Pandemic learning, behind the scenes

The spring of 2020 changed everyones lives and it hit students in a particular way. I was at the end of my junior year and coming back from Cuba. Instead of going back to my campus apartment and classes, I had to transition like all students to what has now been called Zoom University. It was not easy.

Now all my classes were taken from my bedroom, in particular my bed because the desk I had was covered in childhood memorabilia. At first it wasn’t bad, I got to be comfy, I had my cat next to me at all times. However, the uncertainty of the state of the world, the strange emptiness of Rochester, made me start to grow restless. I would go driving because I was bored of the same four walls of my childhood room and nothing would be the same.

In my classes we had to start thinking out of the box, how can we be creative, how can we be photographers, journalists without risking our health and the health of those we interact with?

As a journalist one of our main jobs is getting intimate. Being there with people in their toughest moments—and the pandemic stopped all that. Not to mention the fact that I, along with the rest of my classmates, had to figure out how to do our capstone projects without this key component.

The RIT capstone project, at least for Photojournalism, is talked about since you are a prospective student. We all wanted to work and produce something meaningful, and impactful. Something not only we would be proud of but what our professors and alumni could be as well. Like most of my classmates my original idea was flushed down the drain and like most I spent the summer relaxing and not working.

Then August came. The fall semester of 2020 started. Capstone? Back to the drawing board.

In my end of summer panic about capstone, I was researching and scratching my brain for ideas and much like any creative… I had a bad case of writers block. Then one day it hit me. Use my own experience. Thats where Learning Together started.

I thought about education and my zoom university experience and then my mind wandered to how are kids K-12 dealing with this? What about students who need extra help?

Thats how my capstone started.

I worked with two really amazing families that let me into their homes and lives for the next year.