Interviewer: Hello, what's your name? 

Interviewee:Uh, my name is Angel J Espinoza. 

Interviewer:Uh, what's your major? 

Angel:Um, so I'm going to CSUN and my current major is computer engineer or Computer engineering. Computer engineer. Yeah. 

Interviewer:Would you say that your grades suffered during online classes? 

Angel:Not really. Uh, if I'm being honest, it kind of felt like everybody lowered their standards a bit and so it was easy to pass classes because everybody was trying to figure out, you know, it was going on. We were all going through the whole pandemic thing and, you know, everyone was, was chill. In terms of knowledge being learned, I perhaps maybe it wasn't as, like, if you didn't have self-discipline, I could see how it'd be a little harder to actually learn, uh, what is being taught because it's, it's easy to not, to not focus or to do other things cause you're at home and you're like in, in a space that you're used to being where you don't, you know, have that focus. Whereas when you go to school you're like, Okay, I'm here. I'm gonna learn, maybe I'm gonna study or what have you. 

Interviewer:So do you think having classes online during covid benefited your ability to balance your life? 

Angel:I mean, it definitely helps you forget, I live in la right? So just going there to CSUN is like 26 miles, and so that can mean anywhere from 30 minutes if I'm lucky, or there's no traffic to like an hour and 30, an hour and 40 minutes if there is traffic in like two hours, if it's raining because people forget how to drive and there's crashes, right? But if that's like too many crashes, then yeah, it can take to that long and that's just one way. And so you're talking about like three hours just driving where I could use those three hours to study or to do homework or, you know, something else I might be more productive instead of just spending in traffic, 

Interviewer:Right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. 

Angel:So it definitely helped. 

Interviewer:Um, how was learning on Zoom 

Angel:Zoom you as they call it Affectionally 

Interviewer:Zoom University

Angel: It was, it was pretty, I mean, I thought it was hilarious that no one thought or that Zoom itself didn't even think of encrypting stuff. So you had all these random people just bombing classes and saying all kinds of obscene stuff and oh man, it was hilarious.

Brenda Larin