getting us to talk about the strangeness of these times and they're good at encouraging students to interact. Those are the things that let me know, no matter how tired I might be, that we're going to get through this just fine.