This article really spoke to me because I experienced everything the author wrote about. The whole first semester, I lived in fear. I rarely left my dorm room, I never interacted with new people, I would spend a lot of time outside rather than inside. I did not want to get Covid and I was very serious with my actions so I would not get sick. It upset me though because while I was living in fear many other freshman were living like the pandemic did not exist. I remember the night when the big gathering happened at East. It was the day my roommate and I moved in, we were sitting on the floor of our dorm talking and scrolling through social media when we saw the videos. We both immediately started to cry because we were not even on campus for a full day yet and people were already showing no care for the pandemic. We thought for sure we would be sent home after that. However, we were not and continued to live the next three months in fear.

One day, we saw two girls playing cards outside on the lawn of west. We walked up to them and asked if we could play too, trying to make friends. We played cards for hours. Two days later one of the girls messaged us to tell us she tested positive for Covid. Terrified, my roommate and I left campus and stayed in the basement of her house in Harrisburg for a week until we got our off campus negative test results back. As an out of state student, I was scared to stay in an isolation room alone, so I was very grateful that my roommate took me with her. Again, it was very frustrating doing what we could to control our actions and yet, other students ruining it for us.

The image from the article of Kaleigh Quinnan spoke to me the most. It shows just how depressed we as students got having to stay in our dorm rooms alone. For me, it shows the exhaustion I experienced from worrying about Covid and the actions of my fellow students. I literally would spend hours in my dorm, some days I would not even go outside. This picture captures everything I felt while living on campus. All the pictures of students wearing masks also spoke to me. These images made me realize that I had only seen very few faces while on campus. It is disturbing to know that everyone you walked by, all you saw were their eyes, you have no idea what they actually look like. Same thing with Zoom classes. You see people’s faces but you do not know how tall they are or what their personalities are like. For me, Zoom classes were very difficult for me for that reason- the lack of creation of connections.

Overall this article was very touching and captures what life on Penn State campus was like during the pandemic.