By now, most people are back at school and slowly getting into the academic year, except this time, it’s in-person. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all of us were stuck at home for nearly a year quarantining in order to slow the spread. Many students ended half a school year and then continued online school – a whole year and a half online. This transition was a great one, people struggled to focus on academics from home for various reasons. I found it hard to listen to my professors when everything in my room distracted me. The simple actions of muting myself and not being on the camera caused poor habits of getting distracted and not paying attention to go out of control. All students at this time know this feeling, but as a person within the graduating class of 2020, I feel a different level of this when the pandemic and the shift to online school occurred. I was in the beginning stage of transitioning from high school to college and oh my, it was pretty rough.
It was not easy for anyone transitioning from in-person school, seeing friends daily and teachers actively making sure you pay attention in class, to online school, with no one but yourself at home and a screen full of black boxes with your classmates’ names. As a graduate of 2020, I started my college experience lonely in my dorm, where not only was I living by myself, but with little to no interaction with others. The campus was always quiet and the chance of seeing other people walking by was very unlikely. I thank my school for being as cautious as they were since our percentage of people getting COVID on campus stayed low. But now as a second year, I feel thrown off, as the “college experience” I had for my first year, is nothing like that of the beginning of my second year as my college has decided to bring back most of its students, with the majority of us vaccinated, to a hybrid system, with many more in-person classes now.
Granted everyone still wears masks and social distancing is still encouraged, more people are on campus, and some classes have returned to in-person. It feels strange to be “back” to the environment that I never truly experienced in its entirety. I find myself not only in awe but also anxious about the lifestyle that I have yet to establish. I have seen many people my age on social media dropping out of college, as the drastic shift to in-person college is just too much to handle. I feel for them wholeheartedly, as I myself feel the shift is difficult – the expectations and workload in college are much different than when we were in high school.
Granted, amongst all of this negativity, I am happy to finally be experiencing college like I was meant to, the campus is lively and I feel much safer knowing many of the students here are vaccinated. I’m excited to jump into the real college experience and slowly but surely, it feels like we are finally moving away from the scary pandemic and back to a somewhat normal life.
