In the past year, students all over the world began  experiencing an increase in online learning thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. Having graduated high school in the midst of online courses after all of my other years of schooling in person only, this new normal consisting of online learning was definitely, well, a learning curve.

For me, online learning was the best thing that could have happened for the end of my senior year, but college turned out to be a whole different experience.

I personally really enjoyed the hybrid format, with some classes in person and some classes online, as I enjoy aspects of both ways of learning. Either of these options may not be for everyone, some people do not do well in online classes, while others excel, and vice versa. A lot of people close to me cannot stand online learning,
and are therefore taking a semester off of school due to an overwhelming amount of online classes. A few of my other friends took advantage of this completely virtual format at their respective schools, and were able to enjoy their semesters from the comfort of their actual homes, not bothering to live on campus and saving
thousands of dollars in room and board fees.

As a freshman, I have been unable to experience Eastern with only in person classes, but I really do not mind. Again, I quite enjoyed the hybrid format that my schedule was in, and having a relatively even balance of in person and virtual classes.

I feel that asking for all online classes or even a wide variety of hybrid classes would be asking a lot from our professors in the coming years once we’ve reached that lovely post-pandemic world mark, but I do think I would definitely like to see more online classes from Eastern even after Covid-19.

Each learning platform has its individual pros and cons, but for me, online courses outweigh the cons, and many of the cons can be easily fixed.

For many, choosing Eastern was part of a decision and desire to go to a school that had smaller class sizes and more opportunities to build relationships with professors. Online courses definitely limit that interaction, especially as in a zoom meeting with dozens of students it can be difficult to build any type of relationship or friendship with both professors and fellow classmates. This issue can however, be resolved with even a simple email to a professor, asking for a one on one meeting during office hours or even requesting to stay “after class” for anything. Even in online classes, I have found my professors to be more than accommodating and willing to help in the same ways they would help in an in-person classroom setting.

Online classes also help with any type of sickness, not just covid. In high school, I tended to get sick a lot, and as a result, would miss a lot of my classes due to my
absences from being sick. In college, I have yet to miss a day of class without prior notice to my professor. If I am not feeling well, I can easily email my professor to zoom in to class that day, so I don’t have to miss anything or fall behind on my work. Even when I was in quarantine with Covid I did not have to miss any of my classes.

Don’t get me wrong, no online class could really match the same experience of being in a classroom and attending classes in person, but it can be a great option
for a lot of students.

Either way, college is hard, and I am grateful that the pandemic has allowed us to experience different types of class formats. Online classes may not work for some,
but it can certainly help others, and vice versa, it is really about your individual learning style and preferences.

Emotional Support Animals are pets that can provide companionship that eases anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses. They are different from service animals, as they do not receive any formal training in order to become certified, but they do have to meet certain criteria. They have to be prescribed to a patient experiencing disabling mental health issues by a licensed mental health professional.

In order to get an ESA on Eastern’s campus, you have to get a recommendation from a therapist or mental health professional outside of Eastern’s community, then go through CCAS to get your animal certified as an ESA. They are classified as a housing accommodation so the ESA is allowed to live in dorms as long as they do not cause a disturbance.

Senior Chemistry major Karissa MacCentelli has had her ESA cat, Sasha, since her second semester. She got Sasha over the winter break of her freshman year from a cat cafe. MacCentelli loves having her ESA on campus with her, and feels that Sasha has a significant positive impact on her mental health.

Karissa describes ESA’s as “the annoying thing that gets you up in the morning.” and describes taking care of Sasha as her need to get up in the morning. She acknowledges that Sasha is another being that she is responsible for, so even when she doesn’t want to take care of herself, she needs to take care of Sasha.

“I care about her a lot, and I have the responsibility of having something else to take care of.” MacCentelli said when describing her relationship with Sasha and how she has impacted her life.

Freshman Early Childhood Education major Rebecca Belford has had her ESA shitzu, Tony, since her sixteenth birthday, and has had him registered as her ESA for almost a year now.

“My dog is my other half” said Belford, who has Tony to treat depression and anxiety. “He helps me through so much.”

Belford described how Tony is able to detect her emotions and help her calm down when necessary. “It is a lot for me to be emotionally there
for people” said Belford, “he helps me stay calm.

“I don’t think there is a bad part of having him here … sometimes he wakes up early” Belford said when asked if there were any downsides to having her ESA on campus.

One recent issue that has arisen on Eastern’s campus regarding ESAs is quarantine housing. Recent announcements and events have determined that students with ESAs are not allowed to have their ESA with them if they end up having to quarantine either due to exposure or a positive COVID-19 test.

This announcement has received a lot of negative backlash from students with ESAs on Eastern’s campus, after they had to fill out a form figuring out what their ESA would have to do in the case of quarantine.

MacCentelli had to deal with ESA accommodations in quarantine firsthand when she tested positive for COVID during one of Eastern’s monthly testing periods. She was not able to have her ESA with her after finding out her results, and could not have her with her in her anxious state afterwards.

While MacCentelli was able to go home with her ESA to quarantine in Maryland, she acknowledged that not all students were able to have the same luxury of going home to quarantine and be with their ESA.

Senior Faith Lauffer had a similar experience in the fall semester with her ESA, Sebby, but eventually learned she would not need to quarantine after finding out that she was not actually exposed.

Lauffer was very adverse to the new quarantine rule, as it was not made until this current spring semester. She wonders maybe if she would have been able to quarantine with her ESA in the fall, the new rule might not have been implemented.

“My ESA is a medical treatment for a medically diagnosed disorder, denying me my ESA is denying my medical treatment” said Lauffer, who chose her ESA over medication for mental health, and feels very strongly about Easterns new ESA policy.

Sources: AKC.org, Eastern.edu

Every morning, the first thing I do when I wake up is check my phone. It is part of my daily routine and I feel incomplete if
I don’t. We all have these technological habits that make us feel incomplete if we don’t follow them. But is this necessarily a bad thing?

Both technology and social media have a significant impact on our day to day lives. They influence our actions, even when we don’t realize it. Before I got my phone I wasn’t checking anything daily, I watched the news with my mom but it was
not a habit I needed to follow to continue on with my day.

Technology has the ability to connect us with others even when we’re not physically together, and especially with the pandemic, it has been more difficult to connect with people without technology. I know for me, I did not see my friends for most of 2020, but I was still able to connect with them through technology and maintain my friendships with not much of an impact.

Technology also allows us to communicate with people that we may not have the opportunity to otherwise. Without technology I may not have the chance to meet people who live across the country, and especially not across the world, but thanks to technology I have a group of friends I can talk to that live far beyond my Pennsylvania bubble.

This is not to say that technology does not have its downsides, as it can be very addictive to use social media every day, but when it is used properly, the pros tend to outweigh the cons. Technology is not a good resource to abuse, but it can be a great resource to connect ourselves with others.

Amid the recent outburst in mass shootings, President Biden has brought up the idea of the improvement of gun control in America. On
Tuesday, Mar. 23, the president addressed the recent grocery store shooting in Boulder, Colorado that took place the day before. In his short speech, President Biden proposed a reform on gun control that would ban assault rifles and high-capacity ammunition magazines.

This proposed reform comes after two mass shootings within the same week, the first being an attack in Georgia and the second being the grocery store shooting in Colorado.

“I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common sense steps that will save lives in the future and to urge my colleagues in the House and Senate to act,” said President Biden in his speech.

Less than a week after this address, President Biden announced that gun control was no longer his next priority, pivoting the public conversation to discuss infrastructure in a press briefing that took place on Thursday, Mar. 25.

This change in plans has received significant backlash from supporters of gun control who were already upset by President Biden’s lack of gun reform in January as part of his campaign promises.

President Biden’s involvement in gun reform dates back to the 1990’s when he assisted in the passing of the Brady Bill, which required background checks on most gun purchases as well as a temporary ban on sales of some military-style semi-automatic guns.

Throughout Biden’s political career, he worked on gun reform projects with varying degrees of success. While campaigning for president, one of Biden’s campaign promises was to send a bill to Congress that would repeal liability protections for gun manufacturers and close loopholes in background checks. This, however, did not come to fruition within Biden’s first few months of presidency, which is why this second change in plans has upset many of his supporters.

“I was very frustrated that he pivoted to infrastructure this week,” said Igor Volsky who founded Guns Down America. Guns Down America is one of many organizations who have been calling for Biden to prioritize gun reform in the United States.

In the past month, the House has passed two bills strengthening background checks during firearm purchases, one of which extended the amount of time the FBI has to complete background checks, potentially closing a loophole that previously allowed people to buy guns without background checks due to time concerns.

Even with the two newest bills, gun control activists are saying that it is not enough. The push for a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity ammunition magazines continues to put pressure on President Biden.

Sources: NPR, NYT, whitehouse.gov, Guns Down America.

Easter has always been one of my favorite holidays to spend with my family. Our traditions used to begin on Good Friday when we would color eggs at my church with my dad’s side of the family, followed by a church Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning. My church is rather small, so most of the attendees are my dad’s siblings and my cousins. Then on Sunday morning, we attend our regular church service. Easter has always been one of my favorite holidays to spend with my family. Our traditions used to begin on Good Friday when we would color eggs at my church with my dad’s side of the family, followed by a church Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning. My church is rather small, so most of the attendees are my dad’s siblings and my cousins. Then on Sunday morning, we attend our regular church service.

After Church, we spend the rest of the day at my maternal grandmother’s house, who always hosts a huge Easter celebration for my mom’s side of the family. My favorite part of our yearly Easter party is the Easter egg hunt that my cousins and I have. I have 8 cousins on this side of my family, and our ages range from 12-30, so we split the groups in half, with the younger cousins hiding eggs for the older cousins, and the older cousins hiding eggs for the younger cousins.

To keep things fair and to keep track of all of the eggs, we assign an equal number of eggs to each cousin, and the eggs are marked with our names. When hiding the eggs we are each assigned one cousin to hide eggs for, and can give specific hints when our assigned cousin needs help. The Easter egg hunt is a family wide event, where all of the aunts, uncles, and my nana pitch in to help the egg seekers on the hunt.

While I am sad we won’t be able to have our annual Easter egg hunt and Easter party this year. I am hopeful that by next year we are able to gather together again and continue with my favorite tradition once again.

Walking through Warner library, besides the focused studying students, there is one common theme that most in the library tend to have. Earbuds. Now, earbuds can play a multitude of roles in helping students study, but the most common use is for music.

For me personally, I find it almost impossible to study without having at least some form of background noise, and my go-to, like many others, is music. Even while writing this article, I have music playing through my speaker in my dorm room.

Music can be both beneficial and harmful for study habits, although there are more positive than negative aspects.

Beginning with the downsides, music can be very distracting to a studying student. While we may view music intake as just some background noise, our brain is still constantly processing the soundwaves coming from the music. Some music types are also more distracting than others, and some types of music are not recommended for studying at all. For example, anything loud and wordy may not be the best music to listen to if you are trying to focus on studying. The recommended study music, while genre is based on preference, has less words, and is played at lower volumes.

The Mozart effect theory is one of the most well known examples of how music can be beneficial while studying, but recent studies have shown that the theory may not have the same results it was once thought to have. The Mozart effect is the idea that listening to Mozart (or any other classical music) makes you smarter. This theory is based on the statistical aspect of music, and the idea that the complexity of classical music’s stimulating effect was what brought up test scores, but recent studies have shown that is not quite the case. The new theory, brought on by the “Blur effect” in the 1990’s shows that music just makes people happier. When being put in a happier mood, study habits are improved.

The Blur effect was a study conducted similarly to the Mozart effect, and it found that students had better study results when listening to music by a Pop band called Blur than with Mozart’s music. The cause of this was accredited solely to the fact that teens prefer pop music to classical music.

That being said, study music affects everyone differently, and its effectiveness varies from person to person, different personality types and different music tastes all play an important factor in what study music works best for the individual. Some people work better with no background music at all. It is really up to the individual to make the call as to what will and will not work well for themselves. Some studies have shown that extroverts have an easier time juggling music and study time, while introverts do better listening to calming and relaxing music, but again, everything varies from person to person.

One unfortunate statistic to study music, is that people have an easier time recalling information when in a similar environment to when the information was learned. For example if you learned anatomy while listening to an album by your favorite artist, then you’ll probably have an easier time remembering anatomy if you are listening to that same album. However, this is not very helpful, as when taking an exam, the room typically stays pretty quiet, so you can’t exactly pull up the album while taking a test, nor is your professor likely to play it. With COVID-19 allowing professors to assign online exams, this may be applicable, but in most other circumstances, it is not. One method similar to this that may be most possible is chewing gum. If you chew gum the same flavor you were chewing when studying, it may help your memory recollection the same way music would.

If you are thinking about using music to study, but don’t know where to start looking for what to listen to, start with your favorite genre. Almost every genre of music has lyricless versions that would be perfect for studying. Movie scores are also a good way to go, they can be a great way to know you’re listening to something that makes you happy without the commitment of watching your favorite movie, and it can be done while studying! Love Disney? Most Disney movies have voiceless scores that can be found on most music platforms. Like action movies? Try looking up your favorite movie’s score. Your options are limitless.

As college students, we have a responsibility twice a year to buy textbooks for all of our classes each semester. We all know too well the feeling of dread we have when we go to check out at the bookstore and see the final cost of our textbooks for the semester.

Believe it or not, textbook prices have gone down significantly in the past decade, and they keep getting lower thanks to new programs created by publishing companies such as McGraw Hill. In 2010, college students were averaging almost $700 on course materials yearly, while in 2020, the average college students spent about $413. This is about a 39% decline.

So why are textbooks so expensive in the first place? And how is it possible that we are spending less now than ever before on these textbooks?

“What people don’t understand is textbooks receive and require a lot more development to be published than a typical book.” Kent Peterson, Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer for the higher education division of McGraw Hill, explained. Textbooks require a tremendous amount of peer review from multiple instructors in the subject who provide feedback on the textbook. Textbooks also have a rather extensive visual program, such as visuals and photographs as well, all of which require copyright permissions from various sources, until finally all of the information can come together to form one textbook. Most of the textbook costs come from those copyright permissions and peer review compensation costs to make sure the textbook is factually correct.

McGraw Hill is a publication company that makes full service course material for K-12 and colleges. Most textbooks that Eastern uses are published by McGraw Hill. One important aspect about McGraw Hill is the company’s goal of making textbooks more accessible and available to more students by lowering costs and creating programs that benefit students, rather than making more money.

McGraw Hill is one of many companies trying to keep up with the ever changing market, and has come up with new ways to keep costs down for college students while still maintaining a profit. One of these ways is through a new system called inclusive access. Inclusive access is a model in which the publication company makes a deal with the university directly, and allows the institution to provide course materials to students as part of their overall tuition fees, rather than as a separate cost. This model allows the publication company to still make money and continue making textbooks available, while also making the material available to more students.

Peterson described many reasons as to why students may be spending less than ever on textbook materials, one of which being the newly introduced inclusive access model, although McGraw Hill only recently began using this model about 5 years ago, they already have inclusive access deals with over 1,300 colleges and universities across the country. Another reason Peterson gave for the decline in spending is the wider variety of purchasing options students have when purchasing textbooks. Rather than only having the option to buy a new textbook, students now have the ability to rent textbooks, buy used directly from the bookstore, or even purchase or rent ebooks.

These lower pricing options are “very good for everyone, lower prices mean more access to course materials” Peterson said, “we want to make sure all students have access to course materials… course materials have a direct impact on student learning and performance”

One thing Peterson emphasized is the benefits of online course materials, specifically a program called courseware. McGraw Hill has two separate courseware programs; Aleks, which focuses on Chemistry and Math, and McGraw Hill Connect, which covers all other subjects. Courseware has revolutionized the way textbooks are able to be used. It provides exercises for students to follow, and has been developed to identify where students are struggling and works to help specifically in the problem areas. This allows students to practice and learn on their own when a professor is not available.

With the one year mark of schools shutting down recently passing, Peterson reflected on how the pandemic affected McGraw Hill and what the company did to help students. “We made the decision to offer free access to our course materials and ebooks to instructors to finish the term. We provided over 4000 free courses to over 90,000 students who were able to finish their spring term” Peterson said. “This marked a massive transition from in person education to delivery of courses in a virtual format.”

I remember when I first downloaded TikTok. “It’s just a joke”, I thought to myself at the time, “I am not actually going to waste my time on this app.” If only I had known then how wrong I would be.

On a whim, my boyfriend and I downloaded TikTok together in July of 2019, just to make one joke video using a goofy filter to send to our friends. The plan was to make the one video and then we’d both delete the app. He did, but I still have it downloaded a year and a half later, slightly obsessed.

TikTok has been both a menace and a saving grace for my personal mental health. I open it when I am sad and it cheers me up, I open it when I am procrastinating, and it keeps me occupied for hours on end while the work I needed to get done stares longingly at me from
my computer.

TikTok has taught me a lot in the year and a half that I have been using it. It has become my number one source for news and information. It is how I found out about election results, national emergencies, and other important current events. (disclaimer, if you’re getting news from TikTok, please check your sources.)
TikTok also helped me through a lot of the pandemic. When the initial quarantine began, I got really sick with something that was not Covid, but still really sick, and could barely get out of bed. I spent those days laying in bed watching TikToks, using them as an escape not realizing how serious the pandemic was at the time. In January when I actually did have Covid, I did the same thing- I used TikTok as an escape to try and ignore the pain.

Years ago, when Vine, and then Musically were popular and still on the market, they were my favorite forms of social media. I have a rather short attention span, and the short funny videos were a great way for me to stay entertained, and not get bored. While in my personal opinion TikTok is not as good as its predecessors, it is the closest app on the market to them, and can be used in the same ways by the right people.

From dance videos, to meme videos, cooking videos, to my personal favorite, animal videos, and many more, TikTok dispenses content for everyone to enjoy. There are different “sides” of TikTok for everyone, and pretty much anyone can find a side of TikTok they enjoy. I can personally say I am not a huge fan of the dancing videos, but they almost never appear on my For You Page. Even when they do, it’s super easy to scroll past them and find something else that I actually enjoy.

If you are struggling to find TikToks that you find interesting, or that you want to watch, it is super easy to search for topics that you are interested in, and you will find plenty of creators that fit your niche. The app is incredibly versatile and relatively easy to navigate, which I think is why it is able to appeal to so many people.

While the app has been labeled as cringey by its skeptics, it really is not as bad as other social media apps have made it out to be, and it can be a great way for people of all ages and backgrounds to express themselves on one common ground.

Senior Krista Antenucci discovered her passion for music at a very young age. She began taking piano lessons at the age of five and then traded in piano for trumpet lessons in fourth grade.

Antenucci is a music composition major, her goal is to become a composer and to form her own brass quintet. After graduating from Eastern this May, she hopes to attend graduate school to expand on her ever evolving musical talents.

Even when she was little, Antenucci showed an eye for composition, rather than sitting down and playing random notes in no particular order, she would pick out specific notes and try to make her own melodies instead.

Antenucci has never stopped playing music, she even continues to play trumpet in Eastern’s wind ensemble, jazz band and orchestra.

She does not really know what inspired her to continue playing music. At one point, she just realized that it was one thing that she was really good at and that she truly enjoyed doing.

Like anyone, Antenucci does get overwhelmed from playing music all of the time, and has plenty of other hobbies to keep her busy in these tiny breaks from creating music. Even though it is her passion, it is also work for her, so she has other things to do during these breaks. Among these is painting, which she particularly likes to incorporate pride colors into her pieces. Antenucci also enjoys hiking and astronomy.

When it comes to listening to music, Antenucci mostly enjoys listening to the lesser known artists and composers, some of her favorite inspirations include Florence Price and Charles Alkin. She likes the underrepresented composers because they bring something new to the table and take leaps into multiple genres of music. Her favorite genre of music is modern classical music, for example music created within the past few decades rather than multiple centuries ago.

Antenucci enjoys the versatility of music, her favorite part about playing and creating music is that she is able to describe things without having to use words. “Music is a language but it is not a translatable language,” Antenucci said.

Antenucci considers her gender identity and expression to be a very important piece in her musical identity as well. “Tkaichovsky is a Russian, Holste being an English composer, music is an expression of myself and gender,” Antenucci stated.

Being a transgender woman on Eastern’s campus, Antenucci described how grateful she was in how supportive her surroundings were. Everyone she seemed to talk to were supportive and all of her professors respected her pronouns.

Antenucci wanted to bring attention to the severe lack of female composers in the music world. While there are plenty of female composers, many are overshadowed by the men in the field, some even by their own husbands or siblings, such as Fanny Mendelssohn and her older brother, Felix Mendelssohn, who overshadowed her.

While Antenucci has yet to experience misogyny in the field yet, it is still an active issue in the music composition world, and she is still new to the field. Compared to modern pop music and rock music, classical music is different and historically known as music for the rich and powerful. Antenucci points out that only during specific months, such as March’s Women’s History month and June’s Pride month, female and queer artists seem to get the recognition they deserve in the classical music world. Antenucci wants to be one of the composers to help change that, and celebrate these artists year round. She would like to see their music performed in concerts year round, rather than the same classical music that seems to be played at every concert.

Antenucci’s advice to herself, and anyone interested in music is to practice, practice, practice, to enjoy yourself and play music for yourself, not anyone else. “Making music and playing music is a revolutionary act,” Antenucci said.

When you think of Rock and Roll, where does your mind go? Sister Rosetta Tharpe is likely the last person you’ll think of. Her pop gospel jazz music was a precursor for the modern age of Rock and Roll we all know and love today.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe is known nowadays as the “Godmother of Rock N’ Roll” but did not receive her due credit until years after her death. Tharpe began playing guitar at the age of 4, and began performing with her mom at the age of 6. She would later be one of the first big musicians to popularize the electric guitar.

Tharpe’s career took off in 1938 in New York City, alongside her mother, when she was only 23 years old. She recorded her first album that year, and was an immediate success. The album featured her hit single “Rock Me” which was a fusion between gospel and rock music.

Later in Tharpe’s career, she eventually got to tour with her partner, Marie Knight, and together they toured as two queer black women in a relationship across the country. Tharpe broke boundaries, and challenged institutional racism and homophobia throughout her career. Tharpe is accredited for being an inspiration to many of the names that may come to mind when you think of Rock and Roll. Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and many more acknowledge Tharpes influence on their musical careers.

Toward the end of her music career, she quickly began being overshadowed by the white men in the rock and roll industry, and lived out the end of her days quietly in the suburbs of Philadelphia, before dying in 1973.

Despite Tharpes strong influence on modern day Rock and Roll, her accomplishments and trailblazing spirit was not fully acknowledged until 2018, almost 45 years after she died, when she was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. While she was celebrated by many in her time, she finally has been able to live on in our modern times by millions of people.

Sources:NPR, RockHall.com

Scroll to Top