By: Liam Cooney | Staff-Writer
Freshman year of college is full of so many new challenges, experiences and learning curves. This was the case last September, for the 2023 Salve Regina freshman class, a time which to many seems like a different world and not just a different year. Quarantine and the age of Coronavirus has time-warped our brains. Freshman year of college during all of this madness presents a whole new set of never-before-seen challenges.
The high school class of 2020 will always have the scars of having our senior years ripped away from us in every way possible. No athletics, activities, proms, or graduation was devastating, to say the least. In the present day, we are all still being greatly tested, as the class of 2020 now navigates their way through their freshman year of college, with the COVID-19 pandemic still running our day-to-day lives.
The challenges have certainly been present: adapting into a new environment; meeting new friends and forming new relationships; adjusting to college coursework and athletics, choosing what to eat in the dining hall; and remembering that the class is meeting on Zoom today, not in person. Most of these are difficult enough when things were normal, back in that distant universe of last September, or really any time before Friday the 13th of this past March. To throw in the current situation our world is facing, the introduction to college for us freshman has been one like no other.
Well, what is the main challenge for freshmen right now?
Is it academics? I wouldn’t say so, we’ve been doing the whole remote-learning-thing for some time now, as have faculty and staff. Although it is not ideal to learn over a virtual setting, we have had plenty of time to adapt, discover, and realize what does and doesn’t work when it comes to learning online.
It must be being away from home, right? That is always a challenge, people get homesick and miss their family and friends.
Actually, it’s neither of the two. The biggest challenge for freshmen right now is socializing, making new friends and finding your new circle, when we’re technically not supposed to be together. A seemingly not-thought-of elephant-in-the-room issue, how are new students (transfers included of course), supposed to make real friends during these socially distant times? The fact of the matter is that we are, by definition, suggested to stay apart from one another whenever possible, and even when we wish to whoop it up and hold a gathering, that gathering is restricted to about 3 or 4 people.
I’m all about keeping a small circle but would also like to have the chance to have my circle grow. Far less campus events are being held, and even those that are taking place, are likely “virtual” or modified in some way. The unfortunate reality is that most students don’t want to attend a virtual paint night (most, certainly not all), or even bother adhering to all social distancing guidelines whenever they step foot out of their room. Instead, students may decide to do nothing because it’s less of a hassle staying in bed than having to worry about if I’m far enough away to not break someone’s 6-foot bubble.
What this creates is a sense of isolation and division amongst the freshman class and makes it so incredibly difficult for anyone to find a friend group to consistently socialize with. The one thing upperclassmen have on us is that they had a chance to experience all that college has to offer and socialize and find their circles. Even for the class of 2023, that one semester, I’m sure there was enough time to find their groups and see who they liked to spend time with. Even just having the opportunity to meet and take a whole class picture, which is not at all what the class of 2024 had the opportunity to do.
Mae Flax, a Salve freshman from Mystic, Connecticut, says that while she is “extremely grateful” to be on campus this semester, she told me she “tends to feel isolated in her room sometimes.” She then adds that her and her roommate “have had a difficult time meeting people because of the restrictions. Normal activities are being put online and even orientation was in small groups, which is usually a great time to meet the majority of our class. It feels mostly limited to the students living in the same hall and those in my classes.”
For me personally, as a fellow freshman, I share a lot of the same thoughts that Mae and countless other students do. It has been very difficult to meet new people during these times, which I find very disappointing yet somewhat inevitable given the circumstances. However, one thing has helped me the most, and that would be being an athlete. When coming into college, you don’t know anybody, or at the most very few people. Athletics give students an immediate friend group, and oftentimes roommates as well. I have been fortunate enough to experience this positive, amidst all these negatives. However, for students who aren’t athletes (the majority), or who maybe haven’t found a sense of involvement just yet, there is quite literally no effective way to put yourself out there socially. The feelings that Mae was kind enough to share with me are feelings that I am quite confident countless other students (including myself) are feeling during our first year of college.
So, what can we truthfully do about this? There is no easy answer to that. The easy answer would be to have COVID-19 simply disappear from planet Earth, but that doesn’t look all too reasonable in the coming months or perhaps years. The Salve community is doing what they can to keep us safe and to keep us all on campus, which we should all be grateful for in the first place. I’m really not complaining, some college experience is better than no college experience, and I think we can all agree with that. I appreciate having the chance to live on campus this first semester: many other college students from other institutions cannot say that. The fact remains, however, freshman year amidst a world pandemic, finding your group, meeting people, and making new friends has been a struggle. I hope this current freshman class gets the chance to truly meet and get to know each other, because the people I have had the chance to meet thus far have been fantastic. And with that, the next time you see someone alone in the dining hall, maybe sit down with them or say hello. That is, if you even can…
Cover Image: “RI – Newport: Salve Regina University – Ochre Court” by wallyg is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
