COVID-19's impact on the college experience

COVID-19 has greatly impacted the college experience in both positive and negative ways since its March 2020 arrival in the United States, Western Kentucky University students said. While the pandemic allowed time for reflection, it’s negatively impacted the college experience and made the learning process harder, students said.

Fay Phylersao, 19, a freshman nursing major from Rockville, Maryland, says the pandemic’s greatest effect is that it tremendously altered her freshman experience and her ability to meet fellow first-year students.

“As freshmen I feel like we didn’t get to fully understand or experience college in its normalcy and how everybody else got to experience it,” Phylersao said.

Since the pandemic’s arrival, universities such as Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky have implemented both hybrid and fully online classes. As a result, students have coined the term “Zoom University” on social media platforms such as TikTok or Instagram to describe the college experience in the age of COVID-19.

Senior Kaeyane Martinez, 21, from Nashville, Tennessee said learning in a mostly online format via Zoom is her greatest challenge as a student during the pandemic.

“It’s harder to pay attention when you’re online versus when you’re in person,” Martinez said. “I feel like teachers aren’t teaching as well as they should be because they don’t see the students, and they don’t actually care how much we’re learning. They just want to get through the material.”

The general consensus amongst students is that while online classes may have a limited effect on the learning experience of some students in majors that lead to desk jobs, it is not foolproof at preparing students for more hands-on careers.

Lexington junior and graphic design major Kennedie Nelson, 21, said learning in an online format without social outlets has “triggered anxiety in a lot of people” and may not adequately prepare students to work in group settings because it’s required students to learn in isolated settings.

“The work field is all about teamwork,” Nelson said. “You’re never really working alone, and due to COVID and everything being hybrid and online you take away the whole teamwork aspect of growing up in a college setting, so at that point [online classes are] definitely a crutch because without gaining those teamwork skills that you would get inside of the classroom, it heavily affects students in the future.”

For Bowling Green senior Will Pride, 22, the effectiveness of learning in an online format on students’ future careers “depends on what you’re learning.”

Pride said that for classes such as the personal selling class he had in Spring 2020 when COVID-19 arrived on U.S. shores, he would have benefited from it being fully in person. However, classes such as Principles of Information Systems, which teaches students how to use Microsoft Excel, could easily be translated to an online format without the information being lost on students.

While the pandemic came with its fair share of challenges, it’s also supplied its fair share of lessons.

Paduca sophomore Taylor Puckett, 21, said she’s learned “not to take days with other people for granted” this past year.

“I don’t hang out with as many people,” Puckett said. “I don’t see as many people as normal, and I can’t go out to parties or big social gatherings,” she said. Puckett said it’s important to “know that you’re special to get that time” with people in the age of COVID-19.

Phylersao said students’ experience with and handling of “Zoom University” in specific is one example that displays their “resiliency.”

“A lot of people have experienced death, and I’ve just been able to see how people can still be so positive within such a sad time,” she said. “People are literally studying online. It’s amazing that people are adapting to this and are understanding ‘hey, I gotta wear a mask,’ or ‘I gotta do this so that I can be safe, but also so that other people are safe too.’”

Despite their desire for life to return to a normal similar to the one before the pandemic, some students worry that the normalcy’s approaching return will desensitize them to the pandemic’s effects on the world.

“My biggest fear would probably be everybody just acting like nothing ever happened,” Halley Barrios, 21, a junior psychology major from Hopkinsville, said. “They would be in big groups, there would be parties going on, and a lot of people wouldn’t take those precautions that you still need to take when everything tries to go back to normal.”

Senior Will Pride, 22, from Bowling Green said his biggest concern in returning to a post-COVID-19 society is whether he will be able to adjust to the “constant pace” of life before the pandemic.

“Now it feels like everything is kind of slow, and we’ve got more free time to do whatever we want, or we can do things kind of at our own pace,” Pride said.

COVID-19 has continuously impacted the college experience from its effects on the social landscape to students’ feelings concerning whether college courses can adequately prepare them for their future careers the way it has with past generations.

While the pandemic’s greatest effect on college students is yet to be determined, it can be said that it has made a lasting mark on the minds of youth and influenced how they see their futures.

“I feel like we’re going to definitely have some PTSD down the line,” Phylersao, the freshman nursing student, said. “Our kids are going to be like, ‘Mom, what’s COVID-19? It’s back.’ I’m going to cry if something happens and it returns.”