 We sat down with five Virginia Tech students to talk about their experiences with digital life and online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is what they said. I didn't think it would be as long-term as it was. You have to be online almost wait for seven days. My weeks are consumed by screens pretty much. I think everyone's adapted really well. I feel like I just didn't let, you know, all the bad news and stuff get to me. Navigating the new normal. Describe your typical day of digital engagement. Well, currently I've enrolled in five classes for which are online. One of those are in hybrid but haven't gone to the in-person class yet. But the one last class is asynchronous which is kind of annoying sometimes. My schedule is really spaced out perfectly where it isn't too much in any day or too little any day. A lot of my work is online. Well, all of it is online. I have all virtual classes this semester. Screen time is probably not so great just because I'm always on my laptop, whether that's just checking my email or for classes. Typically, all my classes are online. For the most part, I'm on my computer for usually two to three hours every day in class plus doing homework all online. So that's another like, at least two or three hours every day. How did you feel at the beginning of quarantine when classes first switched to a digital format? I'm really very shocking. I didn't expect that to happen. It was kind of unprecedented, like for sure. It was weird transitioning because I had never experienced that before. Luckily the professors I think also kind of went through a transition period. So at least that everybody was kind of transitioning together. It was kind of a weird feeling because at first I was kind of excited because obviously it's like a new thing. You don't have to go in class and like you get more free time and everything like that. But it was kind of also like challenging because now it was like up to me to actually like watch my lectures and like do everything on time and not get behind. It was the best of both worlds. How did you spend your time over quarantine? In quarantine, I started drawing. I wouldn't say they're great drawings, but I started doing it. I bought a lot of books. I haven't read them yet, but you know, I started each one of them. I felt that working on like my social media presence, if that makes sense, was a great outlet just because, you know, we couldn't see people. So I felt that, you know, social media was the safest way to interact with people. And I felt that really helped me a lot. For me, where I lived, it was hard because everything was closed. I couldn't really do much like in person or, you know, in a building or anything. So I picked up little hobbies here and there, but a lot of me, like a lot of my summer consists of exercising, you know, seeing Mother Nature as fullest, which is great. What are you proudest of from the past six months? Enduring my mental health problems that have probably been exacerbated by the pandemic. I wouldn't say I've like overcome them, but I've definitely like waited it out. I'm definitely getting through it, which is really great. So that's probably what I'm most proud of. I'm like proud of taking the time to like learn new hobbies, because I know for a lot of people it was just hard and like they were really bored. And like when I look back to quarantine, I didn't really think of like me just sitting at my like on my phone all day. Like I tried to make the most out of it. I'm proud that I continued to be semi productive during this time. Because I know I think everyone can kind of relate for this last couple months have been very hard on everyone. Like for mental health reasons and just like economically, it's just been very tough times. So I'm proud of myself for staying semi productive and trying to be positive throughout the experience. Over the past six months, what would you say has been your biggest stumbling block? Not being able to see people. I'm very much a people person and I had joined a few organizations when I came to Virginia Tech. So it was really hard to like how to step away from those just because I knew that I couldn't be as proactive online as in person. So it was really hard to step away from those things. Being able to connect to my professors like on a kind of deeper level because they're online and I have classes of between 100 to 150 students in each one. So super hard to connect with them even like when you're not face to face. So I think that was my huge like biggest challenge in terms of school wise and then in terms of personal life. They connected with my friends because this whole pandemic just kind of brought me apart from them which kind of sucks but you know it's hard to keep those connections going but I'm trying to get there eventually. How would you define digital wellness? It's the idea of taking care of yourself even if you're having to do a lot of things online like we are right now. Like even everyone, most everyone in the workforce is like dealing with it too so there's like a lot of talk about self-care and how do you do that or like dividing your online life from your personal life so people say like don't do work in your bed or like try to go to like another room if you can or whatever so I think of ways to check in on yourself when you're having to do a lot of things virtually. Just having like a healthy relationship with like digitally like with either social media or like how much time you spend online and like how it makes you feel and just making sure you have limits and like knowing your limits and trying to follow them and just knowing what's good for you and what's not. Also just when you're online trying to use it like the most positive way for you and others. If there is one word you would use to describe your experience with the pandemic what would it be? Crazy. Crazy can be a good or a bad thing. Learning. Roller coaster. Lots of highs, lots of blows. Frustrating. To describe this whole pandemic I would say a roller coaster for sure.