With the ongoing quarantine of colleges across the nation, students are forced to take their finals at home, often without the guidance of classmates or professors, unless they ask for help.

Some students, such as Texas Wesleyan’s Samiya Mohamed-Fawzy, are finding this more difficult, and more stressful.

Mohamed-Fawzy, a sophomore political science major, wrote in an email that it’s much more difficult to get assignments done from home and study for finals.

“If I were at school right now, doing these assignments would be stressful, but not as stressful as it is with so many distractions from home in addition to family expectations.” Mohamed-Fawzy wrote.

She wrote that she is a visual learner so when she would normally study for finals on campus, she would go to the library and use the chalk boards to help retain information.

“I have issues paying attention and whenever I’m sitting down or in one spot for too long, I tend to zone out so moving around to write on a chalk board really helps keep me focused,” Mohamed-Fawzy wrote.

Ana Buduen, a sophomore music major at Mountain View College in Dallas said that what she misses the most from campus is the library.

“I have like two core classes right now and they’re so close to the library, and I mentally told myself, ‘If you just get this out the way and go and just read it over and over, you’ll be just fine, like you won’t have to worry about anything.’” Buduen said.

She said one of the ways she has learned to study at home is to take the time to get out of her comfort zone and focus on something when there are so many distractions.

“I actually make myself wake up super early because I have back-to-back alarms, so that I can go get some coffee, start off my day and at least try to get some energy to start on something,” Buduen said.

Similarly, Rin Yellen, a sophomore undecided major of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. said she wakes up at four or five in the morning to study because of the peace and quiet.

“I have a big family and they’re very loud,” Yellen said. “It’s hard for me to concentrate when I’m studying, so a lot of the times they distract me, and it takes more time to remember and study things now.”

A transfer student from Japan, Yellen said Evergreen’s administrative and student support center staff get on Zoom to offer students help.

“They pretty much sit there for a couple of hours every Saturday and answer students’ questions, or if you need help with some kind of writing, they can help with that too, once a week,” Yellen said.

Magdalena Aguinaga, a sophomore graphic design major at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches said her school sends out emails for conferences as well as a hotline for people when the quarantine started.

“I used to try to go to the top floor of the library, with my own cubicle to work and study from there.” Aguinaga said.

In particular, Aguinaga mentions that one of her classes was a group-based class, Teamwork and Group Communication Honors, and that since quarantine, the expectations of that class have been reduced.

She wrote in a text that the final in that class, which had different groups of students make videos of their daily lives, edit them, and then send them to other groups in the class, has been made easier.

“After quarantine, the professor told us not to edit and to send the videos to exclusively to him. He said he would do the editing for us,” Aguinaga wrote. “The videos became vlogs, specifically on life at home in quarantine.”