As I walk across campus, carrying books and sipping coffee, it’s sometimes hard to grasp the fact that I am in my junior year of college. It feels like just yesterday that I was beginning my freshman year, a bundle of nerves and excitement. The pandemic completely changed my college experience, and I didn’t fully understand how much until I was back on campus.
I lived in the dorms my freshman year, wanting the full ‘college experience’ that everyone spoke so highly of. I heard stories of late-night cramming in the lounge, midnight snack trips with roommates, and the feeling of truly being a university student. I was at a difficult point in my life, and I prayed that it would all turn out well. I was lucky enough to be blessed with wonderful experiences that first semester. My roommates quickly became my best friends, and although college was tiring and stressful, I found myself falling in love with it almost immediately. It felt like a new chapter in my life, and I was excited to see where it would take me. Yet just as my roommates and I started making plans for our sophomore year, the world shut down.
The pandemic was difficult for me, as it was for everyone. I was scared for the health of my loved ones and myself, and it sent me into a spiral of anxiety from being stuck in my home day after day. My mental health plummeted and as I entered my sophomore year virtually, it didn’t feel like I was a college student anymore. Every day felt like simply going through the motions. I talked to my friends over the phone, studied hard, and tried taking part in some of the virtual events being held. However, not physically being around my friends and peers made it hard for me to fully enjoy it.
Coming back onto campus, I sometimes still feel like a freshman. I am a junior, halfway done with my college career, and my brain doesn’t feel like it, still frozen in March of 2020. However, after just a few weeks of being back on campus, everything is starting to feel normal again. One of the most important things, I have discovered, is getting back into a solid routine — and not just a routine of pajamas, Netflix, and TikTok anymore. I get up each day, walk to my classes, go to work, do my grocery shopping, and every night I feel like I actually accomplished something that day.
There have been difficulties that came with transitioning back to in-person learning. Honestly, physically getting up to go to class everyday is sometimes harder than I remember. The first night after moving into our apartment, my roommates and I all realized that we forgot how to socialize with other people. After spending a year and a half at home, none of us felt like the same people anymore. Slowly, we are all remembering how to be humans again. Every time I make chit-chat with a classmate or hear the whole class laugh at a joke our professor made, I am reminded just how wonderful being around other people is. As an introvert, I never thought I’d say that.
It’s hard to think that I blinked and am suddenly a junior. This pandemic has taught me just how precious time is, and that it’s important to not waste it. Mentally, I’m in a better place than I was as a freshman, and that’s why I’m so ready to return back to college life. I’m ready to feel like a college student again, and I’m loving returning to this life already.