College students are struggling to meet academic demands post-covid
By Callie Jordan and Gabby Carrion
An ordinary afternoon suddenly turned into a chaotic nightmare when students were suddenly evacuated home in the Spring of 2020 due to COVID-19.
In the beginning, hopeful students received confident messaging that their displacement was only a temporary fixture until conditions were safe for their eventual return. However, the two-week deadline quickly came and went as new information surfaced about the virus.
In the weeks and months following, students quickly learned that they would finish the semester in a fashion, unlike any other, completely online and at home. For the remainder of 2020, students adjusted to quarantine, lockdowns, masking, social distancing, and completing school work via Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet.
Although things were uncertain and bleak, everyone was navigating it together, supporting each other, and extending grace, kindness, and a sense of shared humanity and connectedness.
Understanding and leniency ended when the vaccine arrived and was distributed in mass. Now students were required to be fully vaccinated before arriving on campus again, many for the first time since they left. An effective protectant against the virus meant that the operations of the past could resume as they had before.
Colleges and Universities decided to embrace the model of the past instead of the new normal as if nothing had changed in the past year and a half at all. Class modalities and formats reverted back to in-person offerings in lecture halls with other students, spaced and masked. Schools were eager to make up for lost profit and went on to value the business of higher education over students’ wellbeing.
On the ground, members of faculty too seemed ready to be back in the classroom teaching face-to-face and expected the same joyful, reciprocal reaction from their pupils. Deadlines were enforced, extensions were denied, and the syllabus was upheld regardless of personal, outside of the classroom conflicts in an out-of-touch manner that failed to meet the moment.
Not only were students out of practice but having to show up consistently to meet and mingle with new people led to hyperstimulation and being overwhelmed. The pressure was on to constantly perform.
When faced with these barriers and high, unrealistic, and unforgiving standards, students’ motivation and eagerness to learn were quickly dwindling.
To figure out how other college students are navigating this shift back to in-person classes, we interviewed three students and a faculty member at the University of Mary Washington.
Gracie Bauman, Junior, Sociology major in the College of Education
Stella Pallasch, Junior, Studio Art major
Joey Welch, Sophomore, History major in the College of Education