Online

Dearest Online Learning,

With both a new year and a new semester beginning, it’s the perfect time to find new ways to stay on top of assignments and organize your daily tasks. To get you on track, here’s a guide to help you weigh the pros and cons of four different organization methods.

Since 1894, The Varsity Show has brought laughs to Columbia students, faculty, alumni, parents, and Morningside Heights residents by satirizing life at Columbia. With tickets sold out each night at Roone Arledge Auditorium, the shows featured hilarious plots complemented by coordinated choreography and staging, intense lighting, elaborate set design, and a live pit orchestra. This year’s show, however, will be much different.

With the University going virtual, most students are studying from home, tuning in to their classes from all across the globe. Although some students never had to adjust to a time zone difference while in New York, many students have been recalibrating their hours to EST since last March. Whether you are living three hours behind Morningside Heights on the West Coast or 11 hours ahead in East Asia, here are some tips to guide you through this tough time.

College away from campus is a new but not impossible concept. With this semester taking a remote form, we lose the in-person aspect of socializing. Luckily for you, we have compiled some tips and resources to help you make friends from a distance.

Whether you’re going to class or catching up with friends, video chatting has become part of everyone’s daily routine. However, after many months of working, networking, playing games, and even taking exams over Zoom, many voice the same complaint: an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as Zoom fatigue. Read Spectrum’s tips to find out more about what it is and develop better screen habits during the day.

As Columbia students prepared for another virtual semester in the midst of a global pandemic, many in California shouldered an extra burden: destructive, all-consuming wildfires that have ravaged over four million acres of land since the beginning of the year. And while natural disasters have turned innumerable lives upside down in the past year, wildfires have made an already confusing first year of college even more so for the class of 2024.

While typical preparations for a career fair may involve printing resumes, putting on the right professional shoes, and making sure you beat the line to Lerner Hall, the virtual dynamics of impressing your potential employer follow a different set of standards. The Virtual Engineering Career Fair will be held this Friday, September 25th and more “micro” career fairs will be held throughout the year, so it is never too early to start preparing. Begin getting ready with this checklist of everything you need to do beforehand.

This semester, teachers aren’t the only ones struggling to interact and engage with students over Zoom. Clubs throughout all four undergraduate schools now face the challenge of recruiting and hosting events virtually.