By The Class of 2023 will be the last class to graduate with a pre-COVID college experience, even if it was short-lived. With the pandemic starting in March of 2020, many upperclassmen were college freshmen and high school seniors when the world shut down.
No path was easy in the face of a pandemic that permanently changed the lives of every individual in the modern world, but college students were hit in a unique way.
“I was one of the last out-of-state people to leave,” said Brady Clark, a senior from Madison, Wisconsin, majoring in history and Spanish. “The pandemic seemed distant until I headed home, where on the plane there were less than 10 people aboard. I spent the next three months in my room, that’s when the gravity of the pandemic hit.”
Carroll’s quick shutdown in March 2020 was followed by a rapid transition from in-person education to Zoom meetings. Then, the college completely overhauled how every class would finish the semester and what the following year would look like.
Like all things during the pandemic, the show had to go on regardless of the struggles.
Though some universities stayed online for the 2020 fall semester, Carroll worked hard to bring the students back to campus.
“Carroll did its best to put us at ease but young people had a really rough go, and a lot of us are still recovering,” said Alex Coulter, a senior from Whitefish, Montana, majoring in political science. “Throwing COVID at us when we are already in college, a tough time in our lives, seemed like a cruel joke.”
The steps that were taken to get students back on campus included two-week contact quarantines, contactless meals, closure of all community areas, mask usage in classes, and learning through a computer screen. Student events were infrequent and held at a distance.
Professors found it difficult to connect with students behind a screen or without seeing half of their faces. Students found it hard to be involved in class time through a screen or when their morale was at an all-time low.
The gap between the administration was widened, and the relationship between the administration and the students was strained.
“I have a fairly personal style of teaching, when I taught online in the fall of 2020, I lost 60% of my connection to my students. They were getting less out of the course and I was getting less of a connection with them,” said Brent Northup, chair of the Communications Department.
For the new freshmen, the college experience many students expected was nowhere to be found. For the seniors and juniors–who had tasted a semester of pre-COVID college–it longed for normalcy.
The fall 2020 semester was full of struggle and times of uncertainty.
“We were all around our friend while he had covid because he wasn’t moved due to a mistake in the system after the school was notified,” said Gannon Flynn, a junior from Spokane, Washington, majoring in engineering. “After that, half the floor was put in quarantine for two weeks where no one else tested positive. Despite not getting COVID the quarantine was still a difficult two weeks due to attending class online and the isolation.”
Fortunately, the vaccine was released the following semester, allowing the suffocating restrictions to be loosened. Even so, Carroll suffered through outbreaks in spring and fall, with quarantine rooms being pushed to the brim, oftentimes overflowing to the point where some people were told to remain in their rooms on halls with other students.
With a rough start to their college experience, the 2021-2022 calendar year sparked optimism for today’s juniors and seniors.
The year had decreased quarantine times, moving away from contact quarantines, and inching towards only quarantining positive tests in the few rooms available. Fewer students were locked in dorm rooms and the post-COVID sun began to shine on the horizon.
But even when classes went back in person there were still issues.
“It was different but manageable,” said Melissa Jagelski, a junior from Ontario, Oregon, majoring in political science. “We were required to wear masks and social distance in the classroom. This impacted my learning ability and my relationships with my peers. I knew it was for our safety, so it was a bittersweet experience.”
It wasn’t until the second semester that the mask mandate was lifted. Almost every class was back in person and taught with the intricacies of human interaction.
Today, many don’t think about COVID most days, but subconsciously, it finds its way into the stories that we tell of our time in college. I find myself telling more stories about the previous two semesters than any other time period in college. Only once we returned to normalcy did we find a world where we could make the memories we were always looking for when we entered college.
“I have many fond memories of the two years when COVID hit the hardest,” said Vicente Gallardo, a senior from Butte, majoring in international relations and political science. “But I can’t shake the feeling that I would have had a more fulfilling college experience without it.”
Students have faced the uphill battle of an unprecedented opponent, but many are glad to be out the other end. Many consider themselves better from experience.
“I’ll never forget having to go home early in that spring semester, it left everything feeling so incomplete,” Gallardo said. “The first year of my college experience lacked a conclusion.”
Some students faced extended quarantines that cut months of their college experience.
“My sophomore year, I spent almost two whole months in quarantine,” said Roisin O’Neill, a senior from Lake Oswego, Oregon, majoring in political science. “It made my academic stress much worse as zoom classes and the monotony of the days made focusing much more challenging.”
“COVID mostly affected my experience as a freshman in the 2020-2021 school year,” Jagelski said. “Orientation was canceled, we couldn’t enter each other’s dorm rooms, and we were masked and distanced wherever we went. It all worked out in the end, but I can’t help but think about the relationships I missed out on due to the pandemic.”
