Dance like your parents are watching

Maura Kernell, a senior English major, is going through the motions since returning home to St. Louis. Literally. Her modern dance class has moved online in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the result is a dance routine in the family living room that her siblings sometimes join.

“It’s uncomfortable when my family comes in but I think it’s going to be a decent translation,” says Kernell. “We can still do a lot of exercises and our instructor understands that not everyone has the space to really get into the moves. I think it’s the best we can do, really.”

While Kernell says she’ll miss the opportunity to perform at the end-of-year showcase, she’s still grateful that she has the outlet to move around and express herself even in self-quarantine.

Thousands of Loyola University Chicago students are adjusting to virtual learning since the close of campus. Some, however, have had to get a little more creative as they learn dancing, lab work, and even jewelry making online.

In the Chicago suburbs, junior conservation biology major Caitlyn Lyght is having one of those hands-on lessons. This time, though, the classroom looks a little different than one of her labs back at Loyola’s campus.

Instead of DIY-ing the experiments, Lyght’s professor performs the lab step-by-step in a pre-recorded lecture format using his at-home laboratory. The students then take detailed notes and write their lab reports based on the example. Lyght says it’s not ideal, but it’s much more efficient than she thought online learning would be.

“I’m still learning from the online work and lectures,” says Lyght. “But I was concerned about how we were going to do lab work at home. My parents probably wouldn’t be okay with me mixing chemicals in our kitchen."

The same applies for senior public relations major Olivia Cardinale, who signed up for jewelry making this semester as a way to tap into her right brain and take a class unlike anything she’d taken before at Loyola. When the call came to move to virtual, Cardinale says she was upset at the thought of losing her creative outlet. A couple of pieces of paper and a random assortment of things around her home proved she didn’t have to.

“Basically we have to watch videos and write reports on them and then make jewelry with stuff around the house,” Cardinale says. Last week, she made a wrist cuff out of a bell pepper and seeds.

In the midst of uncertainty, Loyola students prove that, through some creativity and a wifi connection, they can make the most of their education.