College vs. COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic has put a pause to many aspects of everyday life. From schools introducing online learning as a substitute to keep students safe to major unemployment rates, the current children and young adults in the 21st century have missed out on many important parts of life. The spike of cases in early 2020 led to two weeks off school, which quickly continued to lengthen while the world attempted to control and limit this invasive disease. During the summer of 2020, COVID-19 rates reached a height of about 58,000 new cases, and during early January, over 300,000 new cases in the United States. Little did we know that a year and a half later, we would still be fighting. 

College is the beginning of your adult life. Living on your own (finally), learning about what interests you, creating new social circles in a new environment—no wonder everyone says it's the best 4 years of your life. But the change is not exempt from difficulties. Moving to a new place with entirely new people can’t be easy, especially the transition from living with your parents and being taken care of to being dropped off and on your own to practically start a new life. Not to mention making friends is difficult enough as it is, but the new environment would add another edge of insecurity. This change can be hard. Additionally, having to go through it with a pandemic creating all kinds of new restrictions on living situations, social life, and academics. 

Galloway alumni Dylan Danckert, my boyfriend and a sophomore and film major at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), went through part of his senior year of high school and his freshman year of college with these drastic changes created by the pandemic. As a freshman in 2020, he and many others were caught in the middle of this very unfortunate time. The very unpredictable regulations which were forced on him and all other college students around the country left something to be desired. Though it was intended for the safety of all students, these new rules changed a lot about his college experience in his first two years. 

Everything that people expect college to be is built up through childhood. We grow up hearing stories from friends and family, and creating an image of what college should be in our minds. This was immediately changed for Dylan when he arrived at SCAD. COVID-19 affected every aspect of his expectations. It changed his social life completely, which is one of the largest aspects of college life. They couldn’t have roommates, meaning he had to spend most of his time in his dorm for classes, and they couldn’t go into other peoples’ dorms, which put a strain on creating friendships, though Dylan said that he was actually grateful to have his own space. This seemed like a benefit for him in the midst of all of the downsides to COVID-19 precautions—he didn't have to worry about living with other people and it made the transition from home easier because it was relaxing to have his own space. From the academic perspective, students were required to go online for the entirety of the 2020-21 school year, which created the issue of a lack of teacher-student relationships and communication, which made it difficult to get the help that teachers could provide in person. Dylan says that it felt like high school all over again, being on zoom, and because of this he felt that he didn’t actually learn anything in his first 3 quarters. 

With online school, as I’m sure we all agree, attending classes felt much less necessary. Dylan felt the same way. That first year, he ended up skipping a lot of classes because of that feeling of lack of necessity, and same for homework. “I ended up just waking up at 8am to log on to zoom for 2 hours and just ignore it. I didn’t actually learn anything, so it felt unnecessary to even go.” Because of these struggles freshman year, it felt wasted. He said that there was a lack of motivation his freshman year, leading him to feel ill prepared for his sophomore year. In the first semester of sophomore year, some classes became optional to attend online or in person. And after that last stretch of COVID weirdness, finally, for his second semester of sophomore year, Dylan can finally return to full in-person classes. When looking back on his freshman year in college and senior year in high school, he stated that “I feel like we all have to learn what college is all about in our second year rather than freshman year, and now we only have 2 full years left. The whole experience feels rushed, like I got cheated out of a whole year of what is supposed to be the most fun era of my life.” He also says that he never felt like he got any sort of closure from high school—the class of 2020 didn’t get prom, homecoming, or any sort of graduation, or any of the year long fun things that seniors get to experience. To him, because of online school and quarantine, it felt like he never finished high school and simply continued it in a different place. 

But now, finally, with his second semester looming, Dylan feels that he will finally get to start his college life and experience all that he has been expecting. He described to me that if COVID-19 hadn’t impacted his life in the way it did, he would have made more connections in his field, actually learned in school, and would have been working towards his goals the way he is able to now. The pandemic delayed the things he wanted to achieve, both in school and outside, and he stated that without the pandemic, he would have been ‘starting [his] life sooner.’ With the buildup of energy and drive from being essentially stuck in a dorm for the majority of his freshman year of college, Dylan has begun to work towards everything that the pandemic kept him from accomplishing. With restraints being lifted and life beginning to go back to normal, there are many more opportunities for the college students who missed out on two years of their lives, as well as everyone else in the world, to work towards their dreams.