The rush of excitement following the realization that you’ve gotten into university or college feels like the cherry on top of your youth and the starting line of adulthood. In March 2020, I was over the moon about getting into my dream program of Journalism at Ryerson University. In the middle of bustling downtown Toronto, it would have been a complete juxtaposition from everything I had grown up around in my suburban neighbourhood in Mississauga. A few weeks later, we had gone into a temporary lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which quickly turned into a year-and-a-half of life progressing virtually.
Now, in fall of 2021, I’m finally joining the thousands of second-year students in Ontario who are stepping foot onto campus. I spoke with two students going into their second-year to get an idea of how they’re feeling about making their way on campus again, or for the very first time.
Second-year student Celina Mercado is also currently going into her final year of Advertising and Graphic Design at Humber College. She was set to graduate in 2020, but found online school challenging and decided to take a break from the semester to continue in the following year.
“I definitely feel like I missed out on a lot of learning”, Mercado said. “Once the program switched to online, I was having a lot of trouble completing projects and assignments because I didn’t really know how to work the software on my own.”
Mercado’s entire program is heavily based on computers, and with online learning, she couldn’t use any of the campus technology and had to invest in her own software. With limited in-person classes planned, I asked her if she feels distraught about the few in-person experiences she’ll have. She said she appreciates the slow reintegration back to in-person life.
“This whole time the pandemic has been happening, I’ve been so confused and unsure about where my life was going”, she said. “Things are picking up and it makes me feel a lot better, it gives me hope that we’ll be out of this pandemic soon.”
Deprived of on-campus interactions, Mercado is making friends in group chats and through Twitter, but as we regroup in-person, she’s noticed a loss in her energy.
“I feel like my social battery gets drained so much faster. I don’t have the energy to stay out as long as I used to. I find that I don’t like doing multiple things in a day or seeing too many people, I just feel exhausted”, she said.
Arooj Arif feels similar. She is a second-year student at Ryerson University studying Early Childhood Studies, and she says that the pandemic has definitely affected her way of socialization. Arif chose to do hybrid learning to meet new people and cater to her extroverted personality, but after spending so much time online, she told me she feels extremely nervous to meet new people.
“I was really looking forward to Frosh because that’s an opportunity to meet people in your program so I missed out on that”, she said. Although she has made friends online, she says it’s definitely not the same.
Arif’s hopeful that in-person on-campus events will commence and she’ll get to experience more in-person classes. “I hated Zoom because it never felt right, but now that I’m in class, I feel like I’m more motivated; working around others motivates me in a way.”
I found that although second-year students are excited about coming to campus, they’re still riddled with feelings of anxiousness and uncertainty, which I can certainly relate to. Meeting new people, commuting, moving out and going to in-person events is a luxury we are slowly transitioning into and appreciating a lot more. With every change, it’s inevitable to carry feelings of nervousness, but there’s so much to look forward to––and hopefully everyone can return to campus soon, safely and entirely.