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Title
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College Experience During a Pandemic
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Description
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My submission is about how my college experience is going during a pandemic and how it is different from how I envisioned college. This was written as an assignment for Cheryl Dudasik-Wiggs’ fall 2020 ENGL 1100 Foundations of College Writing course.
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Coverage
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Greenville, North Carolina
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Creator
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Massey, Elizabeth
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Date
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2020-10-11
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extracted text
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COVID-19
Elizabeth Massey
Department of English, East Carolina University
ENGL 1100 Foundations of College Writing
Dr. Cheryl Dudasik-Wiggs
Fall 2020
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Covid-19
A pandemic is defined by the World Health Organization as an “epidemic occurring
worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a
large number or people” (World Health Organization, 2020). The most recent pandemic,
devastatingly affecting countries worldwide, is a new strain of the coronavirus called Covid-19
or the 2019 novel
coronavirus, shown on the right (World Health
Organization, 2020). Covid-19 is a highly contagious,
infectious disease that is spread primarily through
droplets of saliva or discharge from the nose when an
infected person coughs or sneezes (World Health
Organization, 2020). Although most people infected with this disease experience mild to
moderate symptoms, Covid-19 can be fatal to people who are older or have underlying health
conditions. Covid-19 has taken many lives and cases rapidly increase daily. In order to prevent
the spread of Covid-19, society has made numerous changes to the way people live. One of the
major life changes of Covid-19 is that of the education system and the distribution of education
to students. Specifically, the Covid-19 pandemic has altered many college students’ experiences
immensely, including my own. My college experience, living through this pandemic, is vastly
different from what I had envisioned my first year of college to be like.
First, although I was able to live on campus for the first two weeks, ECU unfortunately
had to send many freshmen, including myself, home in order to slow the spread of Covid-19 on
campus. This is one of the biggest impacts of the pandemic on myself for various reasons. The
most significant of these reasons is living too far away to be able to visit campus. I am from St.
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Louis, Missouri and I was overjoyed to be able to go to ECU to experience a new area and meet
new people from different areas. However, due to Covid-19, I had to move back home and it is
not the easiest place for me to go visit, which in turn has made me feel as if I am missing out on
the traditional college experience of having independence while living on campus and also being
able to hang out with friends I made in those short two weeks. Additionally, another big
difference from my vision of college due to the pandemic, is the way my education is distributed.
My classes in the beginning of the semester were in person and now have been moved all online.
This is extremely frustrating because I believe that it is fundamental to have class in person. Due
to classes being online, because of Covid-19, there is a lack of motivation to do schoolwork and
a lack of being able to do interactive activities and group work, which is something I enjoyed
doing while having in person classes. Not only do online classes eliminate the activeness that in
person classes provide, but also online classes do not feel like a valuable experience to me
because it is exceptionally easy to feel detached and distant from my courses. Covid-19 has made
my college experience different from my vision in the stated reasons above and has also
impacted my family financially.
Another difference from my vision and most likely my parent’s vision of my college
experience is the financial aspect. ECU originally planned for students to have a somewhat
normal college experience by having students on campus and a mix of classes in person, hybrid,
or online, all the while having Covid-19 restrictions in place such as social-distancing guidelines,
no large crowds, masks, etc. ECU made the effort to at least provide the traditional college
experience to students during the pandemic. However, after two weeks, Covid-19 spread swiftly
throughout the university and they could no longer have all students back on campus, socializing,
and slow the spread of the virus all simultaneously. Therefore, when ECU sent me home, my
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family was given only prorated refunds for my room and board and parking, while my tuition
stayed the same even though classes moved online. This is also extremely frustrating because it
is not financially logical to pay full tuition for the in-person classes when I am getting online
classes.
In brief, Covid-19 is a pandemic affecting people in many ways, some of these ways
being minor and others major. Whilst my college experience is not going the way I planned, I am
thankful for the opportunity of going to a school like ECU that is trying to make the best of the
pandemic for its students. My vision of college may be different this first year, but I am
optimistic that this is temporary, and the world will overcome this pandemic and return to
normalcy.
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References
World Health Organization (2020). Coronavirus. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/healthtopics/coronavirus#tab=tab_1.
