Claire Brom is a finance major who graduates this spring. She is a student employee for The Center for Languages, Literatures and Cultures and agreed to write her experiences of her first week of virtual classes at Ohio State.

“This is all ridiculous, but we’re going to make it work.”

It’s March 23, the first day of e-learning at Ohio State.

It’s the culmination of weeks of emails from university officials and instructors alike, containing policy change after policy change. While the sheer volume of incoming information was at times overwhelming, I couldn’t help but marvel at the proactive and adaptive agility with which the entire OSU administration responded to the COVID-19 outbreak. As a student, it only felt right to respond in kind.

So, after a final Sunday-night update of my course calendars and a few too many Zoom test runs, I find myself sitting in front of my computer this Monday morning in nervous anticipation of the class and week ahead. I’ve taken online classes before but know I’ll have to learn on the fly in a live setting with a hundred or more students. My Asian Philosophy professor then joins the meeting and after a few jokes addressing the pandemic-sized elephant in the room, I am relieved to realize I had nothing to worry about. Just minutes later, we pick up right where we left our last in-person class and for the next eighty minutes it truly feels like business as usual, even from my home five hours away in Chicago.

The above quote was one of his first comments to the class and I made sure to jot it down for this article, knowing it would likely perfectly sum up the first week of classes. Luckily, I was right. Those few words housed both a sense of almost laughable bewilderment at our situation and a determination to persevere despite it, which ended up prevailing in each one of my courses.

While we convened in isolation through our computer screens, our technological barriers did not detract from the overwhelming sense of humanity I felt, and perhaps even contributed to it more than being present in a classroom could. For example, I was able to inadvertently meet several students’ moms, and even a professor’s dog! College is no doubt a time for defining oneself, but this gentle reminder that everyone shares a family and home of some sort was truly heartwarming.

Looking back, week one was by no means perfect. There were bound to be a few errors along the way—accidentally talking into a muted microphone, for example, or voicing questions in tandem with a dozen other students. I am very fortunate to have home internet connection capable of supporting large live meetings and hope (somewhat naively, I’m sure) that most if not all students have similar access. Yet in the face of each small mistake, humility and understanding triumphed again and again. I find it incredibly inspiring and comforting to know that at the end of the day, everyone is ultimately just doing their best, presumably both in and out of the classroom. Coming together for class was sort of a mental checkpoint—another unsure element of our temporary lives we would have to navigate moment by moment. When in that first Asian Philosophy lecture we touched upon Aristotle’s vice of cowardice, defined as an excessive disposition to the fearful, it was hard not to draw parallels to the extraordinary circumstances. But what struck me most was the subsequent discussion of the philosopher’s definition of courage.

Contrary to widespread belief, courage is not pure fearlessness. As my professor remarked, living by such absolutes is simply unrealistic. Instead, courage is moral strength in the face of danger. How wonderful to know that to get through hard times we don’t need to be superhuman, just human. What’s more, my experience this week showed me that we don’t have to do so alone, because even at a distance, the Ohio State community was able to come together stronger and more united than ever.

In the coming weeks, I believe things will only get easier. We are creatures of habit, after all. E-learning is just another habit we must incorporate into our momentarily adjusted routines. I’m glad that no matter what platform it utilizes, the university continues to strive for excellence in its educational provisions. Personally, with the convenience e-learning offers I am hopeful that it will usher in a new era of more flexible education for all, long after COVID-19 has passed. I think I speak for everyone when I say that time cannot come soon enough.