Reading and Remote Learning: Thoughts from Self-Quarantine

By Amy Vandervelde ’21

Hi, everyone. I hope that you and yours are doing well and staying safe. We here at The Words just wanted to share some quick reflections about what we’re thinking and what we’ve been up to for the past couple of weeks. Here’s mine:

I’ve been back in Ottawa, Illinois since Wednesday, March 18. It’s strange that I haven’t left the house at all in that time. I don’t think I ever realized how much I went around town to the library, local coffee shop, or even with my mom on grocery store trips. I keep thinking back to two years ago, another time when I didn’t leave the house all that much. I was a first-year student at Mac, and right around this time, on April 2, 2018, I left campus early because I had completely dislocated and double-fractured my ankle. I finished that spring semester from home too, under very different circumstances. I’m still thinking about how I can even picture these two semesters as similar. 

I will have finished two semesters away from campus after this year, and it’s definitely mind-boggling to try and comprehend that. The first time I was hopping around my house, making individual arrangements with professors on how I would complete my coursework, and spending all day alone at home while my mom was at work and my brother was at school. Now, the second time around, I’m trying to find things to keep me busy, I’m following along with the remote structure like everyone else, and I’m figuring out how to manage classes and such with two other people and a dog in the house with me. It’s a really different experience, but my optimistic side keeps reminding me that everything will work itself out.

Some of my hobbies during this stay at home period have included reading (lots and lots of reading), catching up on homework, listening to music, watching Netflix, and some movies. I’ve finished a couple books so far: Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke and House of Furies by Madeleine Roux. I’m that person who reads more than one book at a time, so a few that I’m currently working on are Attachments by Rainbow Rowell, Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer, The Beautiful by Reneé Ahdieh, and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Movies are always my go-to activity at this point though because they take 90 plus minutes. My current obsession has been re-watching all of the animated Scooby-Doo movies. I have been watching Scooby-Doo and the Loch Ness Monster, Scooby-Doo in Where’s My Mummy?, and Scooby-Doo in Pirates Ahoy! Mostly, I’m just hanging out with my dog, Taffy, trying to only spend a reasonable amount of time on social media, and virtually connecting with family and friends.

Please stay safe everyone, and please reach out at any time if you’d like to discuss books or movies or even just chat. I definitely miss spending all my free time in Old Main and seeing many of you there too.