pandemic experience essay as a student

What Life Was Like for Students in the Pandemic Year

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In this video, Navajo student Miles Johnson shares how he experienced the stress and anxiety of schools shutting down last year. Miles’ teacher shared his experience and those of her other students in a recent piece for Education Week. In these short essays below, teacher Claire Marie Grogan’s 11th grade students at Oceanside High School on Long Island, N.Y., describe their pandemic experiences. Their writings have been slightly edited for clarity. Read Grogan’s essay .

“Hours Staring at Tiny Boxes on the Screen”

By Kimberly Polacco, 16

I stare at my blank computer screen, trying to find the motivation to turn it on, but my finger flinches every time it hovers near the button. I instead open my curtains. It is raining outside, but it does not matter, I will not be going out there for the rest of the day. The sound of pounding raindrops contributes to my headache enough to make me turn on my computer in hopes that it will give me something to drown out the noise. But as soon as I open it up, I feel the weight of the world crash upon my shoulders.

Each 42-minute period drags on by. I spend hours upon hours staring at tiny boxes on a screen, one of which my exhausted face occupies, and attempt to retain concepts that have been presented to me through this device. By the time I have the freedom of pressing the “leave” button on my last Google Meet of the day, my eyes are heavy and my legs feel like mush from having not left my bed since I woke up.

Tomorrow arrives, except this time here I am inside of a school building, interacting with my first period teacher face to face. We talk about our favorite movies and TV shows to stream as other kids pile into the classroom. With each passing period I accumulate more and more of these tiny meaningless conversations everywhere I go with both teachers and students. They may not seem like much, but to me they are everything because I know that the next time I am expected to report to school, I will be trapped in the bubble of my room counting down the hours until I can sit down in my freshly sanitized wooden desk again.

“My Only Parent Essentially on Her Death Bed”

By Nick Ingargiola, 16

My mom had COVID-19 for ten weeks. She got sick during the first month school buildings were shut. The difficulty of navigating an online classroom was already overwhelming, and when mixed with my only parent essentially on her death bed, it made it unbearable. Focusing on schoolwork was impossible, and watching my mother struggle to lift up her arm broke my heart.

My mom has been through her fair share of diseases from pancreatic cancer to seizures and even as far as a stroke that paralyzed her entire left side. It is safe to say she has been through a lot. The craziest part is you would never know it. She is the strongest and most positive person I’ve ever met. COVID hit her hard. Although I have watched her go through life and death multiple times, I have never seen her so physically and mentally drained.

I initially was overjoyed to complete my school year in the comfort of my own home, but once my mom got sick, I couldn’t handle it. No one knows what it’s like to pretend like everything is OK until they are forced to. I would wake up at 8 after staying up until 5 in the morning pondering the possibility of losing my mother. She was all I had. I was forced to turn my camera on and float in the fake reality of being fine although I wasn’t. The teachers tried to keep the class engaged by obligating the students to participate. This was dreadful. I didn’t want to talk. I had to hide the distress in my voice. If only the teachers understood what I was going through. I was hesitant because I didn’t want everyone to know that the virus that was infecting and killing millions was knocking on my front door.

After my online classes, I was required to finish an immense amount of homework while simultaneously hiding my sadness so that my mom wouldn’t worry about me. She was already going through a lot. There was no reason to add me to her list of worries. I wasn’t even able to give her a hug. All I could do was watch.

“The Way of Staying Sane”

By Lynda Feustel, 16

Entering year two of the pandemic is strange. It barely seems a day since last March, but it also seems like a lifetime. As an only child and introvert, shutting down my world was initially simple and relatively easy. My friends and I had been super busy with the school play, and while I was sad about it being canceled, I was struggling a lot during that show and desperately needed some time off.

As March turned to April, virtual school began, and being alone really set in. I missed my friends and us being together. The isolation felt real with just my parents and me, even as we spent time together. My friends and I began meeting on Facetime every night to watch TV and just be together in some way. We laughed at insane jokes we made and had homework and therapy sessions over Facetime and grew closer through digital and literal walls.

The summer passed with in-person events together, and the virus faded into the background for a little while. We went to the track and the beach and hung out in people’s backyards.

Then school came for us in a more nasty way than usual. In hybrid school we were separated. People had jobs, sports, activities, and quarantines. Teachers piled on work, and the virus grew more present again. The group text put out hundreds of messages a day while the Facetimes came to a grinding halt, and meeting in person as a group became more of a rarity. Being together on video and in person was the way of staying sane.

In a way I am in a similar place to last year, working and looking for some change as we enter the second year of this mess.

“In History Class, Reports of Heightening Cases”

By Vivian Rose, 16

I remember the moment my freshman year English teacher told me about the young writers’ conference at Bread Loaf during my sophomore year. At first, I didn’t want to apply, the deadline had passed, but for some strange reason, the directors of the program extended it another week. It felt like it was meant to be. It was in Vermont in the last week of May when the flowers have awakened and the sun is warm.

I submitted my work, and two weeks later I got an email of my acceptance. I screamed at the top of my lungs in the empty house; everyone was out, so I was left alone to celebrate my small victory. It was rare for them to admit sophomores. Usually they accept submissions only from juniors and seniors.

That was the first week of February 2020. All of a sudden, there was some talk about this strange virus coming from China. We thought nothing of it. Every night, I would fall asleep smiling, knowing that I would be able to go to the exact conference that Robert Frost attended for 42 years.

Then, as if overnight, it seemed the virus had swung its hand and had gripped parts of the country. Every newscast was about the disease. Every day in history, we would look at the reports of heightening cases and joke around that this could never become a threat as big as Dr. Fauci was proposing. Then, March 13th came around--it was the last day before the world seemed to shut down. Just like that, Bread Loaf would vanish from my grasp.

“One Day Every Day Won’t Be As Terrible”

By Nick Wollweber, 17

COVID created personal problems for everyone, some more serious than others, but everyone had a struggle.

As the COVID lock-down took hold, the main thing weighing on my mind was my oldest brother, Joe, who passed away in January 2019 unexpectedly in his sleep. Losing my brother was a complete gut punch and reality check for me at 14 and 15 years old. 2019 was a year of struggle, darkness, sadness, frustration. I didn’t want to learn after my brother had passed, but I had to in order to move forward and find my new normal.

Routine and always having things to do and places to go is what let me cope in the year after Joe died. Then COVID came and gave me the option to let up and let down my guard. I struggled with not wanting to take care of personal hygiene. That was the beginning of an underlying mental problem where I wouldn’t do things that were necessary for everyday life.

My “coping routine” that got me through every day and week the year before was gone. COVID wasn’t beneficial to me, but it did bring out the true nature of my mental struggles and put a name to it. Since COVID, I have been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. I began taking antidepressants and going to therapy a lot more.

COVID made me realize that I’m not happy with who I am and that I needed to change. I’m still not happy with who I am. I struggle every day, but I am working towards a goal that one day every day won’t be as terrible.

Coverage of social and emotional learning is supported in part by a grant from the NoVo Foundation, at www.novofoundation.org . Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage. A version of this article appeared in the March 31, 2021 edition of Education Week as What Life Was Like for Students in the Pandemic Year

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Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Covid 19 — My Experience during the COVID-19 Pandemic

My Experience During The Covid-19 Pandemic

• Categories: Covid 19

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Words: 440 |

Published: Jan 30, 2024

Words: 440 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, physical impact, mental and emotional impact, social impact.

• World Health Organization. (2021). Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard. https://covid19.who.int/
• American Psychiatric Association. (2020). Mental health and COVID-19. https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-blogs/apa-blog/2020/03/mental-health-and-covid-19
• The New York Times. (2020). Coping with Coronavirus Anxiety. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/well/family/coronavirus-anxiety-mental-health.html

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Writing about COVID-19 in a college admission essay

by: Venkates Swaminathan | Updated: September 14, 2020

Print article

For students applying to college using the CommonApp, there are several different places where students and counselors can address the pandemic’s impact. The different sections have differing goals. You must understand how to use each section for its appropriate use.

The CommonApp COVID-19 question

First, the CommonApp this year has an additional question specifically about COVID-19 :

Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. If you need it, this space is yours to describe those impacts. Colleges care about the effects on your health and well-being, safety, family circumstances, future plans, and education, including access to reliable technology and quiet study spaces. Please use this space to describe how these events have impacted you.

This question seeks to understand the adversity that students may have had to face due to the pandemic, the move to online education, or the shelter-in-place rules. You don’t have to answer this question if the impact on you wasn’t particularly severe. Some examples of things students should discuss include:

• The student or a family member had COVID-19 or suffered other illnesses due to confinement during the pandemic.
• The candidate had to deal with personal or family issues, such as abusive living situations or other safety concerns
• The student suffered from a lack of internet access and other online learning challenges.
• Students who dealt with problems registering for or taking standardized tests and AP exams.

Jeff Schiffman of the Tulane University admissions office has a blog about this section. He recommends students ask themselves several questions as they go about answering this section:

• Are my experiences different from others’?
• Are there noticeable changes on my transcript?
• Am I aware of my privilege?
• Am I specific? Am I explaining rather than complaining?
• Is this information being included elsewhere on my application?

If you do answer this section, be brief and to-the-point.

Counselor recommendations and school profiles

Second, counselors will, in their counselor forms and school profiles on the CommonApp, address how the school handled the pandemic and how it might have affected students, specifically as it relates to:

• Grading scales and policies
• Graduation requirements
• Instructional methods
• Schedules and course offerings
• Testing requirements
• Your academic calendar
• Other extenuating circumstances

Students don’t have to mention these matters in their application unless something unusual happened.

Writing about COVID-19 in your main essay

Write about your experiences during the pandemic in your main college essay if your experience is personal, relevant, and the most important thing to discuss in your college admission essay. That you had to stay home and study online isn’t sufficient, as millions of other students faced the same situation. But sometimes, it can be appropriate and helpful to write about something related to the pandemic in your essay. For example:

• One student developed a website for a local comic book store. The store might not have survived without the ability for people to order comic books online. The student had a long-standing relationship with the store, and it was an institution that created a community for students who otherwise felt left out.
• One student started a YouTube channel to help other students with academic subjects he was very familiar with and began tutoring others.
• Some students used their extra time that was the result of the stay-at-home orders to take online courses pursuing topics they are genuinely interested in or developing new interests, like a foreign language or music.

Experiences like this can be good topics for the CommonApp essay as long as they reflect something genuinely important about the student. For many students whose lives have been shaped by this pandemic, it can be a critical part of their college application.

Want more? Read 6 ways to improve a college essay , What the &%$! should I write about in my college essay , and Just how important is a college admissions essay? .

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Coronavirus: My Experience During the Pandemic

Anastasiya Kandratsenka George Washington High School, Class of 2021

At this point in time there shouldn't be a single person who doesn't know about the coronavirus, or as they call it, COVID-19. The coronavirus is a virus that originated in China, reached the U.S. and eventually spread all over the world by January of 2020. The common symptoms of the virus include shortness of breath, chills, sore throat, headache, loss of taste and smell, runny nose, vomiting and nausea. As it has been established, it might take up to 14 days for the symptoms to show. On top of that, the virus is also highly contagious putting all age groups at risk. The elderly and individuals with chronic diseases such as pneumonia or heart disease are in the top risk as the virus attacks the immune system. 

The virus first appeared on the news and media platforms in the month of January of this year. The United States and many other countries all over the globe saw no reason to panic as it seemed that the virus presented no possible threat. Throughout the next upcoming months, the virus began to spread very quickly, alerting health officials not only in the U.S., but all over the world. As people started digging into the origin of the virus, it became clear that it originated in China. Based on everything scientists have looked at, the virus came from a bat that later infected other animals, making it way to humans. As it goes for the United States, the numbers started rising quickly, resulting in the cancellation of sports events, concerts, large gatherings and then later on schools. 

As it goes personally for me, my school was shut down on March 13th. The original plan was to put us on a two weeks leave, returning on March 30th but, as the virus spread rapidly and things began escalating out of control very quickly, President Trump announced a state of emergency and the whole country was put on quarantine until April 30th. At that point, schools were officially shut down for the rest of the school year. Distanced learning was introduced, online classes were established, a new norm was put in place. As for the School District of Philadelphia distanced learning and online classes began on May 4th. From that point on I would have classes four times a week, from 8AM till 3PM. Virtual learning was something that I never had to experience and encounter before. It was all new and different for me, just as it was for millions of students all over the United States. We were forced to transfer from physically attending school, interacting with our peers and teachers, participating in fun school events and just being in a classroom setting, to just looking at each other through a computer screen in a number of days. That is something that we all could have never seen coming, it was all so sudden and new. 

My experience with distanced learning was not very great. I get distracted very easily and   find it hard to concentrate, especially when it comes to school. In a classroom I was able to give my full attention to what was being taught, I was all there. However, when we had the online classes, I could not focus and listen to what my teachers were trying to get across. I got distracted very easily, missing out on important information that was being presented. My entire family which consists of five members, were all home during the quarantine. I have two little siblings who are very loud and demanding, so I’m sure it can be imagined how hard it was for me to concentrate on school and do what was asked of me when I had these two running around the house. On top of school, I also had to find a job and work 35 hours a week to support my family during the pandemic. My mother lost her job for the time being and my father was only able to work from home. As we have a big family, the income of my father was not enough. I made it my duty to help out and support our family as much as I could: I got a job at a local supermarket and worked there as a cashier for over two months. 

While I worked at the supermarket, I was exposed to dozens of people every day and with all the protection that was implemented to protect the customers and the workers, I was lucky enough to not get the virus. As I say that, my grandparents who do not even live in the U.S. were not so lucky. They got the virus and spent over a month isolated, in a hospital bed, with no one by their side. Our only way of communicating was through the phone and if lucky, we got to talk once a week. Speaking for my family, that was the worst and scariest part of the whole situation. Luckily for us, they were both able to recover completely. 

As the pandemic is somewhat under control, the spread of the virus has slowed down. We’re now living in the new norm. We no longer view things the same, the way we did before. Large gatherings and activities that require large groups to come together are now unimaginable! Distanced learning is what we know, not to mention the importance of social distancing and having to wear masks anywhere and everywhere we go. This is the new norm now and who knows when and if ever we’ll be able go back to what we knew before. This whole experience has made me realize that we, as humans, tend to take things for granted and don’t value what we have until it is taken away from us. 

Articles in this Volume

[tid]: dedication, [tid]: new tools for a new house: transformations for justice and peace in and beyond covid-19, [tid]: black lives matter, intersectionality, and lgbtq rights now, [tid]: the voice of asian american youth: what goes untold, [tid]: beyond words: reimagining education through art and activism, [tid]: voice(s) of a black man, [tid]: embodied learning and community resilience, [tid]: re-imagining professional learning in a time of social isolation: storytelling as a tool for healing and professional growth, [tid]: reckoning: what does it mean to look forward and back together as critical educators, [tid]: leader to leaders: an indigenous school leader’s advice through storytelling about grief and covid-19, [tid]: finding hope, healing and liberation beyond covid-19 within a context of captivity and carcerality, [tid]: flux leadership: leading for justice and peace in & beyond covid-19, [tid]: flux leadership: insights from the (virtual) field, [tid]: hard pivot: compulsory crisis leadership emerges from a space of doubt, [tid]: and how are the children, [tid]: real talk: teaching and leading while bipoc, [tid]: systems of emotional support for educators in crisis, [tid]: listening leadership: the student voices project, [tid]: global engagement, perspective-sharing, & future-seeing in & beyond a global crisis, [tid]: teaching and leadership during covid-19: lessons from lived experiences, [tid]: crisis leadership in independent schools - styles & literacies, [tid]: rituals, routines and relationships: high school athletes and coaches in flux, [tid]: superintendent back-to-school welcome 2020, [tid]: mitigating summer learning loss in philadelphia during covid-19: humble attempts from the field, [tid]: untitled, [tid]: the revolution will not be on linkedin: student activism and neoliberalism, [tid]: why radical self-care cannot wait: strategies for black women leaders now, [tid]: from emergency response to critical transformation: online learning in a time of flux, [tid]: illness methodology for and beyond the covid era, [tid]: surviving black girl magic, the work, and the dissertation, [tid]: cancelled: the old student experience, [tid]: lessons from liberia: integrating theatre for development and youth development in uncertain times, [tid]: designing a more accessible future: learning from covid-19, [tid]: the construct of standards-based education, [tid]: teachers leading teachers to prepare for back to school during covid, [tid]: using empathy to cross the sea of humanity, [tid]: (un)doing college, community, and relationships in the time of coronavirus, [tid]: have we learned nothing, [tid]: choosing growth amidst chaos, [tid]: living freire in pandemic….participatory action research and democratizing knowledge at knowledgedemocracy.org, [tid]: philly students speak: voices of learning in pandemics, [tid]: the power of will: a letter to my descendant, [tid]: photo essays with students, [tid]: unity during a global pandemic: how the fight for racial justice made us unite against two diseases, [tid]: educational changes caused by the pandemic and other related social issues, [tid]: online learning during difficult times, [tid]: fighting crisis: a student perspective, [tid]: the destruction of soil rooted with culture, [tid]: a demand for change, [tid]: education through experience in and beyond the pandemics, [tid]: the pandemic diaries, [tid]: all for one and 4 for $4, [tid]: tiktok activism, [tid]: why digital learning may be the best option for next year, [tid]: my 2020 teen experience, [tid]: living between two pandemics, [tid]: journaling during isolation: the gold standard of coronavirus, [tid]: sailing through uncertainty, [tid]: what i wish my teachers knew, [tid]: youthing in pandemic while black, [tid]: the pain inflicted by indifference, [tid]: education during the pandemic, [tid]: the good, the bad, and the year 2020, [tid]: racism fueled pandemic, [tid]: coronavirus: my experience during the pandemic, [tid]: the desensitization of a doomed generation, [tid]: a philadelphia war-zone, [tid]: the attack of the covid monster, [tid]: back-to-school: covid-19 edition, [tid]: the unexpected war, [tid]: learning outside of the classroom, [tid]: why we should learn about college financial aid in school: a student perspective, [tid]: flying the plane as we go: building the future through a haze, [tid]: my covid experience in the age of technology, [tid]: we, i, and they, [tid]: learning your a, b, cs during a pandemic, [tid]: quarantine: a musical, [tid]: what it’s like being a high school student in 2020, [tid]: everything happens for a reason, [tid]: blacks live matter – a sobering and empowering reality among my peers, [tid]: the mental health of a junior during covid-19 outbreaks, [tid]: a year of change, [tid]: covid-19 and school, [tid]: the virtues and vices of virtual learning, [tid]: college decisions and the year 2020: a virtual rollercoaster, [tid]: quarantine thoughts, [tid]: quarantine through generation z, [tid]: attending online school during a pandemic.

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“What Has Your Pandemic Experience Been Like?”

Fourteen alumni tell us how COVID-19 has shaped their lives.

I n March, when we were considering CCT’s Summer 2020 issue, we knew that we wanted to address the shockwave that had upended and overtaken all of our lives. The COVID-19 pandemic was — is — that rare event that affects everyone with ties to the College. Even as this introduction is written, its vast, global story continues to evolve, expanding and deepening in ways that resist easy comprehension.

Against this backdrop, we knew we could tell a more personal story, create a record of how the coronavirus and its many ripple effects had been experienced by our community. And so, in April and early May, we asked 14 alumni to offer a keyhole into their daily lives: What did their new routines look like? How had work changed? What had been challenging, and where were they finding their joys?

The responses were varied, shaped by age, profession, location and all the personal variables that distinguish one life from the next. And what began as a kind of time capsule became, slowly, so much more. The reflections enlarged our view beyond the walls that had all too literally been hemming us in. They invited us to exercise our empathies, take comfort in shared experiences and — with so many of us social-distanced into solitude or small groups — feel the warmth of connection.

It will be a long time before we can fully reckon with all that’s happened and is happening during this pandemic. But we are going through it together, and we hope that our contribution can help.

— The Editors

Editor-at-large, iHeartMEDIA; chief content officer at Nineteen Twenty Media

“T hough I was an English lit major at Columbia, these days I find myself immersed in the sciences, living out Einstein’s definition of insanity on the regular: watching the news, then instantly regretting it; begging/bribing/browbeating my kids to sit for home-schooling, only to surrender an hour later; channeling Alice Waters for breakfast, Chester Cheetah by lunch. Our days here at Casa Goldman (me, two grade-schoolers, one eye- rolling husband) are — wait, what day is it, again? We ditched the skim for half-and-half. We subscribed to Hulu. We pray to the broadband gods to keep our signal strong. We are, as the kids say, hashtag blessed.

“As a writer, I wrestle with a strange new tension: I have never felt more creative and yet so hard-pressed to eke out the time and focus to write. But I’ve still managed to bank a win or two. I launched a podcast called Hazmat Hotel , in which I interview interesting people about how coronavirus has upended their professions. (Hit me up if you’d like to be a guest.) I finished my one-woman show about Jim Comey. I am knee-deep in a new screenplay. In the past eight weeks, one of my boys has discovered Seinfeld, the other ‘Shark Week,’ so that Hulu subscription is basically paying for itself now. The news from Casa G is that we are all OK, hanging in and enormously grateful, thank you for asking.”

Policy analyst, NYC Mayor’s Office of Policy and Planning; volunteer coordinator, Bowman for Congress

“I work for the Office of the Mayor in New York City full-time and coordinate volunteers on Jamaal Bowman’s congressional campaign in NY-16 part-time. With local government on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis and, as I write, the June 23 primary less than two months away, I am busier than I have ever been.

“I try my best to work out a few times a week and use Friday evenings to catch up on TV shows and work on crafts. I rediscovered my pottery tools when quarantine began and ordered polymer clay and embroidery floss to make earrings. A friend recommended that I order a weaving loom to make tapestries and rugs — it just arrived, so I am going to try that this week. My roommate’s mom might drop off an old sewing machine so I can try my hand at that, too.

“Work can be a bit overwhelming, so using my hands to make things for myself, family and friends is a welcome reprieve from corona madness.”

COURTESY AMARI HAMMONDS ‘09

Associate deputy solicitor general, Office of the Solicitor General in the California Department of Justice

“W hat if I had to go about my life not knowing the next time it’d be OK to touch another person? I’m single and I live alone, so this has become an abiding question in the weeks, now months, since March 16, when the Bay Area announced its first-in-the-nation shelter-in-place order.

“I’ve learned that isolation makes the memory of my last human contact more indelible — a Kid ’n Play-inspired kickstep as my friend Colin left what would be our last Sunday pancakes together. We now connect through FaceTime meals; from afar, he’s taught me how to make a poached egg. But I’ve also learned that regardless of health orders, video calls won’t cut it. I’m grateful to have cultivated relationships with a select few who, like me, crave connection in the absence of the pandemic-friendly community offered by roommates or romantic partners ‘adjacent’ to their households. A conversation while biking 6 ft. apart is critical nourishment. I once petted a gentle old dog named Loki after one such ride to the Sausalito waterfront, and it was like oxygen for me — though for her, probably more about the hot pastrami sandwich in my hand.

“Most importantly, I’ve learned to be gentle with myself for the swirl of feelings this all brings. It is possible to feel at once abandoned by friends who have hunkered down with the privilege of companionship, while also compassionate toward their choice — one I’d likely make, if given the option. It’s OK to spend one night crying myself to sleep, wishing I could join my mom across the country, then the next cutting up playing Codenames over Google Hangouts as if I’d lived my life this way all along.

“Until ‘normal’ returns at some indeterminate point, in some indeterminate form, I’m learning what that looks like for now and receiving sweetness in every form. My friend and her husband recently invited me for a socially distant picnic, and to meet their puppy. I’ll be there with a fashionably colorful mask and hand sanitizer at the ready.”

COURTESY BRENDON JOBS ‘05

Director of diversity and inclusion, The Haverford School; social studies methods instructor at the Penn Graduate School of Education

“S chool closed suddenly in March as the threat of pandemic became a real crisis. Like many, I’ve been going through a grieving process for the life, vigor and human connection that the schoolhouse offered me in all my years of teaching.

“At the start, I was overwhelmed with the multitude of tasks needed to make the transition [to remote learning] work for my students, faculty and other communities that I serve. Fear and duty defined my feelings in that moment. But it wasn’t long before anger and resentment grabbed hold of me. Hopeful proclamations that ‘we’re all in this together’ came from official channels; they offered encouragement that if we adhered to social distancing we could flatten the curve and ‘get back to normal.’ It wasn’t long afterward that nasty disparities in race and class, in keeping with pre-COVID-19 patterns, magnified. As an educator, I wondered: How can I explain this to kids? How does what they’re witnessing shape their understanding of how the world works?

“As a black queer man growing up in the 1990s, I remember living with the fear of the AIDS virus. Implicitly, I was fed the message that I lived with greater risk of contracting the disease in a way that stigmatized me. Those old feelings have reemerged as I have witnessed COVID-19 transform from a foreign threat into a health crisis disproportionately infecting and killing Black and Brown people; meanwhile, violent, armed calls to reopen businesses rage from white protestors in Michigan and Pennsylvania despite these deaths. My mother and sister still report to their jobs as ‘essential workers,’ and my father lost his job abruptly as an early casualty of the predicted economic crash. These disparities will only grow as long as we continue to allow politics and business interests to make us willfully ignorant to wild differences in the human experience of this moment. I often struggle to imagine a different, more hopeful outcome.

COURTESY DR. JOSH JOHNSON ‘13

Surgical resident, NewYork Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center

“R inging loudly in the background of my day is a cacophony of alarms and notifications that are meant to signify an imminent medical emergency — yet they have become so ubiquitous that I can no longer distinguish among them. The hours I spend on the wards have not changed much; I am here for anywhere between 12 and 24 hours a shift, depending on the day. However, the intricacies of my work have shifted dramatically. Willing or not, I am greeted each day by an endless list of patients with tarnished lungs who require the utmost interventions possible to keep oxygen flowing throughout their bodies. It has been truly taxing.

“The difficulty lies in having to carry on and continue my duties without the time to grieve our losses, to celebrate our wins and to reflect upon our struggles. Yet what has been remarkable is that my connection to my patients and their families has never been deeper. Though my patients cannot speak to me, I hear their pain. Though I cannot see their loved ones in person I have had immensely intimate conversations with them, and I have forged relationships based solely on trust and hope. During this pandemic I have healed others more through compassion and understanding than I have through modern science. That is the lesson I hope to never forget.”

COURTESY NYPD

Chief chaplain, NYPD; adjunct professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

“L ife in the Age of COVID-19 has not been simple or easy for any of us. I’ve had to respond to new challenges: teach classes remotely, conduct Zoom funeral services, attend virtual meetings and counsel the troubled by telephone. Perhaps the most awe- some responsibility of all was to fulfill a request to do a video with a message of ‘uplift’ and ‘encouragement’ for our police officers. Quite frankly, reading the newspaper reports every day about the ever-mounting casualty figures, and discovering that many of the victims are people I know and love, leaves me in need of uplift and encouragement. However, I felt this was really important because police officers are among the first responders to have suffered the heaviest casualties. After all, they are required to answer the call of duty regardless of the risks, including the coronavirus.

“Somehow, notwithstanding my own concerns and anxieties, I managed to put something together. It was based on Mark Twain’s observation that courage isn’t the ‘absence of fear but the mastery of it.’ There are two ways to transcend anxiety: faith in God and faith in each other. To believe in God is not simply to believe that there is a deity who will intervene and alter reality to accord with our wishes. Even more basically, it is the confidence that there is a Benevolent Intelligence undergirding the universe that fills us with the hope, optimism and trust that human beings possess the wisdom and skills required to solve the toughest problems.

“Then there is the most effective therapy of all — each other. Men and women, helping and supporting one another by doing things they don’t have to do, is the essence of love and closest we shall ever come to experiencing genuine spirituality. It is true that COVID-19 requires us to stay apart physically, but getting in touch with each other — as well as family, friends and neighbors assisting each other — can be so important and pivotal in transcending this crisis. I certainly cherish the calls and emails I have received as I cope with the physical distancing of this experience. What they proclaim in the most eloquent and dramatic way possible is that we don’t have to struggle with this alone.”

COURTESY IAN LENDLER ‘96

Children’s book author

“L ike so many others, the virus, alas, has afflicted me.

“For I, you see, am a writer, and I write things of terrible importance. I am a Creator of Truths, a conjuror of metaphors. Every morning I sit at my desk and I call to my Muse; she answers, and we begin a delicate dance of words and images and — oh yes! — similes as well! And just as my prose begins to touch the great mysteries of Life —

“‘DAD! DAD!’ My children burst into the room. ‘Can we have some Goldfish crackers?’

“‘Be still!’ I shriek. ‘What matters your aquatic-shaped snacks when I seek Beauty?’ “But it is too late. My Muse begins to back out of the room. She says, ‘You never told me you had kids.’

“‘You don’t understand,’ I splutter. ‘Normally they’re at school now.’ But she is already gone.

“Then, my wife shouts from a different room that she’s on a Zoom call and the kids need lunch.

“So I make my kids lunch.

“In the afternoon, once again, I tap at my keyboard, calling my Muse back, and with a curtsy and an impish wink, she and I begin to weave our —

‘Dad! DAD! We’re playing Fortnite with our cousins. We need your computer!’ and my kids snatch my laptop away.

“And so I wander the house, alone, bereft of my computer (and thus, all meaning), until my wife shouts from a different room that she’s on a Zoom call and can I get dinner started?

“And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this sheltered-in-place ... until ... what’s this?!

“I have been asked to do an ‘Instagram live reading,’ whatever that is ... But I seize my chance to perform for my adoring audience. To conjure worlds for them; to shaman their imaginations to an ethereal realm.

“So for your undoubted delight (and the consideration of Nobel Prize committees), I give you what I believe to be my most harrowing and important work to date. ”

COURTESY STEVE MARTINEZ ‘11

Television producer, ESPN’s The Jump

“T he show must go on, but my daily routine has been altered significantly. The Jump is now entirely produced from home: on-air talent, producers, directors and so on; we’re doing our best to help deliver to folks a 30-minute slice of escapism every day. Most of our work in production is now done the night before a show (previously, most of the production occurred the morning of ). We complete our daily tapings by 11:30 a.m. PT, but by 1:00 p.m. PT, we are on a conference call discussing the plan for the next day’s show. The current production strategy involves a balance between staying ahead in terms of preparation and being ready for news to break at a moment’s notice.

“Communication has been a challenge at times. It might not look like it at home when you see three people on your screen, but it takes dozens of talented folks to put on a TV show. My previous routine heavily relied upon face-to-face communication for most of my catching up with staff members.

“I find joy in spending time with my wife, Stephanie, and my dog, Callie, here in my Los Angeles home. I also take great pride in the ability to get a show on the air with the entire staff working from home, something we never knew was possible until we were confronted with that problem. Mainly, I just want the NBA back.”

PHOTOS BY MIKE MELLIA ‘02

Director, photographer, creator of advertising for fashion and lifestyle brands

“M any of the world’s greatest successes took place in a garage — Apple, Google, Disney. By the same token, I always loved seeing pictures of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, two great abstract expressionist painters, painting in outdoor barns on Long Island during the 1950s and 1960s. They said they liked the light. What I really think they needed was the isolation and the silence.

BY MIKE MELLIA ‘02

“To me, painting is a performance with an audience of zero, and the record of that performance is the physical object created, a mysterious enigma. Over tens of thou- sands of hours of practice, you train yourself to not even be conscious of yourself; it feels like I’m watching someone else paint a picture. There is also some element to painting that feels like robbing a bank: the intensity, the speed and the risk that you can only experience after learning to transcend all your experience and training. These large oil paintings are inspired by the wild chaos, the light and the color of nature I’m experiencing with my wife and two babies at our home in Southampton, N.Y. I hope they will bring you some joy.”

P ASCAL PERICH

Geezer Fitness

I just did twenty-five push-ups, then vacuumed the floor and then dropped down and did twenty more, for what reason I cannot say or even want to think about, especially at this moment when I am still breathing hard.

I almost didn’t know what day it is and then I did, locked into time, suddenly more secure that it’s Thursday! Which means nothing or next to nothing. I am next to nothing— it’s in this room with me, an old pal.

Snow falling from gray sky, it’s time to bake, scones, I mean, and right out of the oven take one and butter it, with jam, teapot hot at hand, and exult in the fact of everything horrible.

COURTESY DAVID PENG ‘83

Head of Asia Pacific Ex Japan at Legal & General Investment Management; president, Columbia University Alumni Association Hong Kong

“T hough I am a New Yorker, I have spent my professional life in North Asia and this is my fourth posting in Hong Kong, with in-between postings in Taipei, Shanghai and Beijing. I was in Hong Kong during the SARS epidemic in 2003. Most people in Hong Kong remember that period well. When news broke in January about what was happening in Wuhan, people in Hong Kong quickly realized the potential of another epidemic.

“The Hong Kong government was quick to put in place restrictive measures. To date, Hong Kong has never had an official lockdown, but people take the lead from the government, which asked all civil servants to work from home under two orders. People in Hong Kong are very careful to protect themselves and others, and mask wearing is universally practiced. With one of the highest population densities in the world, Hong Kong has managed to ward off a high level of viral transmission and achieved minimal death.

“When I traveled to London for meetings at the end of January through the middle of February, friends and colleagues were not concerned.They also thought it was odd that there would be runs on basic supplies like toilet paper. We know now how quickly the virus traveled and the devastation it has inflicted on our world, with the highest rates of infection and death in Europe and the United States.

“At my office in Hong Kong, we continue to practice a work- from-home policy. Our U.K. head office went into lockdown. This forced many businesses to operate remotely and digitally. For many of us, it was a continuation of the restrictions we have become accustomed to.

“My proudest moment thus far during this pandemic is how the Columbia community in Greater China and Singapore banded together to raise funding to procure and donate PPE to our frontline medical professionals and essential workers. We raised more than $2.1 million in a matter of weeks, which allowed us to donate masks, respirators, gowns, gloves, eye protectors, hazmat suits and more to Columbia University Medical Center/New York Presbyterian Hospital and other affiliated hospitals and emergency service providers.

“During my time at Columbia, I was an official University tour guide. The highlight for me was always Low Memorial Library, where I would stop my tour group in front of the Columbia motto. In Latin, it reads: In Lumine Tuo Videbimus Lvmen (‘In thy light we shall see light’).

“During these dark times, it is my great hope that the pandemic has shown us how we can be better ourselves and that, united, we shall continue to see the light.”

PHOTOS COURTESY JILL SANTOPOLO ‘03

Editor and author

“O n March 12, when Penguin Random House (PRH)’s work-from-home policy began, I grabbed my laptop and headed out of New York City, down to Washington, D.C., where my husband works and where we have a second small apartment. I figured we’d be there for a week at the most, until he began to work from home, and then we’d head back to Manhattan. I’m writing this on May 8. We haven’t yet been back. We are grateful to have jobs we can do from home — his in data and analytics, mine as an editor and novelist. But both of us working from home has meant getting creative with our 700-sq.-ft. space. The bedroom is his office, the rest of the apartment, mine, with a desk — actually, a table that formerly held our record player — next to the refrigerator.

COURTESY JILL SANTOPOLO ‘03

“But at the same time, I can’t stop thinking about New York City. I lived there during 9-11, the 2003 blackout, Hurricane Sandy. I feel like I’ve abandoned my city in its time of need. Neoclassical buildings are beautiful, but so are skyscrapers.

“This pandemic might have made me a Washingtonian, but it also made me realize that in my heart I will always be a New Yorker.”

Entrepreneur; founder, Locasaur

“I left New York in mid-March thinking I’d be back in a matter of weeks, and my packing reflected this. As the situation became more clear, I realized I’d be staying here for a while, on my family’s farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Those who know me know I’m not exactly upset by this. I grew up here, alongside a rotating menagerie of horses, chickens, sheep and the occasional goat. There are 10 shades of green in every direction, and I’ve never been more thankful for the wide open, secluded space. “So much of what’s great about New York happens after dark, and waking up early is done at your own peril. When I’m home, however, I’m on ‘farm time.’ Coffee is on and the house is buzzing by 6:00 a.m. My company Locasaur’s daily standup isn’t until 10:00 a.m., so early mornings are usually given to farm tasks and chores. There is a rhythm that you get into living on a farm; days keep churning, things keep needing to get done. A farmer’s mindset is that no matter the day’s challenge, you find a fix.

C OURTESY SIMON SCHWARTZ ‘17

“The majority of my day is devoted to re- mote work of the most urgent kind. Locasaur is a relationship app for local businesses and their regulars, and right now local businesses need their regulars more than ever. Every creative solution demanded by the reality of COVID-19 — the bakery now doing road- side pickup, the florist who started delivering, the bartender selling premixed cocktails — starts with a business having a group of core customers who truly care about it. Our goal is to power some of those creative solutions and help these businesses go digital without giving up the ‘personal touch’ that means so much to their survival. The next 12–18 months won’t be easy, but local business owners are uniformly some of the toughest people I know. In many ways they, too, have a farmer’s mindset.”

COURTESY MARGARET TRAUB ‘88

Head of global initiatives, International Medical Corps

“M y work is emergency medical relief, so the pandemic has taken over my daily life in every way. My organization normally works in conflict and disaster zones overseas, but with COVID-19, in addition to responding to the pandemic in 30 countries, we have deployed healthcare workers and supplies on the front-lines here in the United States — at hospitals in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Puerto Rico, so far.

“My days start around 5:30 a.m. — bleary-eyed in bed, scrolling through emails and the latest news. I learned early that if I don’t get into the shower by 6:30 a.m., I wind up chained to Skype and video calls in my PJs (and sometimes a nice blouse) until 5:00 p.m. Yes, that’s happened more times than I’m comfortable admitting.

“In between calls with our teams — mostly about procuring PPE, or moving supplies and clinicians, or raising money — I’m checking in with my family in New York, Utah and Arizona. I have a severely immuno-compromised sister and healthy but 90-ish-year-old parents, so I worry constantly about them and have to resist the urge to go be with them. I frequently text and call friends, including my Columbia pals. And at some point during my days I try to squeeze in a workout — usually to old episodes of 30 Rock. Another important COVID-19 distraction: cooking and baking, which I love.

“My heart breaks every day, thinking of the suffering going on around us. And not a day goes by that I don’t feel grateful to be healthy and to have a mostly healthy family and a job that puts a roof over our head and food on our table.

“Thanks to all those heroes out there, putting their lives on the line to serve their fellow humans. Everyone stay safe and healthy!”

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Published three times a year by Columbia College for alumni, students, faculty, parents and friends.

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How to Write About the Impact of the Coronavirus in a College Essay

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many -- a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

[ Read: How to Write a College Essay. ]

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

[ Read: What Colleges Look for: 6 Ways to Stand Out. ]

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them -- and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

[ Read: The Common App: Everything You Need to Know. ]

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic -- and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of Best Colleges.

One Student's Perspective on Life During a Pandemic

• Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
• Ethics Resources
• Ethics Spotlight
• COVID-19: Ethics, Health and Moving Forward

The pandemic and resulting shelter-in-place restrictions are affecting everyone in different ways. Tiana Nguyen, shares both the pros and cons of her experience as a student at Santa Clara University.

person sitting at table with open laptop, notebook and pen

Tiana Nguyen ‘21 is a Hackworth Fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. She is majoring in Computer Science, and is the vice president of Santa Clara University’s Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) chapter .

The world has slowed down, but stress has begun to ramp up.

In the beginning of quarantine, as the world slowed down, I could finally take some time to relax, watch some shows, learn to be a better cook and baker, and be more active in my extracurriculars. I have a lot of things to be thankful for. I especially appreciate that I’m able to live in a comfortable house and have gotten the opportunity to spend more time with my family. This has actually been the first time in years in which we’re all able to even eat meals together every single day. Even when my brother and I were young, my parents would be at work and sometimes come home late, so we didn’t always eat meals together. In the beginning of the quarantine I remember my family talking about how nice it was to finally have meals together, and my brother joking, “it only took a pandemic to bring us all together,” which I laughed about at the time (but it’s the truth).

Soon enough, we’ll all be back to going to different places and we’ll be separated once again. So I’m thankful for my living situation right now. As for my friends, even though we’re apart, I do still feel like I can be in touch with them through video chat—maybe sometimes even more in touch than before. I think a lot of people just have a little more time for others right now.

Although there are still a lot of things to be thankful for, stress has slowly taken over, and work has been overwhelming. I’ve always been a person who usually enjoys going to classes, taking on more work than I have to, and being active in general. But lately I’ve felt swamped with the amount of work given, to the point that my days have blurred into online assignments, Zoom classes, and countless meetings, with a touch of baking sweets and aimless searching on Youtube.

The pass/no pass option for classes continues to stare at me, but I look past it every time to use this quarter as an opportunity to boost my grades. I've tried to make sense of this type of overwhelming feeling that I’ve never really felt before. Is it because I’m working harder and putting in more effort into my schoolwork with all the spare time I now have? Is it because I’m not having as much interaction with other people as I do at school? Or is it because my classes this quarter are just supposed to be this much harder? I honestly don’t know; it might not even be any of those. What I do know though, is that I have to continue work and push through this feeling.

This quarter I have two synchronous and two asynchronous classes, which each have pros and cons. Originally, I thought I wanted all my classes to be synchronous, since that everyday interaction with my professor and classmates is valuable to me. However, as I experienced these asynchronous classes, I’ve realized that it can be nice to watch a lecture on my own time because it even allows me to pause the video to give me extra time for taking notes. This has made me pay more attention during lectures and take note of small details that I might have missed otherwise. Furthermore, I do realize that synchronous classes can also be a burden for those abroad who have to wake up in the middle of the night just to attend a class. I feel that it’s especially unfortunate when professors want students to attend but don’t make attendance mandatory for this reason; I find that most abroad students attend anyway, driven by the worry they’ll be missing out on something.

I do still find synchronous classes amazing though, especially for discussion-based courses. I feel in touch with other students from my classes whom I wouldn’t otherwise talk to or regularly reach out to. Since Santa Clara University is a small school, it is especially easy to interact with one another during classes on Zoom, and I even sometimes find it less intimidating to participate during class through Zoom than in person. I’m honestly not the type to participate in class, but this quarter I found myself participating in some classes more than usual. The breakout rooms also create more interaction, since we’re assigned to random classmates, instead of whomever we’re sitting closest to in an in-person class—though I admit breakout rooms can sometimes be awkward.

Something that I find beneficial in both synchronous and asynchronous classes is that professors post a lecture recording that I can always refer to whenever I want. I found this especially helpful when I studied for my midterms this quarter; it’s nice to have a recording to look back upon in case I missed something during a lecture.

Overall, life during these times is substantially different from anything most of us have ever experienced, and at times it can be extremely overwhelming and stressful—especially in terms of school for me. Online classes don’t provide the same environment and interactions as in-person classes and are by far not as enjoyable. But at the end of the day, I know that in every circumstance there is always something to be thankful for, and I’m appreciative for my situation right now. While the world has slowed down and my stress has ramped up, I’m slowly beginning to adjust to it.

Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

by Alissa Wilkinson

The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

• The Vox guide to navigating the coronavirus crisis

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

• A syllabus for the end of the world

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

• What day is it today?

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

• Vox is starting a book club. Come read with us!

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

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Essays reveal experiences during pandemic, unrest.

Field study students share their thoughts 

Members of Advanced Field Study, a select group of Social Ecology students who are chosen from a pool of applicants to participate in a year-long field study experience and course, had their internships and traditional college experience cut short this year. During our final quarter of the year together, during which we met weekly for two hours via Zoom, we discussed their reactions as the world fell apart around them. First came the pandemic and social distancing, then came the death of George Floyd and the response of the Black Lives Matter movement, both of which were imprinted on the lives of these students. This year was anything but dull, instead full of raw emotion and painful realizations of the fragility of the human condition and the extent to which we need one another. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for our students to chronicle their experiences — the good and the bad, the lessons learned, and ways in which they were forever changed by the events of the past four months. I invited all of my students to write an essay describing the ways in which these times had impacted their learning and their lives during or after their time at UCI. These are their voices. — Jessica Borelli , associate professor of psychological science

Becoming Socially Distant Through Technology: The Tech Contagion

The current state of affairs put the world on pause, but this pause gave me time to reflect on troubling matters. Time that so many others like me probably also desperately needed to heal without even knowing it. Sometimes it takes one’s world falling apart for the most beautiful mosaic to be built up from the broken pieces of wreckage. 

As the school year was coming to a close and summer was edging around the corner, I began reflecting on how people will spend their summer breaks if the country remains in its current state throughout the sunny season. Aside from living in the sunny beach state of California where people love their vitamin D and social festivities, I think some of the most damaging effects Covid-19 will have on us all has more to do with social distancing policies than with any inconveniences we now face due to the added precautions, despite how devastating it may feel that Disneyland is closed to all the local annual passholders or that the beaches may not be filled with sun-kissed California girls this summer. During this unprecedented time, I don’t think we should allow the rare opportunity we now have to be able to watch in real time how the effects of social distancing can impact our mental health. Before the pandemic, many of us were already engaging in a form of social distancing. Perhaps not the exact same way we are now practicing, but the technology that we have developed over recent years has led to a dramatic decline in our social contact and skills in general. 

The debate over whether we should remain quarantined during this time is not an argument I am trying to pursue. Instead, I am trying to encourage us to view this event as a unique time to study how social distancing can affect people’s mental health over a long period of time and with dramatic results due to the magnitude of the current issue. Although Covid-19 is new and unfamiliar to everyone, the isolation and separation we now face is not. For many, this type of behavior has already been a lifestyle choice for a long time. However, the current situation we all now face has allowed us to gain a more personal insight on how that experience feels due to the current circumstances. Mental illness continues to remain a prevalent problem throughout the world and for that reason could be considered a pandemic of a sort in and of itself long before the Covid-19 outbreak. 

One parallel that can be made between our current restrictions and mental illness reminds me in particular of hikikomori culture. Hikikomori is a phenomenon that originated in Japan but that has since spread internationally, now prevalent in many parts of the world, including the United States. Hikikomori is not a mental disorder but rather can appear as a symptom of a disorder. People engaging in hikikomori remain confined in their houses and often their rooms for an extended period of time, often over the course of many years. This action of voluntary confinement is an extreme form of withdrawal from society and self-isolation. Hikikomori affects a large percent of people in Japan yearly and the problem continues to become more widespread with increasing occurrences being reported around the world each year. While we know this problem has continued to increase, the exact number of people practicing hikikomori is unknown because there is a large amount of stigma surrounding the phenomenon that inhibits people from seeking help. This phenomenon cannot be written off as culturally defined because it is spreading to many parts of the world. With the technology we now have, and mental health issues on the rise and expected to increase even more so after feeling the effects of the current pandemic, I think we will definitely see a rise in the number of people engaging in this social isolation, especially with the increase in legitimate fears we now face that appear to justify the previously considered irrational fears many have associated with social gatherings. We now have the perfect sample of people to provide answers about how this form of isolation can affect people over time. 

Likewise, with the advancements we have made to technology not only is it now possible to survive without ever leaving the confines of your own home, but it also makes it possible for us to “fulfill” many of our social interaction needs. It’s very unfortunate, but in addition to the success we have gained through our advancements we have also experienced a great loss. With new technology, I am afraid that we no longer engage with others the way we once did. Although some may say the advancements are for the best, I wonder, at what cost? It is now commonplace to see a phone on the table during a business meeting or first date. Even worse is how many will feel inclined to check their phone during important or meaningful interactions they are having with people face to face. While our technology has become smarter, we have become dumber when it comes to social etiquette. As we all now constantly carry a mini computer with us everywhere we go, we have in essence replaced our best friends. We push others away subconsciously as we reach for our phones during conversations. We no longer remember phone numbers because we have them all saved in our phones. We find comfort in looking down at our phones during those moments of free time we have in public places before our meetings begin. These same moments were once the perfect time to make friends, filled with interactive banter. We now prefer to stare at other people on our phones for hours on end, and often live a sedentary lifestyle instead of going out and interacting with others ourselves. 

These are just a few among many issues the advances to technology led to long ago. We have forgotten how to practice proper tech-etiquette and we have been inadvertently practicing social distancing long before it was ever required. Now is a perfect time for us to look at the society we have become and how we incurred a different kind of pandemic long before the one we currently face. With time, as the social distancing regulations begin to lift, people may possibly begin to appreciate life and connecting with others more than they did before as a result of the unique experience we have shared in together while apart.

Maybe the world needed a time-out to remember how to appreciate what it had but forgot to experience. Life is to be lived through experience, not to be used as a pastime to observe and compare oneself with others. I’ll leave you with a simple reminder: never forget to take care and love more because in a world where life is often unpredictable and ever changing, one cannot risk taking time or loved ones for granted. With that, I bid you farewell, fellow comrades, like all else, this too shall pass, now go live your best life!

Privilege in a Pandemic 

Covid-19 has impacted millions of Americans who have been out of work for weeks, thus creating a financial burden. Without a job and the certainty of knowing when one will return to work, paying rent and utilities has been a problem for many. With unemployment on the rise, relying on unemployment benefits has become a necessity for millions of people. According to the Washington Post , unemployment rose to 14.7% in April which is considered to be the worst since the Great Depression. 

Those who are not worried about the financial aspect or the thought never crossed their minds have privilege. Merriam Webster defines privilege as “a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor.” Privilege can have a negative connotation. What you choose to do with your privilege is what matters. Talking about privilege can bring discomfort, but the discomfort it brings can also carry the benefit of drawing awareness to one’s privilege, which can lead the person to take steps to help others. 

I am a first-generation college student who recently transferred to a four-year university. When schools began to close, and students had to leave their on-campus housing, many lost their jobs.I was able to stay on campus because I live in an apartment. I am fortunate to still have a job, although the hours are minimal. My parents help pay for school expenses, including housing, tuition, and food. I do not have to worry about paying rent or how to pay for food because my parents are financially stable to help me. However, there are millions of college students who are not financially stable or do not have the support system I have. Here, I have the privilege and, thus, I am the one who can offer help to others. I may not have millions in funding, but volunteering for centers who need help is where I am able to help. Those who live in California can volunteer through Californians For All  or at food banks, shelter facilities, making calls to seniors, etc. 

I was not aware of my privilege during these times until I started reading more articles about how millions of people cannot afford to pay their rent, and landlords are starting to send notices of violations. Rather than feel guilty and be passive about it, I chose to put my privilege into a sense of purpose: Donating to nonprofits helping those affected by COVID-19, continuing to support local businesses, and supporting businesses who are donating profits to those affected by COVID-19.

My World is Burning 

As I write this, my friends are double checking our medical supplies and making plans to buy water and snacks to pass out at the next protest we are attending. We write down the number for the local bailout fund on our arms and pray that we’re lucky enough not to have to use it should things get ugly. We are part of a pivotal event, the kind of movement that will forever have a place in history. Yet, during this revolution, I have papers to write and grades to worry about, as I’m in the midst of finals. 

My professors have offered empty platitudes. They condemn the violence and acknowledge the stress and pain that so many of us are feeling, especially the additional weight that this carries for students of color. I appreciate their show of solidarity, but it feels meaningless when it is accompanied by requests to complete research reports and finalize presentations. Our world is on fire. Literally. On my social media feeds, I scroll through image after image of burning buildings and police cars in flames. How can I be asked to focus on school when my community is under siege? When police are continuing to murder black people, adding additional names to the ever growing list of their victims. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. George Floyd. David Mcatee. And, now, Rayshard Brooks. 

It already felt like the world was being asked of us when the pandemic started and classes continued. High academic expectations were maintained even when students now faced the challenges of being locked down, often trapped in small spaces with family or roommates. Now we are faced with another public health crisis in the form of police violence and once again it seems like educational faculty are turning a blind eye to the impact that this has on the students. I cannot study for exams when I am busy brushing up on my basic first-aid training, taking notes on the best techniques to stop heavy bleeding and treat chemical burns because at the end of the day, if these protests turn south, I will be entering a warzone. Even when things remain peaceful, there is an ugliness that bubbles just below the surface. When beginning the trek home, I have had armed members of the National Guard follow me and my friends. While kneeling in silence, I have watched police officers cock their weapons and laugh, pointing out targets in the crowd. I have been emailing my professors asking for extensions, trying to explain that if something is turned in late, it could be the result of me being detained or injured. I don’t want to be penalized for trying to do what I wholeheartedly believe is right. 

I have spent my life studying and will continue to study these institutions that have been so instrumental in the oppression and marginalization of black and indigenous communities. Yet, now that I have the opportunity to be on the frontlines actively fighting for the change our country so desperately needs, I feel that this study is more of a hindrance than a help to the cause. Writing papers and reading books can only take me so far and I implore that professors everywhere recognize that requesting their students split their time and energy between finals and justice is an impossible ask.

Opportunity to Serve

Since the start of the most drastic change of our lives, I have had the privilege of helping feed more than 200 different families in the Santa Ana area and even some neighboring cities. It has been an immense pleasure seeing the sheer joy and happiness of families as they come to pick up their box of food from our site, as well as a $50 gift card to Northgate, a grocery store in Santa Ana. Along with donating food and helping feed families, the team at the office, including myself, have dedicated this time to offering psychosocial and mental health check-ups for the families we serve. 

Every day I go into the office I start my day by gathering files of our families we served between the months of January, February, and March and calling them to check on how they are doing financially, mentally, and how they have been affected by COVID-19. As a side project, I have been putting together Excel spreadsheets of all these families’ struggles and finding a way to turn their situation into a success story to share with our board at PY-OCBF and to the community partners who make all of our efforts possible. One of the things that has really touched me while working with these families is how much of an impact this nonprofit organization truly has on family’s lives. I have spoken with many families who I just call to check up on and it turns into an hour call sharing about how much of a change they have seen in their child who went through our program. Further, they go on to discuss that because of our program, their children have a different perspective on the drugs they were using before and the group of friends they were hanging out with. Of course, the situation is different right now as everyone is being told to stay at home; however, there are those handful of kids who still go out without asking for permission, increasing the likelihood they might contract this disease and pass it to the rest of the family. We are working diligently to provide support for these parents and offering advice to talk to their kids in order to have a serious conversation with their kids so that they feel heard and validated. 

Although the novel Coronavirus has impacted the lives of millions of people not just on a national level, but on a global level, I feel that in my current position, it has opened doors for me that would have otherwise not presented themselves. Fortunately, I have been offered a full-time position at the Project Youth Orange County Bar Foundation post-graduation that I have committed to already. This invitation came to me because the organization received a huge grant for COVID-19 relief to offer to their staff and since I was already part-time, they thought I would be a good fit to join the team once mid-June comes around. I was very excited and pleased to be recognized for the work I have done at the office in front of all staff. I am immensely grateful for this opportunity. I will work even harder to provide for the community and to continue changing the lives of adolescents, who have steered off the path of success. I will use my time as a full-time employee to polish my resume, not forgetting that the main purpose of my moving to Irvine was to become a scholar and continue the education that my parents couldn’t attain. I will still be looking for ways to get internships with other fields within criminology. One specific interest that I have had since being an intern and a part-time employee in this organization is the work of the Orange County Coroner’s Office. I don’t exactly know what enticed me to find it appealing as many would say that it is an awful job in nature since it relates to death and seeing people in their worst state possible. However, I feel that the only way for me to truly know if I want to pursue such a career in forensic science will be to just dive into it and see where it takes me. 

I can, without a doubt, say that the Coronavirus has impacted me in a way unlike many others, and for that I am extremely grateful. As I continue working, I can also state that many people are becoming more and more hopeful as time progresses. With people now beginning to say Stage Two of this stay-at-home order is about to allow retailers and other companies to begin doing curbside delivery, many families can now see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Let’s Do Better

This time of the year is meant to be a time of celebration; however, it has been difficult to feel proud or excited for many of us when it has become a time of collective mourning and sorrow, especially for the Black community. There has been an endless amount of pain, rage, and helplessness that has been felt throughout our nation because of the growing list of Black lives we have lost to violence and brutality.

To honor the lives that we have lost, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Oscar Grant, Michael Brown, Trayon Martin, and all of the other Black lives that have been taken away, may they Rest in Power.

Throughout my college experience, I have become more exposed to the various identities and the upbringings of others, which led to my own self-reflection on my own privileged and marginalized identities. I identify as Colombian, German, and Mexican; however navigating life as a mixed race, I have never been able to identify or have one culture more salient than the other. I am visibly white-passing and do not hold any strong ties with any of my ethnic identities, which used to bring me feelings of guilt and frustration, for I would question whether or not I could be an advocate for certain communities, and whether or not I could claim the identity of a woman of color. In the process of understanding my positionality, I began to wonder what space I belonged in, where I could speak up, and where I should take a step back for others to speak. I found myself in a constant theme of questioning what is my narrative and slowly began to realize that I could not base it off lone identities and that I have had the privilege to move through life without my identities defining who I am. Those initial feelings of guilt and confusion transformed into growth, acceptance, and empowerment.

This journey has driven me to educate myself more about the social inequalities and injustices that people face and to focus on what I can do for those around me. It has motivated me to be more culturally responsive and competent, so that I am able to best advocate for those around me. Through the various roles I have worked in, I have been able to listen to a variety of communities’ narratives and experiences, which has allowed me to extend my empathy to these communities while also pushing me to continue educating myself on how I can best serve and empower them. By immersing myself amongst different communities, I have been given the honor of hearing others’ stories and experiences, which has inspired me to commit myself to support and empower others.

I share my story of navigating through my privileged and marginalized identities in hopes that it encourages others to explore their own identities. This journey is not an easy one, and it is an ongoing learning process that will come with various mistakes. I have learned that with facing our privileges comes feelings of guilt, discomfort, and at times, complacency. It is very easy to become ignorant when we are not affected by different issues, but I challenge those who read this to embrace the discomfort. With these emotions, I have found it important to reflect on the source of discomfort and guilt, for although they are a part of the process, in taking the steps to become more aware of the systemic inequalities around us, understanding the source of discomfort can better inform us on how we perpetuate these systemic inequalities. If we choose to embrace ignorance, we refuse to acknowledge the systems that impact marginalized communities and refuse to honestly and openly hear cries for help. If we choose our own comfort over the lives of those being affected every day, we can never truly honor, serve, or support these communities.

I challenge any non-Black person, including myself, to stop remaining complacent when injustices are committed. We need to consistently recognize and acknowledge how the Black community is disproportionately affected in every injustice experienced and call out anti-Blackness in every role, community, and space we share. We need to keep ourselves and others accountable when we make mistakes or fall back into patterns of complacency or ignorance. We need to continue educating ourselves instead of relying on the emotional labor of the Black community to continuously educate us on the history of their oppressions. We need to collectively uplift and empower one another to heal and rise against injustice. We need to remember that allyship ends when action ends.

To the Black community, you are strong. You deserve to be here. The recent events are emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausting, and the need for rest to take care of your mental, physical, and emotional well-being are at an all time high. If you are able, take the time to regain your energy, feel every emotion, and remind yourself of the power you have inside of you. You are not alone.

The Virus That Makes You Forget

Following Jan. 1 of 2020 many of my classmates and I continued to like, share, and forward the same meme. The meme included any image but held the same phrase: I can see 2020. For many of us, 2020 was a beacon of hope. For the Class of 2020, this meant walking on stage in front of our families. Graduation meant becoming an adult, finding a job, or going to graduate school. No matter what we were doing in our post-grad life, we were the new rising stars ready to take on the world with a positive outlook no matter what the future held. We felt that we had a deal with the universe that we were about to be noticed for our hard work, our hardships, and our perseverance.

Then March 17 of 2020 came to pass with California Gov. Newman ordering us to stay at home, which we all did. However, little did we all know that the world we once had open to us would only be forgotten when we closed our front doors.

Life became immediately uncertain and for many of us, that meant graduation and our post-graduation plans including housing, careers, education, food, and basic standards of living were revoked! We became the forgotten — a place from which many of us had attempted to rise by attending university. The goals that we were told we could set and the plans that we were allowed to make — these were crushed before our eyes.

Eighty days before graduation, in the first several weeks of quarantine, I fell extremely ill; both unfortunately and luckily, I was isolated. All of my roommates had moved out of the student apartments leaving me with limited resources, unable to go to the stores to pick up medicine or food, and with insufficient health coverage to afford a doctor until my throat was too swollen to drink water. For nearly three weeks, I was stuck in bed, I was unable to apply to job deadlines, reach out to family, and have contact with the outside world. I was forgotten.

Forty-five days before graduation, I had clawed my way out of illness and was catching up on an honors thesis about media depictions of sexual exploitation within the American political system, when I was relayed the news that democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was accused of sexual assault. However, when reporting this news to close friends who had been devastated and upset by similar claims against past politicians, they all were too tired and numb from the quarantine to care. Just as I had written hours before reading the initial story, history was repeating, and it was not only I who COVID-19 had forgotten, but now survivors of violence.

After this revelation, I realize the silencing factor that COVID-19 has. Not only does it have the power to terminate the voices of our older generations, but it has the power to silence and make us forget the voices of every generation. Maybe this is why social media usage has gone up, why we see people creating new social media accounts, posting more, attempting to reach out to long lost friends. We do not want to be silenced, moreover, we cannot be silenced. Silence means that we have been forgotten and being forgotten is where injustice and uncertainty occurs. By using social media, pressing like on a post, or even sending a hate message, means that someone cares and is watching what you are doing. If there is no interaction, I am stuck in the land of indifference.

This is a place that I, and many others, now reside, captured and uncertain. In 2020, my plan was to graduate Cum Laude, dean's honor list, with three honors programs, three majors, and with research and job experience that stretched over six years. I would then go into my first year of graduate school, attempting a dual Juris Doctorate. I would be spending my time experimenting with new concepts, new experiences, and new relationships. My life would then be spent giving a microphone to survivors of domestic violence and sex crimes. However, now the plan is wiped clean, instead I sit still bound to graduate in 30 days with no home to stay, no place to work, and no future education to come back to. I would say I am overly qualified, but pandemic makes me lost in a series of names and masked faces.

Welcome to My Cage: The Pandemic and PTSD

When I read the campuswide email notifying students of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the coronavirus pandemic, I was sitting on my couch practicing a research presentation I was going to give a few hours later. For a few minutes, I sat there motionless, trying to digest the meaning of the words as though they were from a language other than my own, familiar sounds strung together in way that was wholly unintelligible to me. I tried but failed to make sense of how this could affect my life. After the initial shock had worn off, I mobilized quickly, snapping into an autopilot mode of being I knew all too well. I began making mental checklists, sharing the email with my friends and family, half of my brain wondering if I should make a trip to the grocery store to stockpile supplies and the other half wondering how I was supposed take final exams in the midst of so much uncertainty. The most chilling realization was knowing I had to wait powerlessly as the fate of the world unfolded, frozen with anxiety as I figured out my place in it all.

These feelings of powerlessness and isolation are familiar bedfellows for me. Early October of 2015, shortly after beginning my first year at UCI, I was diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Despite having had years of psychological treatment for my condition, including Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Retraining, the flashbacks, paranoia, and nightmares still emerge unwarranted. People have referred to the pandemic as a collective trauma. For me, the pandemic has not only been a collective trauma, it has also been the reemergence of a personal trauma. The news of the pandemic and the implications it has for daily life triggered a reemergence of symptoms that were ultimately ignited by the overwhelming sense of helplessness that lies in waiting, as I suddenly find myself navigating yet another situation beyond my control. Food security, safety, and my sense of self have all been shaken by COVID-19.

The first few weeks after UCI transitioned into remote learning and the governor issued the stay-at-home order, I hardly got any sleep. My body was cycling through hypervigilance and derealization, and my sleep was interrupted by intrusive nightmares oscillating between flashbacks and frightening snippets from current events. Any coping methods I had developed through hard-won efforts over the past few years — leaving my apartment for a change of scenery, hanging out with friends, going to the gym — were suddenly made inaccessible to me due to the stay-at-home orders, closures of non-essential businesses, and many of my friends breaking their campus leases to move back to their family homes. So for me, learning to cope during COVID-19 quarantine means learning to function with my re-emerging PTSD symptoms and without my go-to tools. I must navigate my illness in a rapidly evolving world, one where some of my internalized fears, such as running out of food and living in an unsafe world, are made progressively more external by the minute and broadcasted on every news platform; fears that I could no longer escape, being confined in the tight constraints of my studio apartment’s walls. I cannot shake the devastating effects of sacrifice that I experience as all sense of control has been stripped away from me.

However, amidst my mental anguish, I have realized something important—experiencing these same PTSD symptoms during a global pandemic feels markedly different than it did years ago. Part of it might be the passage of time and the growth in my mindset, but there is something else that feels very different. Currently, there is widespread solidarity and support for all of us facing the chaos of COVID-19, whether they are on the frontlines of the fight against the illness or they are self-isolating due to new rules, restrictions, and risks. This was in stark contrast to what it was like to have a mental disorder. The unity we all experience as a result of COVID-19 is one I could not have predicted. I am not the only student heartbroken over a cancelled graduation, I am not the only student who is struggling to adapt to remote learning, and I am not the only person in this world who has to make sacrifices.

Between observations I’ve made on social media and conversations with my friends and classmates, this time we are all enduring great pain and stress as we attempt to adapt to life’s challenges. As a Peer Assistant for an Education class, I have heard from many students of their heartache over the remote learning model, how difficult it is to study in a non-academic environment, and how unmotivated they have become this quarter. This is definitely something I can relate to; as of late, it has been exceptionally difficult to find motivation and put forth the effort for even simple activities as a lack of energy compounds the issue and hinders basic needs. However, the willingness of people to open up about their distress during the pandemic is unlike the self-imposed social isolation of many people who experience mental illness regularly. Something this pandemic has taught me is that I want to live in a world where mental illness receives more support and isn’t so taboo and controversial. Why is it that we are able to talk about our pain, stress, and mental illness now, but aren’t able to talk about it outside of a global pandemic? People should be able to talk about these hardships and ask for help, much like during these circumstances.

It has been nearly three months since the coronavirus crisis was declared a pandemic. I still have many bad days that I endure where my symptoms can be overwhelming. But somehow, during my good days — and some days, merely good moments — I can appreciate the resilience I have acquired over the years and the common ground I share with others who live through similar circumstances. For veterans of trauma and mental illness, this isn’t the first time we are experiencing pain in an extreme and disastrous way. This is, however, the first time we are experiencing it with the rest of the world. This strange new feeling of solidarity as I read and hear about the experiences of other people provides some small comfort as I fight my way out of bed each day. As we fight to survive this pandemic, I hope to hold onto this feeling of togetherness and acceptance of pain, so that it will always be okay for people to share their struggles. We don’t know what the world will look like days, months, or years from now, but I hope that we can cultivate such a culture to make life much easier for people coping with mental illness.

A Somatic Pandemonium in Quarantine

I remember hearing that our brains create the color magenta all on their own. 

When I was younger I used to run out of my third-grade class because my teacher was allergic to the mold and sometimes would vomit in the trash can. My dad used to tell me that I used to always have to have something in my hands, later translating itself into the form of a hair tie around my wrist.

Sometimes, I think about the girl who used to walk on her tippy toes. medial and lateral nerves never planted, never grounded. We were the same in this way. My ability to be firmly planted anywhere was also withered. 

Was it from all the times I panicked? Or from the time I ran away and I blistered the soles of my feet 'til they were black from the summer pavement? Emetophobia. 

I felt it in the shower, dressing itself from the crown of my head down to the soles of my feet, noting the feeling onto my white board in an attempt to solidify it’s permanence.

As I breathed in the chemical blue transpiring from the Expo marker, everything was more defined. I laid down and when I looked up at the starlet lamp I had finally felt centered. Still. No longer fleeting. The grooves in the lamps glass forming a spiral of what felt to me like an artificial landscape of transcendental sparks. 

She’s back now, magenta, though I never knew she left or even ever was. Somehow still subconsciously always known. I had been searching for her in the tremors.

I can see her now in the daphnes, the golden rays from the sun reflecting off of the bark on the trees and the red light that glowed brighter, suddenly the town around me was warmer. A melting of hues and sharpened saturation that was apparent and reminded of the smell of oranges.

I threw up all of the carrots I ate just before. The trauma that my body kept as a memory of things that may or may not go wrong and the times that I couldn't keep my legs from running. Revelations bring memories bringing anxieties from fear and panic released from my body as if to say “NO LONGER!” 

I close my eyes now and my mind's eye is, too, more vivid than ever before. My inner eyelids lit up with orange undertones no longer a solid black, neurons firing, fire. Not the kind that burns you but the kind that can light up a dull space. Like the wick of a tea-lit candle. Magenta doesn’t exist. It is perception. A construct made of light waves, blue and red.

Demolition. Reconstruction. I walk down the street into this new world wearing my new mask, somatic senses tingling and I think to myself “Houston, I think we’ve just hit equilibrium.”

How COVID-19 Changed My Senior Year

During the last two weeks of Winter quarter, I watched the emails pour in. Spring quarter would be online, facilities were closing, and everyone was recommended to return home to their families, if possible. I resolved to myself that I would not move back home; I wanted to stay in my apartment, near my boyfriend, near my friends, and in the one place I had my own space. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic worsened, things continued to change quickly. Soon I learned my roommate/best friend would be cancelling her lease and moving back up to Northern California. We had made plans for my final quarter at UCI, as I would be graduating in June while she had another year, but all of the sudden, that dream was gone. In one whirlwind of a day, we tried to cram in as much of our plans as we could before she left the next day for good. There are still so many things – like hiking, going to museums, and showing her around my hometown – we never got to cross off our list.

Then, my boyfriend decided he would also be moving home, three hours away. Most of my sorority sisters were moving home, too. I realized if I stayed at school, I would be completely alone. My mom had been encouraging me to move home anyway, but I was reluctant to return to a house I wasn’t completely comfortable in. As the pandemic became more serious, gentle encouragement quickly turned into demands. I had to cancel my lease and move home.

I moved back in with my parents at the end of Spring Break; I never got to say goodbye to most of my friends, many of whom I’ll likely never see again – as long as the virus doesn’t change things, I’m supposed to move to New York over the summer to begin a PhD program in Criminal Justice. Just like that, my time at UCI had come to a close. No lasts to savor; instead I had piles of things to regret. In place of a final quarter filled with memorable lasts, such as the senior banquet or my sorority’s senior preference night, I’m left with a laundry list of things I missed out on. I didn’t get to look around the campus one last time like I had planned; I never got to take my graduation pictures in front of the UC Irvine sign. Commencement had already been cancelled. The lights had turned off in the theatre before the movie was over. I never got to find out how the movie ended.

Transitioning to a remote learning system wasn’t too bad, but I found that some professors weren’t adjusting their courses to the difficulties many students were facing. It turned out to be difficult to stay motivated, especially for classes that are pre-recorded and don’t have any face-to-face interaction. It’s hard to make myself care; I’m in my last few weeks ever at UCI, but it feels like I’m already in summer. School isn’t real, my classes aren’t real. I still put in the effort, but I feel like I’m not getting much out of my classes.

The things I had been looking forward to this quarter are gone; there will be no Undergraduate Research Symposium, where I was supposed to present two projects. My amazing internship with the US Postal Inspection Service is over prematurely and I never got to properly say goodbye to anyone I met there. I won’t receive recognition for the various awards and honors I worked so hard to achieve.

And I’m one of the lucky ones! I feel guilty for feeling bad about my situation, when I know there are others who have it much, much worse. I am like that quintessential spoiled child, complaining while there are essential workers working tirelessly, people with health concerns constantly fearing for their safety, and people dying every day. Yet knowing that doesn't help me from feeling I was robbed of my senior experience, something I worked very hard to achieve. I know it’s not nearly as important as what many others are going through. But nevertheless, this is my situation. I was supposed to be enjoying this final quarter with my friends and preparing to move on, not be stuck at home, grappling with my mental health and hiding out in my room to get some alone time from a family I don’t always get along with. And while I know it’s more difficult out there for many others, it’s still difficult for me.

The thing that stresses me out most is the uncertainty. Uncertainty for the future – how long will this pandemic last? How many more people have to suffer before things go back to “normal” – whatever that is? How long until I can see my friends and family again? And what does this mean for my academic future? Who knows what will happen between now and then? All that’s left to do is wait and hope that everything will work out for the best.

Looking back over my last few months at UCI, I wish I knew at the time that I was experiencing my lasts; it feels like I took so much for granted. If there is one thing this has all made me realize, it’s that nothing is certain. Everything we expect, everything we take for granted – none of it is a given. Hold on to what you have while you have it, and take the time to appreciate the wonderful things in life, because you never know when it will be gone.

Physical Distancing

Thirty days have never felt so long. April has been the longest month of the year. I have been through more in these past three months than in the past three years. The COVID-19 outbreak has had a huge impact on both physical and social well-being of a lot of Americans, including me. Stress has been governing the lives of so many civilians, in particular students and workers. In addition to causing a lack of motivation in my life, quarantine has also brought a wave of anxiety.

My life changed the moment the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and the government announced social distancing. My busy daily schedule, running from class to class and meeting to meeting, morphed into identical days, consisting of hour after hour behind a cold computer monitor. Human interaction and touch improve trust, reduce fear and increases physical well-being. Imagine the effects of removing the human touch and interaction from midst of society. Humans are profoundly social creatures. I cannot function without interacting and connecting with other people. Even daily acquaintances have an impact on me that is only noticeable once removed. As a result, the COVID-19 outbreak has had an extreme impact on me beyond direct symptoms and consequences of contracting the virus itself.

It was not until later that month, when out of sheer boredom I was scrolling through my call logs and I realized that I had called my grandmother more than ever. This made me realize that quarantine had created some positive impacts on my social interactions as well. This period of time has created an opportunity to check up on and connect with family and peers more often than we were able to. Even though we might be connecting solely through a screen, we are not missing out on being socially connected. Quarantine has taught me to value and prioritize social connection, and to recognize that we can find this type of connection not only through in-person gatherings, but also through deep heart to heart connections. Right now, my weekly Zoom meetings with my long-time friends are the most important events in my week. In fact, I have taken advantage of the opportunity to reconnect with many of my old friends and have actually had more meaningful conversations with them than before the isolation.

This situation is far from ideal. From my perspective, touch and in-person interaction is essential; however, we must overcome all difficulties that life throws at us with the best we are provided with. Therefore, perhaps we should take this time to re-align our motives by engaging in things that are of importance to us. I learned how to dig deep and find appreciation for all the small talks, gatherings, and face-to-face interactions. I have also realized that friendships are not only built on the foundation of physical presence but rather on meaningful conversations you get to have, even if they are through a cold computer monitor. My realization came from having more time on my hands and noticing the shift in conversations I was having with those around me. After all, maybe this isolation isn’t “social distancing”, but rather “physical distancing” until we meet again.

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How COVID-19 pandemic changed my life

Table of Contents

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the biggest challenges that our world has ever faced. People around the globe were affected in some way by this terrible disease, whether personally or not. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many people felt isolated and in a state of panic. They often found themselves lacking a sense of community, confidence, and trust. The health systems in many countries were able to successfully prevent and treat people with COVID-19-related diseases while providing early intervention services to those who may not be fully aware that they are infected (Rume & Islam, 2020). Personally, this pandemic has brought numerous changes and challenges to my life. The COVID-19 pandemic affected my social, academic, and economic lifestyle positively and negatively.

Social and Academic Changes

One of the changes brought by the pandemic was economic changes that occurred very drastically (Haleem, Javaid, & Vaishya, 2020). During the pandemic, food prices started to rise, affecting the amount of money my parents could spend on goods and services. We had to reduce the food we bought as our budgets were stretched. My family also had to eliminate unhealthy food bought in bulk, such as crisps and chocolate bars. Furthermore, the pandemic made us more aware of the importance of keeping our homes clean, especially regarding cooking food. Lastly, it also made us more aware of how we talked to other people when they were ill and stayed home with them rather than being out and getting on with other things.

Furthermore, COVID-19 had a significant effect on my academic life. Immediately, measures to curb the pandemic were announced, such as closing all learning institutions in the country; my school life changed. The change began when our school implemented the online education system to ensure that we continued with our education during the lockdown period. At first, this affected me negatively because when learning was not happening in a formal environment, I struggled academically since I was not getting the face-to-face interaction with the teachers I needed. Furthermore, forcing us to attend online caused my classmates and me to feel disconnected from the knowledge being taught because we were unable to have peer participation in class. However, as the pandemic subsided, we grew accustomed to this learning mode. We realized the effects on our performance and learning satisfaction were positive, as it seemed to promote emotional and behavioral changes necessary to function in a virtual world. Students who participated in e-learning during the pandemic developed more ownership of the course requirement, increased their emotional intelligence and self-awareness, improved their communication skills, and learned to work together as a community.

If there is an area that the pandemic affected was the mental health of my family and myself. The COVID-19 pandemic caused increased anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns that were difficult for my family and me to manage alone. Our ability to learn social resilience skills, such as self-management, was tested numerous times. One of the most visible challenges we faced was social isolation and loneliness. The multiple lockdowns made it difficult to interact with my friends and family, leading to loneliness. The changes in communication exacerbated the problem as interactions moved from face-to-face to online communication using social media and text messages. Furthermore, having family members and loved ones separated from us due to distance, unavailability of phones, and the internet created a situation of fear among us, as we did not know whether they were all right. Moreover, some people within my circle found it more challenging to communicate with friends, family, and co-workers due to poor communication skills. This was mainly attributed to anxiety or a higher risk of spreading the disease. It was also related to a poor understanding of creating and maintaining relationships during this period.

Positive Changes

In addition, this pandemic has brought some positive changes with it. First, it had been a significant catalyst for strengthening relationships and neighborhood ties. It has encouraged a sense of community because family members, neighbors, friends, and community members within my area were all working together to help each other out. Before the pandemic, everybody focused on their business, the children going to school while the older people went to work. There was not enough time to bond with each other. Well, the pandemic changed that, something that has continued until now that everything is returning to normal. In our home, it strengthened the relationship between myself and my siblings and parents. This is because we started spending more time together as a family, which enhanced our sense of understanding of ourselves.

The pandemic has been a challenging time for many people. I can confidently state that it was a significant and potentially unprecedented change in our daily life. By changing how we do things and relate with our family and friends, the pandemic has shaped our future life experiences and shown that during crises, we can come together and make a difference in each other’s lives. Therefore, I embrace wholesomely the changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic in my life.

• Haleem, A., Javaid, M., & Vaishya, R. (2020). Effects of COVID-19 pandemic in daily life.  Current medicine research and practice ,  10 (2), 78.
• Rume, T., & Islam, S. D. U. (2020). Environmental effects of COVID-19 pandemic and potential strategies of sustainability.  Heliyon ,  6 (9), e04965.
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Writing About COVID-19 in a College Admissions Essay

Wordvice contributing author

The Wordvice Workshop

Many college applicants will be tempted to write about the coronavirus in their admissions essays this fall. It is common knowledge to most students that their admissions essays should be about experiences and people that are important to them. And, for better or for worse, the pandemic has created memorable experiences for many. Furthermore, many college applications — including the Common Application and Coalition Application — are introducing optional COVID-19 prompts for 2020–2021 applications . What is the best way to approach COVID-19 in an admissions essay? Here are five guidelines for writing about the coronavirus in a college application.

1. Limit writing about COVID-19 to designated spaces.

Many college admissions consultants are advising students against writing about COVID-19 in their admissions essays. Their reasoning is simple: everyone else will be doing the same thing. Students who make their pandemic experiences at the center of their essays are in danger of writing stories that anyone can tell. Mark Sklarow, CEO of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, said in an interview with Insider , “Please don’t write an essay about the coronavirus. Can you imagine a poor admissions director reading 2000 personal essays and they’re all going to be on the coronavirus? Whatever you were going to write about two months ago, stick with that.”

If you must write about COVID-19, strongly consider limiting yourself to answering designated prompts on the subject. The Common App has explicitly stated that they want students to answer COVID-19 questions only once while using the rest of the application as they would have before to share their interests and perspectives beyond COVID-19 . Many other applications are also providing coronavirus-specific prompts with the purpose of addressing the individual struggles and triumphs of students. Students should make use of these spaces and commit the rest of their application to writing about experiences unrelated to COVID-19.

2. Do answer optional prompts that are specifically about COVID-19.

Although students are not encouraged to make their applications solely about COVID-19, it is advisable to answer any coronavirus-specific prompts an application provides — even if they are optional. The new COVID-19 prompt is another opportunity for students to reveal something about themselves to admission officers. In particular, it gives students the chance to contextualize their experience under these difficult circumstances . A carefully crafted response to an optional coronavirus prompt can strengthen an application.

However, if you feel that you have not been affected by the pandemic, you should consider not responding to optional COVID-19 prompts. Mindlessly filling space may only damage an already strong application. Every part of an application — including a coronavirus-specific prompt — should work towards painting the applicant in a compelling light. There is no point in writing just for the sake of filling space.

3. When writing about COVID-19, make unique connections and use unconventional language.

A stand-out essay describes an uncommon topic, makes uncommon connections, or uses uncommon language . COVID-19 has affected everyone — this makes COVID-19 a common topic. Therefore, an essay about the coronavirus should make uncommon connections and use uncommon language.

You should think about the values you can connect to your pandemic experience. Ideally, these values will be unexpected in the context of the pandemic. Brainstorming values other applicants are likely to invoke may help with determining more unique connections. For example, many applicants will write about family in relation to COVID-19. Therefore, an essay about family is unlikely to stand out, unless it’s connected to another, more surprising value.

An admissions essay about COVID-19 does not significantly differ from an admissions essay about anything else. Like all admissions essays, it should demonstrate an applicant’s capacity to coherently support ideas with logical arguments and showcase them in a distinctively positive light.

Students who are struggling with English — or simply want to elevate their essays — may consider an online admissions editing service . Many editing companies employ professional admissions editors who can take an essay to the next level. Such online services not only correct errors in grammar and mechanics but also elevate an essay in terms of vocabulary, style, and flow.

As always, students should focus on telling genuine, personal stories that emphasize their unique abilities and potential.

Written by Wordvice contributing author

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• Open access
• Published: 07 August 2024

Well-being among university students in the post-COVID-19 era: a cross-country survey

• M. Bersia 1 ,
• L. Charrier 1 ,
• G. Zanaga 1 , 2 ,
• T. Gaspar 3 ,
• C. Moreno-Maldonado 4 ,
• P. Grimaldi 1 , 2 ,
• E. Koumantakis 1 , 2 ,
• P. Dalmasso 1 &
• R. I. Comoretto 1  

Scientific Reports volume  14 , Article number:  18296 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Health care
• Human behaviour

University students have to handle crucial challenges for their future lives, such as succeeding in academic studies and finding attachment figures. These processes could potentially involve their well-being and mental health, with possible sociocultural differences based on the country of study. In order to explore such potential differences, a cross-sectional, multi-center survey was performed involving students from the University of Torino (Italy), Sevilla (Spain), and Lusòfona (Portugal). The survey, conducted from May to November 2023, investigated students’ demographic and educational details, socioeconomic status, social support, mental health, academic environment, perceived COVID-19 pandemic impact, and future plans. Demographic profiles showed a predominance of female participants and straight sexual orientation, followed by bisexuality. Italian students showed the lowest levels of mental well-being and the highest rates of mental problems (anxiety and depression) and suicidal risk across the three countries despite the relatively similar profiles of social support. The prevalence of the students’ confidence in their professional future is higher in Spain than in Italy and Portugal. This study provides a comprehensive examination of university students’ mental health and well-being in three Southern European countries, addressing the major mental health challenges among university students and offering valuable insights for public health purposes.

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Introduction.

The university years represent an intriguing life period with plenty of challenges, including academic issues, emotional delusions, and problems related to the transition between the end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood 1 . The interplay of academic pressures, social dynamics, and developmental transitions provides a delicate balance in which mental vulnerabilities can easily thrive 2 , 3 , 4 . Furthermore, university experience can move the needle: indeed, college students are at higher risk of developing a mental condition compared to their non-college peers 5 , 6 . In particular, Beiter pinpointed three college-related individual concerns that may heighten mental risk: struggles with academic performance, intense pressure to succeed, and uncertainty about post-graduation life 7 . Furthermore, academic environments themselves, demanding high effort and commitment, could play a role in impairing the university experience 8 , 9 , 10 . All these elements could synergically stimulate the onset of both burnout and several mental conditions, such as anxiety, depression, and suicidality 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 . In this regard, a prevalence of about 30% % of depressive and anxiety symptoms among university students has been estimated 12 . In particular, the female gender, the pre-existing mental health conditions, and the lower socioeconomic status seem to be additional risk factors across multiple studies 13 , 14 , 15 . On the other hand, good social support can mitigate the above-mentioned risk factors for mental health, playing a crucial protective role as a source of motivation and promoting healthier lifestyles 16 . Further, the perceived social support could also represent a relevant individual background, capable of encouraging students’ resilience and having beneficial effects on academic performance 16 .

Beyond the well-known influential factors, the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly impacted students’ mental health worldwide in both the short- and long term. In the immediate phase after the COVID-19 pandemic eruption, the impairment was observed mainly in terms of difficulties concentrating, disruptions of sleep patterns, concerns about academic performance, and increased anxiety and depression 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 . Furthermore, several researchers assessed the impact of prolonged exposure to the pandemic on cognitive and affective processing among students, observing an increase in the prevalence and severity of conditions such as anxiety, depression, suicidality, chronic sleeping difficulties, appetite changes, and health-related anxiety 21 , 22 , 23 . More specifically, the pandemic could have contributed to impaired mental health also among college students through the implementation of distancing measures leading to distance learning modalities, social isolation, lack of access to traditional support services, and family financial difficulties 24 , 25 . Additionally, research suggests that female students and those residing in lower-quality housing during lockdowns displayed exacerbated declines in mental health 25 , 26 .

In May 2022, the WHO Director-General declared the global emergence related to the COVID-19 pandemic concluded 27 . However, the pandemic long-term consequences on youths’ mental health are still a relevant public concern, and they still deserve careful surveillance over time to address targeted mitigation policies. The still scarce literature on the topic mainly relies on data from national-level surveys, hampering the adoption of a transcultural approach 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 .

To our knowledge, literature still lacks studies assessing and comparing college students’ mental health and well-being across different environments in the delicate post-pandemic phase. In order to address these research gaps, the present study describes the main findings of an international project that explored university students' mental health and well-being in three universities in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. These Mediterranean countries share cultural and environmental similarities (e.g. dietary habits, natural environment, social bounds) 33 , 34 , 35 , despite the societal peculiarities (e.g. financial situation, physical activity habits) and the adoption of different pandemic-related measures potentially influencing mental health and well-being outcomes 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 . More specifically, the aim was to discern commonalities and differences in students’ characteristics and experiences across these countries through a comparative approach, trying to offer a more detailed understanding of well-being patterns among college students in the post-COVID-19 era.

Survey design

A cross-sectional and multi-center survey was conducted between May and November 2023 in three European universities, the University of Torino (Italy), Sevilla (Spain), and Lusòfona (Portugal).

Participants

Students were eligible for enrollment in the study if they were (1) between 18 and 35 years old and (2) attending a bachelor's or master’s degree program. Those who declined to provide informed consent were excluded from the study. All the eligible students (about 79,000 students in Italy, 60,000 in Spain, and 15,000 in Portugal) received an institutional email with a link to an anonymous online questionnaire. Students could agree to participate in the study by checking the box at the bottom of the personal data treatment information sheet on the first page of the online questionnaire. There was also a section explaining the study’s goals, clarifying that there was no obligation to complete the questionnaire and assuring confidentiality and anonymity of the collected data. Finally, the research team did not offer any incentives to increase recruitment nor played an active role in selecting and/or targeting specific subpopulations of students. Participation was entirely voluntary, with students having the option to opt-out at any stage. Informed consent was obtained from all subjects.

Ethical considerations

Data was collected anonymously, no personal identifiers were collected, and the IP address was not registered. Approval for this study has been obtained from the institutional ethics boards of the participating universities (Prot. no. 0059546 of 30 January 2023, for the University of Torino; approval no. 20/23 of 16 May 2023 obtained by the Comité de Ética en la Investigación de Sevilla; approval no. 9 of 8 March 2023 received by the Ethics and Deontology Commission For Scientific Research (CEDIC) for the Lusofona University). The study was conducted in accordance with the international guidelines and regulations and the Declaration of Helsinki.

Questionnaire

A multi-language online survey (i.e., in English, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese) was implemented on the REDCap platform of the University of Torino 40 , 41 . Overall, we adopted standardized scales validated in English. When available, we used the validated versions of the scales in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; otherwise, the English scales underwent the forward–backward translation process. The specific process for each scale, with the relevant validation work, can be found in the Supplementary file, Table S1 . Respondents could choose the language in which they would fill out the questionnaire. The survey encompassed the following key components: demographic details (e.g., age, sex, sexual orientation), educational profile (course area, year of study, progress), socioeconomic status, social support, mental health and well-being, perceived COVID-19 impact, academic stress, and future perspectives information.

In particular, information related to sex at birth and sexual orientation was assessed following the GeniuSS Group guidelines 42 . Sexual orientation was asked as follows: ‘How do you identify yourself?’, adopting as possible answers: ‘straight’, ‘lesbian’, ‘gay’, ‘bisexual’, ‘queer’, ‘pansexual’, ‘asexual’, ‘unlabelled’, ‘questioning’, ‘other’.

Socioeconomic status (SES)

The students’ socioeconomic status was investigated using the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status 43 . The scale visually represented a ladder in which steps were associated with numbers ranging from 1 (low perceived SES) to 10 (high perceived SES). Respondents were then asked to place themselves on the ladder compared to their peers. The personal financial situation was evaluated through one further question with four possible answers: ‘dependent on family’, ‘work’, ‘scholarship’, or ‘other’.

Social support

Social support was assessed using a well-known validated psychometric tool, the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) 44 . The scale consists of 12 items exploring an individual's perceived social support distributed across three subscales: Family, Friends, and Significant Other Support. Individuals rated their agreement with each item on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from ’strongly disagree’ to ’strongly agree’. The scores for each subscale are added up and then divided by 4, while for the overall support, the sum score is divided by 12. Both the overall and subscales scores (ranging from 1 to 7) provide a measure of the individual’s perceived social support. Low, medium, and high social support are defined based on the overall score (i.e. 1–2.9, 3–5, and 5.1–7, respectively). An excellent internal consistency was found for the overall scale (α > 0.92), and the three subscales, consistently in the three countries.

Mental health

Mental health was evaluated using different validated tools based on the specific characteristics under investigation. Depression and anxiety were assessed through the Patient Health Questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2) 45 and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-2 (GAD-2) 46 , respectively. These two brief self-report instruments derived from the longer Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) 47 and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) 48 questionnaire, both commonly used tools in mental health assessments. Participants were asked to indicate the frequency of presentation of each symptom using a 4-point scale ranging from 0, ’not at all’, to 3, ‘nearly every day’. A total score ≥ 3 on the PHQ-2 assessment suggests the presence of anxiety symptoms, while a score ≥ 3 on the GAD-2 evaluation indicates the occurrence of depressive traits. The PHQ-2 and the GAD-2 scales showed good internal consistency (α = 0.80 and α = 0.85, respectively), consistently in the three countries.

Suicidal behaviors and ideation were evaluated with the Suicide Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised (SBQ-R) 49 . This self-report validated questionnaire includes four items inquiring about different aspects related to suicidal risk (suicidal ideation, past suicide attempts, and the likelihood of engaging in future suicidal behavior). SBQ-R can help identify individuals who may be at risk for suicidal behavior or who have a history of suicidal thoughts or attempts. Total scores (ranging from 3 to 18) have been categorized identifying groups with low (total score less than 7) and high risk (total score equal to or higher than 7) of suicidal behavior 49 . A good internal consistency was found in our sample (α = 0.82), independently by country. Before the SBQ-R questionnaire, participants were warned of questions about a particularly sensitive topic, and the section was optional.

Well-being was investigated through the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF) 50 . The self-report validated scale consists of 14 items measuring the degree of several aspects of well-being: (a) Overall well-being (items 1–14); (b) Emotional well-being (items 1–3), defined in terms of positive affect and satisfaction with life; (c) Social well-being (items 4–8), as described in Keyes’ model of social well-being 51 ; and (d) Psychological well-being (items 9–14). The MHC–SF asks individuals how frequently they felt in a specific aptitude, from 0 (none of the time) to 5 (all of the time): the higher the overall score, the higher the level of well-being. In our sample, an excellent internal consistency (α > 0.90) was found referring to Overall and Emotional well-being, while a good internal consistency was shown for both Social, and Psychological well-being (α = 0.82, and α = 0.87, respectively), consistently in the three countries.

Perceived COVID-19 impact

A 10 items scale from the 2021/2022 Health Behavior in School-Aged Children was used to evaluate the subjective impact of COVID-19-related measures on various aspects of individuals’ lives: life in general, overall and mental health, relationships with family and friends, school performance, physical activity, eating behaviors, future expectations, financial situation 52 . Respondents were asked to assess the extent of the impact by selecting one of the following options on a five-point Likert scale: 1 = ‘’very negative’, 2 = ’somewhat negative’, 3 = ’neither positive nor negative’, 4 = somewhat positive’, or 5 = ’very positive’. Collapsing some response options, a three-level variable was obtained for each item, identifying negative (options 1 and 2), neutral (option 3), and positive (options 4 and 5) COVID-19 impact groups 53 .

• Academic stress

The Academic stress was evaluated using the Effort-Reward Imbalance—Student Questionnaire (ERI-SQ) 54 , a self-reported validated questionnaire based on the Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI) theoretical framework 55 . The tool includes three subscales: the Effort (from items 1 to 3), the Reward (from items 4 to 9), and the Overcommitment dimensions (from items 10 to 14). The Effort score identifies the intensity and amount of effort an individual perceives in academic activities. It is calculated based on participants' responses to items regarding the study load, time pressure, and interruptions in doing the academic tasks. The Reward score reflects the perceived level of rewards gained in exchange for the efforts made. Rewards encompass social recognition, career advancement, job security, or other positive outcomes associated with academic accomplishments. In addition, the ERI-SQ incorporates a measure of Overcommitment, which denotes a personality trait characterized by an excessive dedication to work or academic tasks, regardless of the balance between effort and reward. From the previous measures, the Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI) ratio is computed by dividing the Effort score by the Reward score multiplied by a correction factor 54 , 56 . The ERI ratio suggests a possible imbalance between the effort and the reward. For ERI ratio equal to 1, the student reports equal levels of effort and reward, an ERI ratio < 1 indicates less effort than rewards, while an ERI ratio > 1 indicates that the perceived effort is greater than the rewards, suggesting a greater likelihood of negative health outcomes due to stressors in the academic environment. Similarly, a high overcommitment score implies a propensity to invest excessive effort, even when the corresponding rewards are perceived as inadequate. The 14-item scale showed good internal consistency (overall α = 0.83), in contrast, independently by country, lower internal consistency levels were registered for Effort, Reward, and Overcommitment scales (α = 0.66, α = 0.69, and α = 0.80, respectively).

Future perspectives

Some further questions were asked about students’ future professional perspectives: (1) Plans for the future after completing higher education (the possible answers were pursuing further studies (post-graduate, master's, or Ph.D.), getting a job, working in another country, starting a business, or not having a specific plan); (2) Professional future: two questions with response options ranging from 1 (‘strongly disagree’) to 5 (‘strongly agree’) were provided to explore the readiness to manage and build the professional future after completing higher education and confidence in professional future. Dichotomized variables were then created based on high (options 4 or 5) or medium/low (equal or lower than 3) agreement. Furthermore, one further question exploring overall future expectations was provided. In this regard, subjects were asked to rate their expectations for the future on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 represents poor expectations and 10 excellent ones. This assessment reflects general optimism or pessimism about prospects.

Data analysis

Demographic information and psychometric measures were described with absolute frequencies and percentages for categorical variables and medians and interquartile ranges (IQRs) for continuous ones. Data was stratified by country, and the rate of missing values for each aforementioned variable was reported. Afterward, further stratification by sex was performed within each country, and d fferences by sex were tested with a chi-square test for categorical variables and a Wilcoxon test for continuous ones. All statistical tests were two-sided, and the level of statistical significance was set at 0.05. Data were analyzed using the R software version 4.3.0 57 . Radar plots were generated to visually represent specific results by country, using Flourish 58 , a data visualization platform, and InkScape 59 , a vector graphics editor, to enhance their quality and clarity.

Demographic and Educational profile of participants

Our sample comprised 8773 students in Italy, 612 in Spain, and 396 in Portugal. The response rates in the three universities were 11.1% (Italy), 2.6% (Portugal), and 1.0% (Spain). We then excluded all participants who waived informed consent (n = 90), those older than 35 (n = 1308) or younger than 18 (n = 3), and those with missing information about sex (n = 72) obtaining a final overall sample of 8380 students (7559 students in Italy, 469 in Spain, and 352 in Portugal).

Table 1 shows the demographic and educational characteristics of the sample. The median age of respondents was homogeneous in the three countries. The majority of the sample was composed of females (more than 65% in the three countries) and declared a straight sexual orientation (> 70%). The main reported non-straight sexual orientation was bisexual, declared by 8–20% of the participants across countries (Most respondents attended a program concerning “Humanities and Philosophy” and “Social and Economic Sciences” areas, although over 12% of participants did not provide such information. Most students were in the first three years of college in the three countries (71% in Italy, 62% in Spain, and 88% in Portugal). Less than 50% of students in Italy and Spain declared themselves on track (44% and 46%, respectively), compared to 73% of Portuguese students.

Socioeconomic status and social support

The MacArthur Scale registered slightly higher levels of Subjective Social Status in Italy (median score: 7.0; IQR: 5.0–7.0) than in Spain and Portugal (median score: 6.0; IQR: 5.0–7.0 in both countries). Participants declared that they mainly depend on their families for financial support (> 75%), with variations in rates of work and scholarships across the countries. Notably, fewer respondents in Italy and Portugal (11% and 16%, respectively) relied on scholarships compared to the Spanish sample (29%), while an inverse trend was found regarding rates of work (i.e., lower in Spain than in Italy and Portugal) (Fig.  1 , Table 2 , and Table S2 , Supplementary file).

Financial situation among university students in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Radar plots with percentages of financial situation are presented across the three countries.

The social support profiles emerging from the MSPSS showed similar perceived support levels on the three subscales among the three countries. Significant other subscales represented the primary source of support (median scores of at least 6.0 across the three countries). Overall, most respondents reported high social support (> 60%), mainly from Significant other and Friends, without relevant cross-country differences. Some sex differences were found within countries concerning social support (Table S3 , Supplementary file). More specifically, females declared higher Friends and Significant others support scores in Italy and Spain than their male peers (p < 0.001). In Portugal, males declared higher scores of Family support than females (p = 0.007). Patterns are globally confirmed adopting the categorized variables.

Mental health and well-being

In Italy and Spain, about two out of three respondents showed a high GAD-2 score (67% and 64%, respectively), while in Portugal, this anxious trait was presented by 50% of the sample (Table 3 , Fig.  2 ). However, the percentages of high depressive scores on the PHQ-2 were below 50% in all countries (44% in Italy, 44% in Spain, and 34% in Portugal). While students in Italy and Spain exhibited a higher frequency of both anxious and depressive symptoms compared to the Portuguese sample, a quite homogeneous picture emerged exploring SBQ-R scores. More specifically, 30%, 26%, and 29% of respondents were classified in the high suicidal risk group in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, respectively. Concerning the MHC-SF questionnaire, Italian respondents exhibited lower overall scores (median score: 30.0; IQR: 21.0–40.0) than Spanish and Portuguese ones (median scores: 41.0 (IQR: 29.0–51.0) and 39.0 (IQR: 29.0–48.0), respectively) indicating lower mental well-being among Italian participants compared to the others. This pattern is consistent across the three domains of the MHC-SF questionnaire.

Radar plots showing rates of mental problems and confidence levels in the professional future among university students in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Radar plots with percentages of anxiety symptoms (GAD-2), depressive symptoms (PHQ-2), suicidal risk (SBQ-R), and confidence in professional future are presented across the three countries.

In terms of sex differences across the mental domains, Italian and Portuguese females presented higher scores in both the GAD-2 (p < 0.001 in both countries) and the PHQ-2 scales (p = 0.011 and p = 0.023, respectively), while no substantial patterns were found regarding SBQ-R. In the three countries, lower levels of well–being could be observed in girls than in boys in all domains of the MHC-SF questionnaire, with significant differences between the two sexes in Italy and Portugal for the overall score and social and psychological domains (Table S3 , Supplementary file).

Perceived impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

Results about the perceived impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are shown in Fig.  3 and Table S4 (Supplementary file). University students were more likely to report a negative than a positive pandemic impact on several life domains (i.e., life as a whole, overall and mental health, physical activity, eating behaviors, family financial situation, and future expectations), especially in Italy. In particular, half of Italian students (50.2%) reported a negative impact of the pandemic on their mental health compared to 40.3% and 37.8% of Spanish and Portuguese ones. Conversely, the COVID-19 pandemic’s influence on relationships with family and friends and school performance seemed to have been perceived more positively than negatively. A missing rate of 16% was observed consistently throughout the items.

Prevalence of positive (in blue) and negative (in red) perceived COVID-19 impact on several life domains among university students in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Radar plots with percentages of perceived COVID-19 pandemic impact on students’ overall health, life in general, family relationships, friends’ relationships, mental health, school performance, physical activity, eating behaviors, future perspectives, and financial situation are presented across the three countries.

Academic stress and future perspectives

The ERI-SQ scoring revealed a homogeneous pattern in perceived overcommitment levels and the ERI ratio across countries (Table 4 ). In all countries, the median ERI ratio was slightly greater than 1, indicating that 6–13% of the effort was not met by the received rewards. In all countries, females seemed to have a significantly higher ERI ratio than males (Table S3 , Supplementary file).

The expectations for the future were similar in the analyzed universities (median score: 7.0; IQR: 5.0–8.0), while perspectives after graduation showed a higher variability across countries (Table 4 ). More specifically, in Italy, most students declared their intention to find a job after graduation (35%), while in Spain and Portugal, most planned to continue their studies (46% and 40%, respectively). Overall, a decreasing prevalence of participant students declaring confidence in their own professional future was found in Spain, Italy, and Portugal (47%. 34%, and 20%, respectively). Furthermore, Italian and Spanish students felt more prepared for work than Portuguese ones (35% and 29% vs. 19%, respectively).

The present cross-country project primarily aimed to identify common and specific mental health and well-being traits among university students in Italy, Spain, and Portugal.

Respondents were primarily females with a median age of 21, currently attending the first three academic years. About three out of four students declared a straight sexual orientation, while bisexuality represented the second most common sexual orientation, ranging from 8% in Italy to 20% in Spain. The high levels of bisexuality compared to the previous studies (up to 10%) could be the result of undergoing changes in sexual norms and behaviors, leading to even more youths identifying as bisexual 60 , 61 . Italian students presented higher median socioeconomic status than Portuguese and Spanish ones, reflecting the different economic wealth situations observed by the World Bank in such countries 38 , 39 . Conversely, quite similar patterns in social support were registered across universities, confirming the expected cultural similarities in social bonds in these three Mediterranean countries 35 , 62 , 63 . Overall, students declared a relatively higher support from Friends and Significant other than Family, underlying their developmental transition from adolescent to young adult supportive networks 64 , 65 , 66 .

The PHQ-2 and GAD-2 assessments showed high levels of anxiety (> 50%) and depressive symptoms (> 30%) among students in the three countries, being exacerbated among females than males. Furthermore, these first insights suggest higher levels of such mental problems among Italian and Spanish students than Portuguese ones. The disparities in emotional, social, and psychological well-being captured by MHC-SF are also noteworthy, with Italian students reporting lower scores than their counterparts in Spain and Portugal.

These results suggested different cross-country trends based on the indicators explored, enforcing the validity of conceptualizing mental health as a multidimensional construct in which the various dimensions can have different correlated patterns 51 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 . More specifically, the present study found that Italian students showed the lowest levels of well-being and the highest rates of mental problems across the three countries. These findings align with those reported by recent works on nationally representative samples of adolescents in the same countries, suggesting shared underlying causes at a macro-level, even among contiguous age groups (adolescents and young adults) 36 , 71 . Several factors could be involved in the observed pattern, including pandemic-related measures duration and strictness, as confirmed by the higher levels of negative perceived impact of COVID-19 on mental health in Italy, observed in the present and other studies 36 , 71 . Moreover, cross-country differences in physical activity could have had a contributing role 37 . In particular, the high negative impact of pandemic-related measures on students’ physical activity in Italy could have exacerbated the pre-pandemic cross-cultural exercise differences 37 .

Furthermore, the observed cross-country pattern of mental problems in the university environment may also be attributed to the significant social and academic pressures that Italian university students experience 10 , 72 . Our analysis revealed a lower percentage of scholarship recipients and higher rates of working students in Italy than in the other explored countries. These elements suggest differences in university study support policies across countries, reflecting the different financial frameworks, which also have consequences for the well-being of university students 73 .

Among the mental health issues explored in this survey, results about suicidality deserve to be discussed separately, in light of the latest evidence on this sensitive topic.

Approximately one-third of students within the three countries exhibited characteristics placing them in the “high risk” category in the SBQ-R assessment, with substantially geographically homogeneous patterns across countries. Such prevalence is higher than that emerged from other surveys conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic 74 , 75 , 76 , in line with data collected during 2020 77 , and slightly lower than levels registered in 2021 77 . In particular, literature exploring long-term temporal trends of suicidality suggested an increase in the phenomenon since 2021, which was attributed to the impact of COVID-19 on students’ lives 21 , 78 , 79 , 80 . Furthermore, in our sample, high rates of negative perceived impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health were observed across the three countries, enforcing such possible association. From this perspective, the long-term consequences of COVID-19 pandemic-related measures on youths’ mental health could have left prolonged traces, still detectable in 2023, during the so-called post-COVID-19 era. In this regard, literature is still lacking, and further exploration of the topic is needed to increase the knowledge of the phenomenon and to guide the policy agenda promoting youths’ mental health 81 , 82 .

COVID-19 perceived impact assessment showed a relatively homogeneous picture among students across countries. Specifically, pandemic-related measures seemed to have negatively impacted several domains (i.e., mental health, physical activity, future perspectives, and financial situation). Still, a prevailing positive impact was perceived regarding relationships with family, friends, and school performance. Overall, our findings are consistent with other studies adopting the same measurement tool on nationally representative samples of adolescents in the three countries, enlightening shared environmental exposures across age groups 53 , 83 . More specifically, results referring to the pandemic impact on family relationships are consistent with the findings by other authors, who observed tighter family bonds after the lockdown establishment 17 , 25 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 .

The academic stress assessment pointed out similar trends among countries: the median ERI ratio was higher than one among students regardless of the country, indicating perceived rewards lower than expected, especially among girls. These findings align with results from previous works that showed unbalanced ERI ratios toward effort among university students 10 , 54 .

Finally, a quite heterogeneous geographical pattern was found regarding future professional perspectives: 20–30% of students in our sample felt prepared for work, and confidence in the professional future showed a decreasing pattern from Spain to Italy and Portugal. This presumably reflects the cross-country economic wealth differences and the widespread uncertainty about the future among youths 38 , 39 , 89 , 90 .

Limitations and strengths

The observed findings should be interpreted cautiously due to several limitations of the study. While our sample included over 8000 students, it only represented a small percentage of the target population (approximately 150,000 students in the academic year 2022–2023). This issue could potentially hinder the generalizability of our findings. Additionally, most students responded in Italy, resulting in an unbalanced sample and few participants in Spain and Portugal. These methodological issues could lead to analytical constraints regarding statistical comparisons between countries, making it possible to analyze differences only within each country. The unbalanced sample and the low sample size in 2 out of 3 countries also limited the exploration of the factors associated with well-being in a cross-country framework. Furthermore, the self-reported nature of the data and the cross-sectional design of the study also represented additional weaknesses.

Despite these limitations, the present work is one of the first cross-country surveys exploring academic stress, mental health, and well-being among university students in the post-COVID-19 era. This international research stands out for its rigorous methodology, using validated tools and a consistent protocol to assess the well-being of university students in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. The comparative approach adopted across countries allowed us to explore the complexities of three Southern European countries sharing cultural similarities and to study their influence on university students' well-being. In particular, we found cross-university patterns consistent with the existing studies on the topic despite a high level of heterogeneity recognized in the literature in psychometric instruments and target student populations. Finally, using validated tools like PHQ-2, GAD-2, SBQ-R, and MHC-SF allowed us to simultaneously capture different mental health and well-being dimensions among university students, providing a more comprehensive and holistic framework.

Conclusions

This cross-sectional survey explores the well-being levels and mental health patterns in three Southern European countries in the post-COVID-19 phase in light of their cultural similarities and peculiarities.

Overall, Italian students showed the lowest levels of mental well-being and the highest rates of mental problems (i.e., anxiety and depression) and suicidal risk across the three countries despite the relatively similar profiles of social support. The prevalence of the students’ confidence in their professional future is higher in Spain than in Italy and Portugal. The emerging picture offers valuable insights into this public health topic and paves the way for further exploration of the relationships between students' environmental factors (e.g., social support and academic stress) and various aspects of their well-being.

Data availability

Data is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the students who participated in the study and the university staff who assisted us in sending the links for participation.

The present study was funded by the University of Torino (COMR_GFI_22_01_F, COMR_RILO_23_01_F, COMR_RILO_24_01).

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PD and RIC designed the research. MB, RIC, TG, CMM, EK conducted the research. MB, GZ and RIC analyzed data. MB, LC, TG, CMM, PG, EK, RIC interpreted the results. MB, GZ, PG mainly wrote the manuscript. PD and RIC supervised the research team. All of the authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Bersia, M., Charrier, L., Zanaga, G. et al. Well-being among university students in the post-COVID-19 era: a cross-country survey. Sci Rep 14 , 18296 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-69141-9

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Personal Experience With the COVID-19 Pandemic

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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many areas of individuals’ daily living. The vulnerability to any epidemic depends on a person’s social and economic status. Some people with underlying medical conditions have succumbed to the disease, while others with stronger immunity have survived (Cohut para.6). Governments have restricted movements and introduced stern measures against violating such health precautions as physical distancing and wearing masks. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced people to adopt various responses to its effects, such as homeschooling, working from home, and ordering foods and other commodities from online stores.

I have restricted my movements and opted to order foodstuffs and other essential goods online with doorstep delivery services. I like adventure, and before the pandemic, I would go to parks and other recreational centers to have fun. But this time, I am mostly confined to my room studying, doing school assignments, or reading storybooks, when I do not have an in-person session at college. I have also had to use social media more than before to connect with my family and friends. I miss participating in outdoor activities and meeting with my friends. However, it is worth it because the virus is deadly, and I have had to adapt to this new normal in my life.

With the pandemic requiring stern measures and precautions due to its transmission mode, the federal government has done well in handling the matter. One of the positives is that it has sent financial and material aid to individual state and local governments to help people cope up with the economic challenges the pandemic has posed (Solomon para. 8). Another plus for the federal government is funding the COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, and distributing the vaccine. Lastly, the government has extended unemployment benefits as a rescue plan to help households with an income of less than $150,000 (Solomon para. 9). Therefore, the federal government is trying its best to handle this pandemic.

The New Jersey government has done all it can to handle this pandemic well, but there are still some areas of improvement. As of March 7, 2021, New Jersey was having the highest number of deaths related to COVID-19, but Governor Phil Murphy’s initial handling of the pandemic attracted praises from many quarters (Stanmyre para. 10). In his early days in office, Gov. Murphy portrayed a sense of competency and calm, but it seems other states adopted much of his policies better than he did, explaining the reduction in the approval ratings. In November 2020, Governor Murphy signed an Executive Order cushioning and protecting workers from contracting COVID-19 at the workplace (Stanmyre para. 12). Therefore, although there are mixed feelings, the NJ government is handling this pandemic well.

Some states have reopened immediately after the vaccination, but this poses a massive risk of spreading the virus. Soon, citizens will begin to neglect the laid down health protocols, which would increase the possibility of the increase of the COVID-19 cases. There is a need for health departments to ensure that the health precautions are followed and campaign on the need to adhere to the guidelines. Some individuals are protesting their states’ economy to be reopened, but that is a rash, ill-informed decision. The threat of the pandemic is still high, and it is not the right time to demand the reopening of the economy yet.

In conclusion, the pandemic has affected individuals, businesses, and governments in many ways. Due to how the virus spreads, physical distancing has become a new normal, with people forced to homeschool or work from home to prevent themselves from contracting the disease. The federal government has done its best to cushion its people from the pandemic’s economic effects through various financial rescue schemes and plans. New Jersey’s government has also done well, although its cases continue to soar as it is the leading state in COVID-19 prevalence. Some states have reopened, while in others, people continue to demand their state governments to open the economy, which would be a risky move.

Works Cited

Cohut, Maria. “COVID-19 at the 1-year Mark: How the Pandemic Has Affected the World.” Medical and Health Information . Web.

Solomon, Rachel. “What is the Federal Government Doing to Help People Impacted by Coronavirus?” Cancer Support Community . Web.

Stanmyre, Matthew. “N.J.’s Pandemic Response Started Strong. Why Has So Much Gone Wrong Since?” 2021. Web.

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Are Students College-Ready, or Are Colleges Student-Ready?

As pandemic-related learning issues become more prominent among incoming students, institutions of higher education can consider how structural barriers impact student success.

By  Ashley Mowreader

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College readiness metrics are declining among high school students. How can institutions position themselves better to be ready for a new generation of learners?

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Colleges and universities will welcome the class of 2028 to campus this fall, another cohort of learners whose high school experience was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and remote learning .

Over the past few years, higher education practitioners have noticed differences in how today’s students learn compared to their peers, some disparities directly attributed to the pandemic and others a symptom of isolation and online learning.

Rather than asking students to catch up and mold to higher ed’s traditional structures, experts in the field are asking, are colleges set up to help students succeed?

Survey Says

A July 2023 report from Tyton Partners found 60 percent of student were unaware of the full scope of support services offered at their college or university. Higher education professionals—including administrators, advisers and faculty members—were much more likely to say resources were available, highlighting a gap in how institutions recommend and refer students to resources.

What’s different: Student readiness has declined from a number of angles: historically low ACT scores , a lack of study skills, class attendance, classroom participation and meeting deadlines consistently. Teenagers entering higher education are also more likely to say they struggle with their mental health and loneliness .

In addition to the new challenges traditional-aged students face in higher education due to their pandemic-related learning loss, today’s student demographics are changing, says EAB’s Alexa Silverman, senior director of student experience and well-being research.

Close to half are employed and many are simultaneously caring for a dependent and an older adult in their family. Additionally, the number of students with psychological-based disabilities have increased and more first-generation learners are enrolled than ever before.

Higher ed tends to make assumptions about what students know how to do. “We tell students ‘You should know how to study,’ but have we really broken down what those skills are?” Silverman says.

Making use of office hours is one example of an assumed-skill, Silverman says. Many students aren’t familiar with the language of office hours and don’t know how to effectively engage with their professor when they do show up.

“While a lot of these changes to processes and resources have been made to address learning loss for the traditional student, I think this set of challenges or barriers have also faced our post-traditional students, adult learners and first-generation students ,” Silverman says.

Reframing the issue: College readiness is the idea that a student should be prepared and equipped to succeed at their institution, but many in higher ed want to shift the conversation to institutional readiness . Student success leaders share their perspective that, if a college enrolls a student, that is the indication the student can be successful there.

In speaking to over 100 administrators and leaders , Silverman found institutional readiness was a strong theme in their conversations about serving students, but how that’s being modeled is just starting to be seen.

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Instead of placing responsibility on students, she says, colleges and universities can model institutional readiness through:

• Making implicit assumptions explicit. Also called the “ hidden curricula of higher education ,” institutional leaders, staff and faculty members can provide education to students about the college experience and what skills they need to be successful. Montclair State University launched a campaign in spring 2024 to provide weekly themes of student success and practical strategies to students to promote their academic and co-curricular achievement.
• Modeling a growth mindset. Historically, higher education has had a “weed out” mentality that assumes a student who struggles is not capable of completing their degree. Rather, Silverman argues institutions should emphasize growth and that struggles are part of learning. Practitioners should share with learners that asking for help is not failure and using campus resources such as tutoring is part of good practice. Colorado College integrated an intervention in its first-year seminar that frames support resources as athletic trainers or coaches to hone academic skills, making students aware of services and how those services can serve their individual needs.
• Supporting faculty development. Many of today’s learners are very different from the faculty who are teaching them now, Silverman says, so campus leaders should increase instructors’ awareness of student demographics, how to break down implicit requirements in the classroom and how to refer learners to other offices, if needed. Administrators can also make investments in peer-coaching models or ready-to-use tools and materials to support this work. Texas A&M University at Kingsville implemented the Caring Campus program from the Institute for Evidence-Based Change to promote belonging among diverse student groups and implement best practices for student success.

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Creating Community for Vets at Rural Colleges

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Listen: Where Upward Transfer Fails and How Institutions Are Improving Processes

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• Doctoral Students Enjoy Study Abroad Experience at Rome Location

This summer, six doctoral students in The School of Education at St. John’s University spent 10 days studying abroad at the University’s Rome , Italy, location.

Katherine C. Aquino, Ph.D. , Assistant Professor and Assistant Chairperson, Department of Administrative and Instructional Leadership , organized opportunities for the group to meet with full-time and adjunct faculty members from LUMSA University and Sapienza University of Rome.  The group observed the similarities and differences between US and Italian higher education, as well as Italian institutions’ increased use of distance learning in the post-pandemic postsecondary environment. 

“I was honored to lead this short-term study abroad experience,” she said. “This opportunity allowed these doctoral students—all of whom have busy professional and personal lives—to engage in a unique learning opportunity, experience St. John’s Rome location, and immerse themselves in the global higher education environment.”

Additionally, students met with administrators from the Pantheon Institute and the Council on International Educational Exchange to learn about the role of study-abroad organizations in supporting global studies learning opportunities.

“I really enjoyed my short-term study abroad experience,” said student Prattasha Paul. “It was my first time in Rome, and it was fantastic to explore the city’s culture and visit its higher education institutions. The global higher education speakers were insightful and welcoming, and our professor made the trip even better by integrating local culture into our discussions and having us debrief in meaningful settings like the streets and restaurants of Rome. The best part was definitely becoming closer with my St. John’s doctoral cohort.”

“As a higher education administrator working with first-year students for more than 18 years, I have always encouraged students to study abroad and take advantage of our exceptional programs,” said Alison Celaya, Associate Director, First-Year Academic Advising, Center for Student Success , who is pursuing her doctorate. “Having the unique opportunity to study abroad as a doctoral student was a chance of a lifetime and offered invaluable insight into what it is like for a student to study abroad. I will forever cherish the memories and moments I got to experience as a student, and cannot wait to share what I have learned with my future students and to continue encouraging them to partake in these life-changing moments.”

Student Alexandrea Anzalone shared, “The short-term study abroad experience in Rome was an enriching experience that brought global learning to a new level. Through hands-on lectures and tours of various Italian universities, we were able to develop unique partnerships with Italian faculty. We were able to truly compare our higher education system in America to Italy’s higher education system. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity we had to immerse ourselves in Rome and learn not just about Italian higher education, but the history of ancient Rome. This opportunity brought 21st century learning ideologies to life, and I am excited to bring what I learned into my classroom.”

• The School of Education

From ‘crisis’ to ‘catastrophe,’ schools scramble once again to find teachers

Vance Varner is heading into another school year desperately searching for teachers and staff members: an English instructor, a special education teacher, a speech therapist. 

Varner, the superintendent of schools in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, a rural community 30 minutes from the Penn State campus, said four of his teacher positions are still vacant less than a month before the start of school. He said that with some positions getting zero applications, he is preparing to fill some of the vacancies with people who have no teaching experience or training, which he rarely had to do a decade ago. 

“There’s a perfect storm in education right now, especially in rural communities such as ours,” said Varner, who has worked as a teacher and an administrator in Mifflin County for 25 years.

As millions of students get ready to head back to the classroom, school districts are once again scrambling to fill jobs as teacher shortages aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic show little signs of improving for yet another school year, according to interviews with more than a dozen academic researchers, teachers and administrators in rural, suburban and urban school districts. 

Teachers aren't just trying to help students catch up from pandemic-era learning losses — many are also at the center of a pitched culture war as politicians accuse them of trying to indoctrinate children and turn their syllabuses into campaign fodder.

But many education leaders say the real problem in classrooms is the lack of instructors.

“At first it was a teacher shortage. Then there was a teacher shortage crisis. Then it was a teacher shortage catastrophe, and it just escalates,” said Mark Klaisner, the president of the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools. “Our kids deserve so much better, and it just feels almost criminal, because we’re not providing the quality that we would if we could find the candidates.”

Administrators say that to deal with the staffing shortfalls, they are relying again this year on long-term substitute teachers, hiring emergency certified teachers with no teaching qualifications or experience, bringing in teachers from overseas, and increasing class sizes. It means yet another year when many students won’t be able to get the support they need as standardized tests show kids falling behind in key areas, educators said. 

“This has an impact on kids’ learning precisely at a time where we need to be accelerating learning,” said Ed Fuller, an education professor at Penn State. “We don’t have enough teachers and enough principals to fill all the positions, and we have lots of turnover. So that’s making it very difficult to accelerate the kids back to where they should have been had the pandemic not happened.”

Klaisner said his colleagues across Illinois tell him the problem is only getting worse despite efforts by policymakers, including legislation to raise minimum teacher pay. Some superintendents are discussing whether they will have to send kids to neighboring districts because they don’t have enough teachers, he said. Others are filling the gaps with teachers who aren’t fully certified, as in one district in central Illinois where a middle school doesn’t have a single teacher who is appropriately certified for the subject being taught, Klaisner said. 

“It’s almost down to can you find a pulse and a heartbeat, and that’ll work,” he said of filling job vacancies.

It’s almost down to can you find a pulse and a heartbeat, and that’ll work.

— Mark Klaisner, Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools

While some school districts have long struggled to find enough teachers, the shortages have become more widespread and severe in many regions since the start of the pandemic, which education researchers say triggered a wave of early retirements, along with resignations from burned-out educators. 

There is little nationwide data to show how many teachers have left the workforce in recent years. State surveys from a variety of regions show a growing trend of teacher resignations. Pennsylvania had the largest increase in teacher attrition on record last year, with 7.7% of all teachers leaving their jobs, according to research by Fuller. In Washington state, the teacher attrition rate was 8.91% last year, the highest in 37 years. In Maine, more than 2,000 teachers and other educators quit or retired last year, the most in the past seven years, according to the Maine Public Employee Retirement System.

At the same time, there has been a decrease in the number of college graduates going into teaching that predates the pandemic. Relatively low pay in a strong labor market and political infighting that has put teachers at the center of culture wars on issues like race and gender have also fueled the trends, said teachers, administrators and researchers.

“It’s a lack of respect that the position seems to have right now,” said Trina Berg, who teaches earth and space science in the Phoenix suburb of Peoria. “We’re under attack, unfortunately, by different parent groups and different political groups. And then everything kind of just builds up on you.”

Berg, who is also the president of the Peoria Education Association teachers union, said her district has 10 special education teacher openings, five elementary school openings and 13 middle school vacancies. A district spokesperson said the number of openings this year was similar to what the district has had the past several years. 

“It’s exhausting. It’s tiring. You get kids who roll up into high school who might have had long-term subs, no math teacher, no science teacher for at least a year, sometimes more,” Berg said. “When you have openings, larger class sizes, that all leads to more teacher burnout, which just causes the problem to become worse.”

Varner said that five years ago in Mifflin County, his district would get 15 to 30 applications for an opening. Now it’s a victory if he gets five. He said his district’s relatively low salary, about $46,000 for a new teacher, is one of his biggest hurdles to recruiting. In nearby State College, Pennsylvania, where many teachers live, the starting salary is $11,000 higher. He recently lost an English teacher with more than a decade of experience to another district where he estimates the teacher could make $8,000 to $12,000 more a year. 

He also blames a wider decline in the number of new teachers. Applications for teaching licenses in Pennsylvania have fallen by 67% since 2010.

To make up for the shortage, the state has been issuing more emergency teacher certifications, which allow people with no teaching experience or training to be able to work as full-time teachers. Now the state is issuing more emergency teaching permits than full teaching certificates to new college graduates. 

Almost half of the 45 people hired in Mifflin County to fill teaching roles last year, as well as 75% of special education teachers, had no formal training as teachers and were working under the state’s emergency teacher certification program, Varner said.

“We have great people who care about kids, and they could be an incredible teacher in four or five years, but they have a lot of learning to do,” Varner said.   

In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Joseph Torres, the dean of students at George Washington Elementary School, said his school will most likely have to start the year again with at least one long-term substitute teacher in a classroom.

“I don’t want to say our kids are hurting, but that is the fact: Kids are hurting. They are suffering,” said Torres, who is also the local president of the Lancaster Education Association teachers union. “That first pandemic group came back into a different educational world that is not the one that you and I went through.”

To fill the staffing holes last year, Torres said, he and his colleagues frequently juggled multiple roles. 

“I’ve had to be the secretary, cover the door; I’ve had to step in at lunches and recess. I have packed lunches, served lunches, breakfasts,” Torres said. “It’s all hands on deck.”

Ernest Williams has been on the front lines of two other areas with particularly severe shortages in North Carolina — bus drivers and substitute teachers. On a typical day, Williams starts his bus driving shift at 6:15 a.m., picking up elementary school students in Vance County, then works as a teaching assistant for a third grade class at the local elementary school. 

But in addition to those two jobs, last year, he said, he was often asked to fill in as a substitute teacher, taking him away from his third graders, then called on to pick up extra bus driving shifts in the afternoon.

“I had to watch a lot of classes, because they couldn’t find anybody to sub. I’d get off the bus, I’d clock in, and a lot of times the assistant principal would say: ‘We need you today. We can’t find anybody,’” Williams said. “I leave early in the morning. I get home late.”

While some saw teaching shortages as a post-pandemic hiccup, school administrators are treating them as the new normal and coming up with longer-term strategies to adjust to shortages, such as recruiting teachers from overseas. In the Phoenix suburb of Maricopa, about 1 in 4 teaching positions will be filled this year by teachers recruited from overseas, many of them coming from the Philippines, said Tom Beckett, Maricopa’s assistant superintendent of human resources. 

“Our foreign national teachers, really, they’ve been a godsend,” Beckett said. “I’m not sure what we would do if we did not have that avenue.”

Almost half of the 33 positions in the Altar Valley Elementary School District, about 30 minutes from Tucson, are filled with teachers recruited from overseas, including eight from the Philippines who are starting this year, said David Dumon, the district’s superintendent. Without those teachers, Dumon said, the positions would most likely have gone unfilled, because he got only a handful of applications. 

“There just aren’t people applying for our jobs, Dumon said.

In Mifflin County, Varner is still hopeful that some members of the community will raise their hands at the last minute to help fill his openings. But his optimism is tenuous. 

“We’ve always been able to do it. I’m trying to be optimistic that we can do it this year,” Varner said. “But there is going to be a day that we’re going to have an empty classroom.”

Shannon Pettypiece is senior policy reporter for NBC News.

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What Students Are Saying About Living Through a Pandemic

Teenage comments in response to our recent writing prompts, and an invitation to join the ongoing conversation.

By The Learning Network

The rapidly-developing coronavirus crisis is dominating global headlines and altering life as we know it. Many schools worldwide have closed. In the United States alone, 55 million students are rapidly adjusting to learning and socializing remotely, spending more time with family, and sacrificing comfort and convenience for the greater good.

For this week’s roundup of student comments on our writing prompts , it was only fitting to ask teenagers to react to various dimensions of this unprecedented situation: how the coronavirus outbreak is affecting their daily lives, how we can all help one another during the crisis and what thoughts or stories the term “social distancing” conjures for them.

Every week, we shout out new schools who have commented on our writing prompts. This week, perhaps because of many districts’ move to remote online learning, we had nearly 90 new classes join us from around the world. Welcome to the conversation to students from:

Academy of St. Elizabeth; Abilene, Tex.; Alabama; Anna High School, Tex.; Arlington, Va.; Austria-Hungary; Baltimore, Md.; Bellingham, Wash.; Ben Lippen School; Bloomington, Ind.; Branham High School, San Jose, Calif.; Boston; Buffalo High School, Wyo.; Camdenton, Mo.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Collierville, Tenn.; Dawson High School, Tex.; Denmark; Desert Vista High School; Doylestown, Penn.; Dublin, Calif.; Dunkirk, N.Y. ; Eleanor Murray Fallon Middle School; Elmhurst, Ill.; Fairfax, Va.; Framingham, Mass.; Frederick, Md.; Hartford, Conn.; Jefferson, N.J.; Kantonschule Uster, Switzerland; Laconia, N.H.; Las Vegas; Lashon Academy; Lebanon, N.H.; Ledyard High School; Leuzinger High School; Livonia, Mich.; Manistee Middle School; Miami, Fla.; Melrose High School; Milton Hershey School, Hershey, Penn.; Milwaukee; Montreal; Naguabo, Puerto Rico; Nebraska; Nessacus Regional Middle School; New Rochelle, N.Y.; Newport, Ky.; Newton, Mass.; North Stanly High School; Oakland, Calif.; Papillion Middle School; Polaris Expeditionary Learning School; Pomona, Calif.; Portsmouth, N.H.; Pueblo, Colo.; Reading, Mass.; Redmond Wash.; Richland, Wash.; Richmond Hill Ontario; Ridgeley, W.Va.; Rockford, Mich.; Rovereto, Italy; Salem, Mass.; Scottsdale, Ariz.; Seattle, Wash.; Sequoyah School Pasadena; Shackelford Junior High, Arlington, Tex.; South El Monte High School; Sugar Grove, Ill.; St. Louis, Mo.; Timberview High School; Topsfield, Mass.; Valley Stream North High School; Vienna, Va.; Waupun, Wis.; Wauwatosa, Wis.; Wenatchee, Wash.; Westborough Mass.; White Oak Middle School, Ohio; and Winter Park High School.

We’re so glad to have you here! Now, on to this week’s comments.

Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length, but otherwise appear as they were originally submitted.

How Is the Coronavirus Outbreak Affecting Your Life?

The coronavirus has changed how we work, play and learn : Schools are closing, sports leagues have been canceled, and many people have been asked to work from home.

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Biology undergrad student, Caroline Carwie, published in The Classic

In May, Caroline Carwie’s essay “Attitudes Toward and Experiences of Pregnant Medical Students” appeared in The Classic , the Writing Intensive Program’s journal of undergraduate writing and research. This paper explores “[p]regnancy during medical school” and how “institutions can help new mothers by acknowledging risks and implementing appropriate policies.” You can read the latest issue and find out more about The Classic online at http://theclassicjournal.uga.edu/ .

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Link to Issue 10.2

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Thursday, August 8, 2024

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Undergraduate Research in Biology

Undergraduates majoring in biology have the opportunity to enhance their learning through direct participation in research and scholarship. At UGA, these opportunities enable undergraduates to participate in ground-breaking research, often as part of a team of graduate students and faculty. In fact, many students can earn academic credit while working under an experienced faculty mentor by taking BIOL 4960R or working directly with the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO). The Biological Sciences Undergraduate Research Fellowship (BSURF) has been established to support undergraduate research opportunities in the Division of Biological Sciences within the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. The Fellowship provides financial assistance to students who have not had an opportunity to participate in a mentored research experience (paid, volunteer, or for credit) since matriculating to the University of Georgia.