The COVID-19 pandemic affected everyone no doubt–with people losing their jobs, half a million people lost their lives, and the school year being messed up. We’ve seen how the high schoolers feel about their classes, but let’s take a deeper look into how college students feel about their school year. Every college and university has a different set of rules and guidelines, but it seems pretty universal that everyone must wear masks and social distancing, and that can definitely take away from the college experience. We interviewed 5 college students to get a deeper understanding of how they feel about their college experience. 

——————————————————————————————————————————

Jake Spagnolli: Sophomore at University of Colorado Boulder

Q: How has Covid affected your college experience so far?

A: “No in-person classes have been very underwhelming. Communication and bonding with other students and professors is significantly reduced. All extracurricular events like football, clubs, and ski weekends aren’t happening. It’s all the hard work and struggles of college without a majority of the fun of college. College students need time to relax and decompress with all the work we do, and we don’t get that with covid.”

Q: Do you feel your campus is setting safe Covid guidelines?What concerns do you have?

A: “My campus has been great with COVID, and since I already had COVID I’m not as concerned. Plus, I haven’t really gone onto campus because it’s been closed for half the year and just reopened and has been very strict with covid guidelines.

Q: What has been the hardest part of college with the pandemic? 

A: “Back to my earlier point, right now college is all of the same workload without the same support structure and stress release systems. I work my [butt] off all week and don’t usually get to do a lot on the weekends.”

Q: How has COVID affected your grades, classes, and learning? Is it better or worse than previous semesters? 

A: “My grades are fine as always, but a lot of students are struggling without that support system they normally have. I do think I put in extra effort to make sure my grades stay up, but that’s just me and a lot of students don’t feel the same way. Some professors are understanding and some are not”

“ The college experience is significantly worse during COVID but so is everything else”

——————————————————————————————————————————

Raechel Lawrence: Sophomore at University Pittsburgh at Johnstown

Q: How has COVID affected your college experience so far?

A: “Badly, my typical college experience was stripped away, no more in person classes, no more college parties, casual hanging out with friends.”

Q: Do you feel your campus is setting safe COVID guidelines?What concerns do you have?

A: “Guidelines are being set but it’s hard to control impulsive teenagers/ young adults. My concerns are that students disobey these guidelines and socialize anyways, spreading the virus across the campus rapidly under the reasoning that they’re young and will recover from COVID.”  

Q: What has been the hardest part of college with the pandemic? 

A: “The hardest thing was not being able to socialize with friends on the weekends like usual and also not being able to talk to my professors in person and being so conscious of getting sick. I had to quarantine twince when my roommate and suitemate had covide which was really frustrating.”

Q: How has COVID affected your grades, classes, and learning? Is it better or worse than previous semesters? 

A: “My grades were negatively affected by covid at first with the rapid transition to strictly online schooling, and then i figured out the art of cheating but then the professors came up with new tactics to make it nearly impossible so now i actually have to pay attention and basically teach myself the topics, online semesters are worse than the previous ones.” 

——————————————————————————————————————————

Trisa Mckenzie: Senior at University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg

Q: How has COVID affected your college experience so far?

A: “COVID  has affected my college experience because since there are no longhold in person classes, the connection with peers and teachers has diminished.” 

Q: Do you feel your campus is setting safe COVID guidelines?What concerns do you have?

A: “Pitt Greensburg is setting safe guidelines because there are no in person classes for the students and teachers safety. I don’t really have too many concerns.” 

Q: What has been the hardest part of college with the pandemic? 

A: “The hardest part is adjusting to asynchronous learning. Since i did not choose to take classes this way it’s difficult to find motivation.”

Q: How has COVID affected your grades, classes, and learning? Is it better or worse than previous semesters? 

A: “COVID  has affected my learning in the worst way so my grades are going to be a reflection of that. I do what I can to make it through but these past semesters definitely have been way worse with being online. No available study groups with friends, limited office hours with professors, etc.”

_____________________________________________

Kylie Berko: Freshman at University Seton Hill

Q: How has COVID affected your college experience so far?

A: “COVID has made it difficult to interact with people because of all of the social distancing guidelines. it’s really upsetting to have to meet with people via Zoom all the time because i’m the type of person who needs in person interaction.”

Q: Do you feel your campus is setting safe COVID guidelines?What concerns do you have?

A: “My college is doing constant random surveillance testing which is nice to eliminate any possible asymptomatic cases. Professors are making proper accommodations for students who have to quarantine because they came in contact with someone or themselves contracted covid. classes via zoom are sometimes open all the time to any student and other times just the students who need to be out of class, all depending on the professor.”

Q: What has been the hardest part of college with the pandemic? 

A: “The hardest part of college is all of the specific rules we have to follow with wearing masks and distancing. I don’t ever recognize anyone around campus because I can’t see their face, and I’m really not supposed to be hanging out with people without wearing a mask. so i don’t hang out with many people to protect myself and others.”

Q: How has COVID affected your grades, classes, and learning? Is it better or worse than previous semesters? 

A: “COVID hasn’t really affected my grades too much. most of my work is turned in online, which doesn’t bother me too much since we did that with Google Classroom in high school. Since I am still allowed to have in person classes, I think that is why I haven’t had a problem. I know that if I had all of my classes online, I may actually see my grades suffer. class sizes are smaller than usual to meet the distancing guidelines, but that doesn’t bother me because i enjoy smaller classes to get more interaction in the class.”

——————————————————————————————————————————

Rachel Lundy: Sophomore at Duquesne University

Q: How has COVID affected your college experience so far?

A: “COVID has definitely affected my college experience in a negative way.  Zoom classes are not easy for anyone and professors seem to give more work. I have been a commuter to college since my freshman year of college to save money and now that all of my friends have no in person classes I only see one other friend I made my freshman year.  We have a group chat but it’s not the same as it was when we all could be together.”

Q: Do you feel your campus is setting safe COVID guidelines?What concerns do you have?

A: “I do believe that Duquesne is taking precautions and guidelines seriously. Greek-life activities and sports are being closely monitored and students had to be tested before returning to campus and now we are being tested every 2 weeks. The vaccine is also starting to be administered on campus for faculty and clinical students. No one is allowed on campus without a mask and we have to do daily health checks to make sure we are good to be in person for some classes.”

Q: What has been the hardest part of college with the pandemic? 

A: “The hardest part of college with the pandemic for me is definitely being at home and not face to face. I am definitely an in person learner and being behind a screen has really affected my attention span as well as how much information I am retaining in my classes.”

Q: How has COVID affected your grades, classes, and learning? Is it better or worse than previous semesters? 

A: “My classes I would say are the same level of difficulty, but being online and not in person makes it difficult to meet with professors if you have questions and emails sometimes don’t get answered in a timely fashion. It is very hard to keep track of readings and assignments for classes while managing when you have to be on Zoom versus in person. My grades really haven’t been much different, college is still difficult regardless. Like I said before my learning has definitely been a struggle because I don’t like being on zoom at all. There’s no participation in classes and it seems like no one wants to be on zoom either. College was difficult my first year pre-covid but after COVIDstarted. It definitely became even more difficult for me personally just because of my learning style, and not being able to ask questions freely, or see my friends I had made earlier in my experience.”