What’s it like to be a college freshman during a pandemic? Students share their stories

Student stories republished from EdSource.org

Dec. 22, 2020

Taralina Paulo

Taralina Paulo has dreams of teaching young children. The 18-year-old freshman at California State University, Dominguez Hills plans on earning her bachelor’s degree in Child Development. She likes to say that her decision was “relatively easy” for her considering she’s one of nine, and she regularly babysits for her family. When Paulo is not doing homework or logged into class, she’s helping her mom around the house or watching the kids.

Add financial and technological problems to the mix and it creates a potentially unproductive environment. With her other siblings logging onto the internet at home for their middle school and high school classes at the same hours, connecting to her college courses became a problem for Paulo. As a result, Paulo missed classes and ended up behind in her coursework within several weeks.

Paulo says that her biggest challenges with online learning has been communicating effectively with her professors, dealing with long homework hours and learning to navigate the ins and outs of college.

“I actually dropped one of my classes because of the coursework, and I was having trouble with keeping up with it because I have the tendency to procrastinate,” Paulo said.

Due to the worsening pandemic in California, Paulo planned to spend the fall semester learning and studying online. But that didn’t dampen her motivation to continue her education despite the fact that some of her peers were putting college off or dropping out.

“I’m a second-gen American and I’m the first one of my siblings to go to college,” Paulo said.

“So, I feel like it kind of motivates me to keep on pushing through even though it’s all online and I just want to show all my siblings still in school that even though I’m in college I’m still here and still learning, too.”

With her first semester completed, Paulo is starting to gain a better sense of how to navigate college — from registration to coursework to communicating better with her professors. Part of that is because she’s found it easier to connect with her academic advisor through Zoom.

Paulo’s spring semester, however, is stacked with another 15-unit course load. That’s because she says that she remains intent on making it to graduation sooner than later.

“I thought that taking on that bigger load would help me to continue on and stay on track and push me through it,” Paulo said.

As her first semester comes to a close, Paulo has more of a sense of what college culture is, how to navigate it, but still has reservations for the next semester. To build stronger connections to her campus and keep herself motivated, Paulo said she decided to find a community or club that represents her Samoan heritage. She is considering signing up for the Oceania club.

“I’m kind of scared for next semester because that is going to be 15 units again,” Price said. “But I think I got it.”

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Robyn Price

Robyn Price is blunt about her college life situation and the bottom-line is she is having a less than exciting freshman year.

Price, 18, is majoring in Liberal Studies at Sonoma State University and says that she anticipated she’d be on campus, attending school events, meeting strangers who would start off as dorm roommates and eventually become lifelong friends.

“I thought it would be running into a lot of people who you’d know and making friends almost every day, like there would just be all different kinds of events going on,” Price said.

Despite attempts by the university, clubs and organizations to host virtual events and mixers, Price says her freshman year has been a real let down.

The extent of Price’s campus life involves chatting with classmates occasionally on Zoom during lectures and a few group chats with classmates to talk about classwork and assignments. One study group she found interesting was for a course called The Human Enigma, a class for her Liberal Studies program.

“There’s a girl in my class who likes to read aloud, so some people will form a reading group, and they’ll read the books together over Zoom,” Price said.

The group formed after the professor announced to the class that a student was willing to host a virtual study group to read and discuss the many books they would have to read throughout the semester.

Price says that she figured taking a 12-unit course load would allow her to spend hours outside of class reading, writing and staying up late for projects. Instead, she works from her desk in her bedroom at her parent’s house. Making her more stressed out is the fact that her full-time student status was also a requirement for Price to receive her scholarship money and CalVet Fee Waiver, which provides a tuition-free education at the CSU and the other state public post-secondary colleges and universities.

“I had to be fully enrolled for the waiver that my dad gets for being a disabled veteran,” Price said. “So I get free tuition to a CSU or UC which is really nice.”

It helps her to stay focused on her plan to graduate in four years and then go on to earn teaching credentials.

“I will graduate Spring 2024 as long as I stay on track,” Price said. “Which I really hope and plan to do.”