COVID-19 has been no easy feat for anyone in the world. Particularly with students, it has left a lot of uncertainty: what will happen with exams, group projects, and classes? When will students in their final year graduate? What will happen with student placements? With many aspects of our lives abruptly coming to a halt, there are many people who are affected due to the global pandemic.
For international students, it has been a bumpy ride. Being an exchange student myself, I have experienced a large amount of uncertainty and stress over the past few weeks, including making the decision of whether to go home to Scotland and be with my family or possibly be stuck over 3,000 miles away, in Toronto.
It came to a shock to me when Ryerson University announced they were moving all classes online, not because I thought it was a bad idea, but because it was so sudden and made things feel a lot more real. After the announcement, I spent 48 hours battling out in my head whether I should stay or go. Every hour my decision would change, and in the end, I just wanted someone to tell me what the right thing was to do.
Eventually I made the right decision to go home and be with my family, which meant uprooting the life I had made for myself in Toronto in just 2 days, including many goodbyes to life-long friend’s I had made, some that I didn’t even get the chance to make.
I am certainly not the only one that has experienced such hardships during this time, with many other international students having to do the exact same, all around the world.
Charmaine Tan, a second-year exchange student studying at Ryerson, is from Singapore. Being over 9,000 miles away from her family, the decision for her to return home was also not an easy one.
“It was mainly when the friend that I was on homestay with decided to return home early as most of her classes could already be completed online. Both her and her parents wanted her to go back so she booked a flight for the next day,” says Tan. “This sudden move made me consider the idea and eventually fly home too because I didn’t want to be in the homestay alone.”
“Before this, we both had already been hearing about our school doing prompt recalls for the South Korean exchange students and were worried about when they would do the same for North America since we already suspected cases to increase soon,” she says. “So, I guess we made the proactive move. The school issued the recall on the day I flew home anyway so I guess it was the right decision.”
India de Wolf, a third-year international student studying business management at Ryerson, is from England. Her thought process was similar to Tan’s in the way that she was weighing out the pros and cons of returning home. After losing her job, she agreed with her family that the best option would be to go home.
“I literally booked my flights on the Sunday after Ryerson announced classes were going online, she says.” de Wolf booked her flight for that Tuesday. “And on Monday I got an email from my [home] university in bold, basically saying ‘you have to come home.’”
For the most part, the main positive for all international students who made the decision to go home is that they get to spend these uncertain times with their family.
Nina Saup, a professional communication student from Germany, was carrying out her final semester at Ryerson. She described some of the positives of going home and the consequences international students could potentially face if deciding to stay abroad.
“One benefit from going home is definitely that I am just at home with my family if something happens, which I hope it doesn’t,” says Saup. “For example, my mum’s uncle died really suddenly, and he also had Coronavirus, but his daughter is in Poland right now so it’s just really hard for her to even come to Germany during those times.”
“It is quite weird in times like this because you’re with your family but then if something were to really happen, you’re not even allowed to go to the hospital anymore,” she says. “But I feel like it’s still a better feeling, knowing that you’re at least in the same country as your loved ones.”
The internet is the sole reason as to why many universities and businesses can still run during the pandemic, making it a safe and efficient way for people to still carry on their daily lives, only now from home. For Ryerson, online classes have been an extremely effective way for students to follow through with their courses and gain the credits they need. While this makes the option to go home for international students easier, it isn’t the most efficient way for those who live in different time zones to carry out their education.
For Tan in particular, who is 12 hours behind EST, it means that a lot of her classes are held during the early hours of the morning. “So far, I’ve attended two classes that were from 1-4 a.m. and 3-6 a.m.,” she says. Tan says while this is inconvenient, she’ll be able to make do. “I just have to endure this for 2-3 more weeks and it will be all good.”
Similarly, for Saup, whose country is 5 hours ahead of EST, she is finding the time difference strange to cope with.
“It is pretty weird to be honest,” says Saup. “I have to start all my assignments in the evening and I’m more likely to forget about it. One of my courses left it up to us when we fulfil each task of the week so I sometimes forget.”
For others, however, the time difference doesn’t really affect them and is actually a bonus.
“For me, the time difference is 5 hours,” says de Wolf. “I’ve been fine because I don’t have to stay up for any webinars or anything.” One of de Wolf’s exams is at 2:00 EST, meaning she wll have the entire day to study.
Despite the logistics of international student’s studies, it is important to recognise, in terms of mental health, the severe amount of stress that they have had to endure during the past weeks and some of the emotions they have been feeling throughout the process.
Tan has felt a number of emotions after returning two months early from her exchange, including shock, anxiousness, and worry.
“While I am one of the lucky few that did most of the travelling in the beginning of the semester, that also thankfully started early in 2020, I had only just begun to really immerse myself in the community here in Ryerson and Toronto, making friends and new plans, so I also feel quite sad and regretful that I have had to part ways as soon as I made my move to say hello,” she says. “While the situation obviously doesn’t allow it, I definitely would have liked to stay for at least a month more to follow up on meetings with friendships in and outside of school.”
Others weren’t as lucky to have gotten the chance to travel. I know that for myself, I put my course work above travelling during the first few months, due to the fact that the grades I got were going towards my final degree. I thought I had left plenty of time at the end of my exchange in Toronto to travel, as I had planned to stay in Canada until early June.
While my stay was only a semester, de Wolf had been in Canada for the full academic year and also had a similar mindset about her travel plans. “I definitely felt weird about having to go home early,” said de Wolf.
“I was planning to travel around Canada and not come back until June, so I guess it’s weird because coming home and not really having stuff to do after university work is done is very strange,” she says. “I guess it’s bittersweet. It’s nice to be home and feel safe, I guess safer than sorry but obviously so sad that it just ended so abruptly and because I was there since September I took advantage of that and I thought ‘Oh, I’ve got so long to do everything’ and then ended up not doing stuff that I really wanted to do.”
The thought of leaving newly made friends was also a hardship on all of the international students.
“It honestly felt pretty weird having to leave this sudden,” says Saup. “I barely had any time to actually prepare to leave Toronto and there were still so many things I wanted to see before leaving this city and also Canada in general. It was also sad to say goodbye to everyone without having the opportunity to go out once again or just have a big farewell party.”
Amongst all the uncertainty, communication between international students and their host university was vital. The girls had differing views on how Ryerson had accommodated them through this stressful period.
“Ryerson has been really good actually,” says de Wolf. “They’ve been sending emails quite a lot and they asked us to let them know what their plan was, so I let them know. There’s obviously not a lot they can do now so all they can do is wish us the best and make sure everyone gets home safe.”
“I think the best thing they have been is just honest about the situation, I don’t think they have tried to sugar-coat it and make it seem less bad than it is, especially in a country where there weren’t even that many cases at the time,” de Wolf says. “I know that they said that if your residence is closing that they’ll help find you somewhere else to live as well.”
Saup shared similar thoughts, “Ryerson was really trying its best to make it as easy as possible for myself to go home and not feeling like I would have to stay to complete my courses,” she says. “I feel like they’re very focused on letting students know that they can always contact them no matter what issue which I think is really nice.”
However, not all international students felt the same way.
“Ryerson has not accommodated me much,” says Tan. “They sent out an email regarding support services that are essentially available to all Ryerson students, but there hasn’t been much accommodation for the time difference and long live lessons/lectures that we have to sit through”
“They could have afforded to forewarn the international students better so we could have enough time to make our own informed decisions. I think that it was only in the thick of it that Ryerson started to react,” says Tan.
Personally, I feel the biggest support has come from individual lecturers, in my case. Many have been prepared to push deadlines back due to my particular situation and have kept in communication with me to ensure that I have returned home safely and fully understand the course work needed to be done in order to complete my courses. This is something that I’m sure all students at Ryerson have appreciated during this time, as lecturers and professors will also be under a great deal of pressure at the moment, so them actively checking on students and making an effort is something that does not go unnoticed.
As COVID-19 is a new and unprecedented illness, countries around the globe have had different responses in terms of their government’s advice. Therefore, how have universities across the world responded to the global pandemic?
For British Universities, their reaction was more of a delayed response in comparison to Ryerson’s.
“My University shut down slightly after Ryerson,” said de Wolf, an English student. “So similar, but delayed.”
However, de Wolf says her home university was more on-it when it came to ensuring the safety and academics of international students. “I think Universities in England were trying to hold out until the Easter period that you have off and then go online from then, but they did it earlier, so all British Universities are all closed now.”
However, in Singapore, the reaction from universities was much more prompt than Ryerson’s.
“My home university was much faster to prepare us and were more on the ball in regard to reassuring students with their presence,” says Tan. “Prior to the recall, they had already been asking us for travel declarations for record keeping purposes, and the recall itself was accompanied with a recall officer for every student to ensure that they had safe flights to return home with and were following all the protocol with regards to social distancing upon arrival.”
Tan says Ryerson’s guidance was much more feeble, and that they should have aided international students to a much greater degree.
Still, universities in Germany have had a completely different approach.
“My home University reacted to the pandemic by postponing the start of the semester by a month,” said Saup. “Luckily all students had their semester break during this time. But I feel like all this is going to take way longer than an extra month so I feel like they will need to eventually come up with another option such as online classes or something, similarly to Ryerson.”
Despite their time coming to a premature end, international students at Ryerson were still lucky enough to gain a lot of worth from studying at the university in Toronto.
“I absolutely loved my time at Ryerson,” says de Wolf. “I think the way that the classes were structured meant that although it’s hard work you still have time to see people and make friends and group work meant that you could meet lots of Canadians, which was nice.”
“I was a bit worried that I’d made a really rash decision coming home and that it was the wrong one and I was frightened I was going to regret it, but I think now I feel a bit more calm in the way that I know I have made the right decision,” she says.
Saup says despite how her exchange ended, she still had many positive experiences. “For example, doing my own thing without really relying on anyone else, trying out different courses to the ones we have at our home university, and I got to know so many great people.”
Tan shared a similar sentiment, and enjoyed spending her time abroad. “It was also definitely a period of self-growth and reflection,” she says. “Amidst the whole ordeal however, I guess it just shows me that you never know what will happen tomorrow and you should always live to the fullest every day, to make the most out of essentially borrowed time.”