Creative Writing: Article

Pandemic, a New Psychological Burden

Nowadays, the world faces a new condition, where a disease spreads through body contact, or by worse through the air. Called as Covid19, an acronym of Coronavirus disease 19. Started from Wuhan, China, the disease evolves into pandemic as it easily spread in the entire part of the world and killed so many people. Such conditions force many countries to lockdown their area, a condition when the public place is all closed and the people are prohibited to come out from their house to suppress the victim of the virus. Since not so many countries cannot lockdown their area because of their economic condition, those countries only can run a condition called social distancing, when the government reduced all social activities as minimum as possible, making new rules for a worker and student to work and learn from their home.

A lot of countries who ran the social distancing rule usually a developing country, especially Indonesia. Since the majority of Indonesian is a middle class whose work depends on the public, the social distancing rule really affects their income. A lot of the worker’s family become difficult, as the rule instruct the student to learn from their work which needs internet to attend the class by online, it gives an additional burden for their parents as they need to buy an internet data besides their daily and premier needs.

The learning from the home condition also gives a new pressure to the student. Seen from the habit of majority Indonesian student, that the student doesn’t really pay attention to the material if the teacher doesn’t control them. The teacher also aware of the student’s habit, so not a little that the teacher gives an abundance of assignments to their student, without thinking about the student’s psychological condition. Let’s said that, there are 5 different courses, and each of the teachers of the courses gives more than 1 assignment, as they think that the student is at their house, so they concluded that the student has a lot of time to do their work, within 1 week. If we look at social media, we can found that so many students complaining about their assignment, commenting that the teacher doesn’t really care with their student, just give an assignment, and the teacher’s obligation to teach the student is paid off. This kind of condition doesn’t really suitable for the culture of Indonesian students, where the majority of them usually do the assignment as there is a pressure to do that, so they usually do it at a tight time. The other problem is, that in fact, some students live in remote areas, where the internet connection isn’t stable or there is no internet at all, as the student needs to attend the class online, it forces them to go to the area where internet is covered, or in some case, they got a slow internet connection that will be disrupt their learning process or discussion.

So, rather than the positive effect, the pandemic more give a negative effect on the student. Besides the economic, that the culture of Indonesian student when studying plays a big role in their academic performance, as the abundance of the assignment and the habit of delaying of their work.