Honestly, just as you would expect, Eva O’Leary’s Time Magazine article “As Colleges Open During a Pandemic, Student Life Remains Closed” captures the life of a college student and its challenges and setbacks during the coronavirus pandemic. While I was reading the article and looking at O’Leary’s photos and what each student had to say, I noticed that I have had pretty much the same experience as they all had. Here are a few images I particularly felt connected to and what I felt when I saw them and their captions:
Here is the first image of O’Leary’s article which is of a freshman like me who says “we’re gonna take anything we can get at this point” after leaving high school. I can remember feeling this exact way after graduating. Even with my dad encouraging me to reevaluate my choice of moving to campus while being online, I just wanted some freedom like Esther (the girl in the image) said. Like it was for most people, quarantine was really hard on me mentally, and I felt like I needed a change even if it was not gonna be much different. Her last comment was that “It’s just a hard transition because everything is unknown.” Going to college for the first time in the middle of a pandemic was way different than I had imagined going to college and I hope no one else in the future is going to have as hard of a transition as freshman did this year.
The next image I related to was of sophomore Inayah Johnson. She spoke about the difficulty she faced in online learning as a “hands on learner.” I, too, have always felt I was a hands on learner and so online school has not been as beneficial to me as in person would have been. I am sure many fellow students feel the same way. She said, “learning through the screen isn’t really that helpful” and I feel the same way. I understand that this is how things had to be to keep moving forward, but I just feel like I am going through the motions of school and not actually learning. Just mindlessly checking off boxes in a way, sadly.
My final image I would like to talk about is of senior Kaleigh Quinnan. With this one I felt I related more to the image than to her comment. As you can see, Kaleigh is sitting on her bed in a dark room, staring off at something not in the shot. But the way she is staring makes me think she’s not actually looking but deep in thought. The look on her face just made me think of how I felt while on campus: trapped and depressed. There really was not much to do on campus and with all online classes I rarely left my dorm room, I mean there really was no where to go. This feeling like I was stuck and the difficulty to make friends because of it, made my mental heath get bad again and the look on Kaleigh’s face just takes me back to that time on campus, just stuck.
I enjoyed reading this article, I think it is a good way for those who have kids or even just friends in college to get an idea of how it has affected college students too. Covid has been hard on everyone, although in different ways, and I think that is important for our communities to understand.
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