Spreading out the work with online and summer classes

By Victoria Lewis / Staff writer

College students know the mid-semester struggle where class loads get heavier, stress goes up, those 8 a.m. classes seem to start earlier, and care factor about attendance is at an all-time low.

What are the options for students who want to alleviate this stress?

Online and summer classes offered at Hutchinson Community College may be one answer, as they can help lighten the workload during semester or even just give students less classes to attend in person.

Online classes took the world by storm in recent years since the Covid-19 pandemic, but now that students have the choice to attend in-person classes, the question is are online classes worth the hype?

Danny Saili, from Long Beach, California, is taking ‘Death and Dying’ online this semester at HutchCC and said he enjoys the freedom and independence he gets with the class.

“I think it’s less of a workload, so to me it’s easier and there’s less teacher supervision which I like,” Saili said.

He does offer some advice to prospective online students after failing his last online class, Introduction to Baseball after falling behind on classwork.

“It was really easy to fall behind because it was only a three-week class, so I’d say just make sure you stay on schedule or you could fail,” Saili said.

Another option available for students is to take a class or two in the summer semester. One student who took Public Speaking during the summer of 2022 was freshman Journey Armstead, a freshman from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She initially enrolled in the class because she wanted a smaller number of students to present in front of.

Armstead’s experience in her summer class was positive, as she found that the class “was way easier to focus in, and not only that you can get them out of the way before school starts.”

In her eyes, summer classes are well worth it and she would recommend them to prospective students.

“It also helps with your GPA in case you are failing [the] first semester,” Armstead said.

Enrollment has opened for the fall semester, and students can still enroll for the summer at HutchCC. Students wishing to enroll or enroll can sign up for classes online or make an appointment with their academic advisor.

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