USC professor Jenifer Crawford finished the spring semester just in time to take care of a very important personal matter. Within four hours of posting her students’ grades at Rossier School of Education, she was on her way to the hospital to give birth.

When her fall classes debuted, she planned to juggle childcare responsibilities with her partner, but tending to her newborn son and 8-year-old daughter, on top of teaching graduate students, proved a bit too much.

“As a mom with a newborn, I’m leaking, the baby’s crying, and it’s so hard to focus already with the sleep deprivation,” Crawford said. “I had to be honest with the students that it’s a challenge.”

New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin became a little too comfortable in mixing the two in the now infamous “zoom dick” incident. Others prioritize professionalism even if they face challenges that become increasingly harder to hide off camera in their personal lives.

University life is no exception. Students and professors across the nation are dealing with long hours of Zoom classes followed by a flurry of online assignments. Several of them shared the challenges of balancing professional and personal responsibilities while quarantining.

Crawford tried to give her full attention to students. Even with her partner caring for their children during class, the reality of her home life is shown on Zoom.

“When I’m on campus, I can go into my office and I work. I go into the classroom and I'm just in the classroom,” Crawford said. “I’m really fortunate I have a room that can be an office, but there’s no way I cannot have the infant cry at night.”

As the semester progressed, Crawford couldn’t resolve the challenges she was facing alone. She says they had to use her partner’s family leave, and their savings to hire additional childcare. With that support, Crawford felt she reached her stride with only two weeks remaining this semester.

With the barriers of separation eroding, deeper personal experiences are also creeping into classrooms.

After the police killing of George Floyd and ensuing demonstrations nationwide, Ebony Cain, chair of the educational leadership administration and policy program at Pepperdine University, found herself addressing “the elephant in the room.” She talked to her students about her own experiences as a Black woman in America.

“I had to say I am feeling really, really sad,” Cain said.

Even though Cain was passionate, she sensed students started encountering fatigue surrounding racial topics, similar to the burnout from using Zoom every day.

“It’s hard sometimes when students are asking me, ‘Why do we have to keep talking about Black people getting murdered. I don’t want to hear it anymore,’” Cain said.

Cain found a silver lining to the remote environment. She joined a group chat with other Black professors at Pepperdine. The group shares, vents, and validates each other’s experiences as they continue working at what Cain calls a “predominantly white” institution.

While Cain managed to find support outside her classroom, another professor, Stephanie Knezz at Northwestern University discovered remote work uncovered a unique set of challenges different from in-person settings. She responded by rethinking her lecture time.

“I’m using that time to focus on things students are struggling with,” Knezz said.

To better support her students, Knezz prepared recorded lectures and quizzes to gauge what students were struggling with. The extra, constant work took a toll on her.

“The thing I struggle with the most is myself being burnt out but still having to carry the energy of the learning experience,” Knezz said.

She hopes that students and professors realize they both face personal challenges that can affect their work, so they gain mutual understanding.

“Hardship really humanizes all of us in a way,” Knezz said. “And I think that that’s what the rigidity of the educational system really needed.”

Valeria Guzman, a junior at Florida International University, questions if this openness between professors and students is possible. Guzman says she felt overwhelmed by the amount of work assigned and by her school’s’ culture where students rarely, if ever raise workload issues with to professors.

“There’s not much talking to professors in my school,” Guzman said. “I’ve never been the type to complain about work.”

Since her school is in a hybrid system, Guzman notices a difference in her level of focus between the two formats. With the expectation to learn the material before attending lecture, Guzman says online classes “seem optional and redundant.” Meanwhile, her in-person class offers more structure and demands more focus.

“In person, you don’t have the distraction of your parents or your phone, but online those boundaries aren’t set,” Guzman said. “I feel like there’s just a lack of effort to actually adapt to online learning,”

Guzman says she thinks if professors improved the online experience to closely match the in-person class, it would be much easier to regain the focus and motivation she lost.

“It’s a two-way street and if professors try, students try and vice versa,” Guzman said.

Eden Burkow, a senior studying communications at USC, also struggles to adapt to online learning and to share her troubles problems with her professors.

“I’m so far removed from what college life is supposed to be,” Burkow said. “I love to be engaged and right now, the way I get to do that is through my laptop for everything.”

Though Burkow tries to stay connected to USC by remaining active in her clubs and attending class regularly, she finds online classes lacking the elements that made college life captivating.

“I don’t see anyone in the hall. I don’t have side conversations. I enter my classes to only hear what my professors have to say, most of which could probably be found in the textbook,” Burkow said. “And it’s recorded so do I even need to be there?”

To address her mental health for the first time, Burkow reached out to professionals during the semester. Burkow is part of a growing number of college students experiencing increased levels of anxiety and depression during the pandemic, according to a study conducted at Texas A&M University.

Burkow hesitated speaking openly to her professors about her declining mental health and its toll on her schoolwork. She says some professors are understanding, but others minimize the effect personal challenges can have on assignments.

“It feels like the reality that we’re all going through right now isn’t actually the reality professors are going through,” Burkow said.

Knezz says professors want their students to succeed and wishes students would make their needs known so that the accommodations could can be made.

“I’ve always felt like one of the biggest issues in education has been this weird adversarial sense between instructors and students,” Knezz said. “Professors need to make sure to let students know that we’re on their side.”

Taking time for self-care

Despite the challenges, these professors and students try to make time for self care whenever possible. They shared what some of their go-to activities for staying mentally and physically healthy during the pandemic in the video below.