Struggling with Returning to Campus? You are not alone!
Those of you struggling with returning to school after being remote for the past year, you’re not alone! For those of you who had on-campus classes during the pandemic, you most likely also relate to this feeling of uncertainty shaping our lives as college students as we transition back into a “normal” classroom setting. This is not only the first time I have been to campus in a year and a half, it’s my first time coming to SUNY Poly after transferring in over a year ago. For the last year, I have, like most of you, become accustomed to meeting my teachers through video on a small box on the computer screen, and have gotten to know classmates by looking at the list of names on Collaborate.
A shift in campus culture
A term we hear thrown around all the time is “campus culture.” We shrug off this important yet influential source of socialization that dictates how we interact with the campus community. In the last two years, campus culture has shifted considerably. It has left students scrambling trying to figure out what is the right thing to do when returning to school in the midst of the pandemic. It was one thing when we were all behind computer screens, but it’s different now physically sitting in classrooms, applying pencil to paper, and raising your physical hand opposed to the virtual one that became a staple of online learning. This return to classrooms may be difficult for students for a multitude of reasons, including that classrooms are not what they once were. Mask mandates, social distancing, hand sanitizer, and other precautionary measures now shape the classroom setting, leading many students including myself to experience social anxiety in all the constant change.
Struggles
I find myself being slightly uncomfortable in situations in the classroom that I wouldn't have before. I’d like to think of myself as a rather outgoing person who would never shy away from an opportunity to meet new people and hear about their experiences. After telling you this, would you believe it if I told you that when approached by another student recently, I froze, panicked, and my flight instincts encouraged me to run away? While this other student presumably just wanted to get to know one of his peers, I have forgotten what it means to be part of a campus community and don’t know what is socially acceptable anymore. Truthfully, I have found myself afraid and filled with doubt in these situations, struggling to acclimate to the new norms.
Questions shaping our lives
This social anxiety stems from being removed from campus for so long and being isolated from both our peers and the community. It’s created this hesitancy in students not knowing what to do. All these questions keep surfacing about what is allowed in these educational settings. Being that there isn’t a social handbook on how to deal with a pandemic and a return to “normalcy,” we all are sort of just figuring it out together. You may have asked yourself any of these questions: Is it socially acceptable anymore to talk about your weekend plans with your classmates who even seeing them in person seem so dehumanized? Is it allowable for you to make “friends” in a pandemic? Should you allow yourself to get close to people even though there’s this possibility that campus life may revert to being remote? How do we even smile at someone else and see emotions through masks? Truthfully, I don’t have the answers to any of these questions as I keep asking myself these very things.
Where to go from here
The question then becomes how do we adapt to this new normal in educational institutions? We should consider that the pandemic has impacted all aspects of our lives and that it’s okay to be unsure of how to act, how to socialize, and how to live our lives moving forward. I’ve found that for me, it’s helped to talk to other students about this because I found that I am not the only one who feels uncertain on the right course of action. I’d like to think of this being just one obstacle moving forward that once again tests our resilience as students. It’s very much like a journey that we find ourselves embarking on. That is, not only through education but through a pandemic. As you're walking down the paths leading to your destination you’re encountering these boulders along the way, twists and turns that inevitably lead you to get lost, and at some point, you're able to navigate through the obstacles and stand on top of the mountain and finally have a moment of clarity. In practice this journey would happen in different ways and stages for everybody, but nonetheless thinking about it through this analogy allows us as students to think about it more deeply and focus on the fact that there is an end goal we are looking to achieve and the current obstacles we face are just one step along the journey.
Image obtained from Squarespace
