{"id":121867,"date":"2021-01-21T09:27:38","date_gmt":"2021-01-21T08:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=121867"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:25:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:25:20","slug":"staying-up-all-night-to-catch-your-4-am-class-from-is-horrible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2021\/01\/21\/staying-up-all-night-to-catch-your-4-am-class-from-is-horrible\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Staying up all night to catch your 4 am class is horrible’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being a medical student \u2018stuck\u2019 in his home country of Suriname, EM journalist Ferayed Hok is now experiencing first-hand what it\u2019s like to study from a different time zone. He spoke to two fellow students who have been experiencing the same problem from other countries.<\/p>\n

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Because of the pandemic, international students have been stuck in their home countries. Due to the swift shift to online education, they\u2019re able to continue their programmes safely. My home country Suriname (UTC -3) is four hours behind the Netherlands (UTC +1), which means that waking up at 8 am for a normal school day isn\u2019t going to cut it. While I\u2019ve only been in Suriname for six weeks, Amanda and Kushan have been in their home countries for almost a year.<\/p>\n

Class at 4 in the morning<\/h2>
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Just south of Suriname lies Brazil, where IBCoM student Amanda Barreto do Medeiros is back in her old bedroom. Being in the same time zone as me, I thought she would perhaps have some good advice on how to deal with the time difference. But when we start the Zoom call at 2 pm in our shared time zone, she tells me she\u2019s been up for about 26 hours, with small powernaps in between. \u201cI had a 4 am class today. It\u2019s horrible!\u201d, she exclaims. \u201cUsually, we get to choose a fitting time, but that just wasn\u2019t the case for this elective. So I decided it was best to just stay awake instead of waking up at 3 in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amanda, whose first year abroad was interrupted by the pandemic, decided in March that it would be best to move back home, partly because her mum was quite insistent on that. \u201cAnd thank God I did, because I was able to help my parents too. My father and grandmother just got Covid-19, so I took care of them. At the same time, I had to protect my mother as well, so I was wearing masks and face covers. Fortunately, they\u2019re okay now.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just Covid that can be a challenge when you\u2019re back at your parents\u2019 house. Even though my parents are quite considerate of privacy, there have been a few instances where I was in the middle of a tutorial and someone (not saying it\u2019s my sister) walked in. Amanda recognizes that problem, she tells me. \u201cSome of my friends who are also studying from home told me that even if they tell their parents not to come into their room because they\u2019re studying, they\u2019ll still just come in.\u201d<\/p>\n

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