I think like most college students, coming out of the pandemic was no easy feat. The pressure of knowing we all would have to socialize again was a mixture of excitement and anxiety. Now that we are all back on St. John’s campus, half of us are going through the uncomfortable transition of trying to make new friends. After spending nearly two years in our rooms I too will say, it is pretty hard.
If you are anything like myself you also hide behind social media platforms such as Tik Tok or even Instagram. You purposely search up other students with the SJU tag in their bios and hope to connect in person soon. However, now that the “soon” has arrived and we are finally in person, the unwelcoming mask and scrunching of the eyebrows makes it that much harder to speak. For most of us, we have the social anxiety of if they are the actual person we followed on social media due to the mask, or if they would even want to talk in person. I believe all of us can admit that the nervousness of knowing when to talk or not can be so overwhelming. Campus life has been so lively with everyone having their distinct friend groups, but some new students haven’t made their connections yet.
Although college can seem extremely intimidating, I believe that St. John’s activities board does its best to get us all talking and mingling whether that’s at the activities fair, or yoga on the lawn. Post pandemic life has been full of second-guessing and a weird feeling of misplacement, but when we all admit to those feelings, I believe we can truly have that university experience we all hoped to tell our children about. As a sophomore myself, I feel like I am playing catch up due to my freshman year being held remotely in my house. Now I have the pressure of excelling academically, networking, making friends, and joining clubs. Fortunately enough, we are in the fifth week of school so we are making progress and finally getting the hang of it. By the second semester, we all could have our established friend groups, majors, possible minors, and our favorite organizations. If college post-pandemic life hasn’t been so fun thus far, please don’t give up! We have only just begun!