Samina’s Story: Online Learning Without a Laptop in the Time of COVID-19

You know the feeling when you’re staring at your laptop for a long time and then when you look up the world around you is fuzzy? Or how after a long day of working at your computer your head aches or there is a piercing pain over one of your eyes? What do you do? Take a break? Go on a walk? Read a book?

Now, imagine that instead of staring at your computer you were staring at your phone completing the same tasks. In fact, imagine writing a lab report or conducting research for a paper on your cell phone. For Samina, a Soondra Foundation grantee, this is her reality. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began over a year ago, Samina has been attending university full time from home and does all her school work on her cellphone. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most schools and universities around the world have shifted into online learning.

Now, every student needs access to an electronic device, ideally a laptop. All across the world, even children who do have access to computers and high-speed internet have struggled to attend online school. For students like Samina, one of the many students around the world who does not have a laptop, the digital divide has led to serious consequences regarding her academics as well as her mental and physical health.

The Soondra Foundation met Samina through Teach for India back when she was in 10th grade.

She had fractured her leg and needed immediate surgery so that she could take her final exams. The Soondra Foundation supplied Samina’s family with a direct cash grant to cover the costs of the hardware for her leg surgery. Since then, Samina has become the first person in her family to graduate high school and go to university. However, because of the pandemic, Samina now has to attend all of her classes and do all of her work on her cell phone because she does not own a laptop. Samina regularly gets headaches from staring at a small screen for hours on end and has become increasingly exhausted by her school work.

“It’s the major issue right now,” she explains, “sticking to a phone from 9-4 is tough plus mom wants me to do some chores as I’m home so my concentration is gone sometimes.”

On top of the physical effects of attending school from her phone, Samina feels left out and realizes that many of her classmates are “well equipped [and have been] using these devices for years.” She is frustrated that students who have access to their own laptops are able to attend class regularly and build community online while “people like me who don’t have access and don’t know much about anything that’s going on the virtual world.

“It’s demotivating,” she says. As the eldest child Samina constantly feels the pressure to drop out of school for a year to help support her family during the pandemic. 

While the effects of COVID-19 on education can seem overwhelming, there is a happy ending to Samina’s story.

After asking virtually everyone she knew, Samina was recently lent a 7 year-old laptop from an old teacher of hers. She explains that while she has the laptop, “I can attend lectures peacefully.” Her favorite class? “To be honest, it’s physics for the first time … it’s cool to hear something good just out of what every professor talks everyday.”