Completing College in a COVID-19 World

College students are facing an unprecedented amount of stress due to a shift to online learning across the board. As a senior at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, I see not only myself but my cohort losing faith in the quality of their education by the day. Office hours for professors have been regulated to Zoom calls. Lessons are pre-recorded. Mentorship is through email. The sense of learning is dulled by a lack of in-person teaching.

The professors are trying their hardest to produce quality education despite the barriers, but there is no substitute for in-class learning. The first few weeks of online learning were rough around the edges, but everyone seemed to adjust as needed. We were determined to continue the momentum we had before spring break.

 As the weeks passed, the Zoom calls included fewer and fewer students. Soon enough, my classes consisted of live online class times where only one or two students attended. Now, I see only my professor’s camera when I watch the lecture the next day.

There is no urgency left in the semester for a lot of students. How could there be when assignment #12 feels a lot less important than continuing the job hunt? In many ways, school all feels like homework. Not in the traditional sense, but in terms of it feeling menial to the larger issues at play.

Most students have gone back to their respective homes. A select amount have requested to stay on campus. The usual bustle of the university is replaced with a somber ritual where students collect their meals to go from the cafeteria that remains open and consider interaction with each other strange and inappropriate. University life has effectively quit being a community and started feeling like a hideout.

Yet, this is where we Stay at Home. We are Safer at Home here. This is to say that some students on campus had no choice but to request to stay. As a Resident Assistant at my university, it was difficult for me to ask my residents weeks ago what reason is barring them from returning home. Those conversations only begged the question: what really is a home?

To live, learn and plan for the future within the same walls is a taxing practice. The office space is my laptop. I cook 10 feet away from where I work on my internship. I’m packing to leave school in the same place I grew to know as home long since the pandemic began. There are multitudes of mindsets that I assume within my humble dorm and they all congeal together whether I want them to or not.

As a senior, I have come to terms with the lack of commemoration I’ll be having. I have accepted that I’ll never see some of my cohorts again. The pangs of nostalgia that should fill the last few weeks of my collegiate career are replaced with sadness. In many ways, the last portion of my senior year feels less like a celebration and more like a death. I think that for a lot of us, the prospect of a good senior year has been spoiled months ago. The only thing we might want now is a little bit of empathy.

The senior year class of 2020 is looking to enter the most bone-dry job markets in recent memory. Internships are postponed and jobs in our field are scarce. “It’s all up in the air,” is the single most used phrase I hear from my peers when talking about post-grad living. Perhaps this mental strain is part of entering “the real world” that our public school teachers warned us about. Perhaps the loss of control is the adult experience we all were so naive to rush to when we were 15.

Even if this is the case, I trust the class of 2020. As college students, we are no strangers to improvisation and rough living. We are resilient and we are ready to not be ready. With everyone else wishing for a return to normalcy, students across the world will continue doing what they have always done: tackle whatever may pop up and block our path next.

Hector Salas is a graduating senior at Colorado Mesa University and has been an intern with Spoke+Blossom Magazine. Check out his most recent creative project.