For freshman Arbri Gillis, 2020 did not exactly meet her expectations.
Her senior year of high school was cut short due to the lockdown, so she was unable to experience the major celebrations that are often associated with completing school after 12 years, like graduation and prom.
“I was a little devastated that my senior year was cut short because it led to no graduation or grad night,” Gillis said.
Gillis said she was able to persevere through the disappointment with the knowledge that she was graduating soon, through worship and family support.
“I think that spending more time with my family, especially since I was leaving for college, was the best part of the lockdown,” Gillis said.
While 2020 did not go as planned for Gillis and many others, she and other students were also able to find light in the darkness of the past year in several different aspects of their lives.
Jeanna Dickson, sophomore, was able to ease the pain of the year by practicing self-care and learning things about herself.
“The best thing to happen to me was that I learned my self-worth and I was able to get rid of my toxic ‘friends,’ ” Dickson said.
Students also picked up and honed in some skills over “Coronacation” to entertain themselves while they were trapped inside for months on end.
“Kayaking was something we did over the summer, and I had more time for exercising and music,” sophomore Tyler McMaster said.
Sophomore Jeff Zubroski said he found entertainment in exercise as well by joining a co-ed softball team over the summer.
“Beer league softball was pretty fun,” Zubroski said. “It’s kind of funny how that was the best thing to happen to me even though we got destroyed almost every game.”
People on campus said they appreciated the extra time that they got to spend with their families over the months-long shutdown.
Tiffany MacQuarrie, assistant teaching professor of English, said that the moments she was able to spend with her daughter, Mikayla, before she departed for college was the highlight of MacQuarrie’s 2020.
“My daughter was a senior in high school and she was always busy, so I wasn’t seeing a lot of her and I knew she was going away to college and living on campus,” MacQuarrie said. Mikayla MacQuarrie is now a Penn State Beaver freshman living in Harmony Hall and a Roar staff member.
“I was able to get lots of quality time with my daughter,” MacQuarrie said.
McMaster agreed.
“I got to spend a lot more time with family than expected because I wouldn’t have been in Ohio from March through May had it not been for the lockdown,” he said.
MacQuarrie said she also appreciated the time that enabled her to improve her online instruction delivery. Though she had previously taught some asynchronous classes, she enjoyed finding ways to adapt her in-person instruction to Zoom instruction.