The Freshman Experience During a Pandemic

Going into his first semester at Penn State made Will Field nervous. Even though he was a legacy student and has had multiple family members attend the university, he wasn’t sure what his experience would be like with the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic.
Making friends and getting adjusted to a new environment has something he always found difficult. However, in a period of time where in person classes and staying socially distant is encouraged, Field stressed that while that is important, it makes it that much harder to interact with other students.
This took a toll on his mental state, but he decided to join a club called “Navigators”, a Christian group on campus, in order to try and make some friends, and it worked.
“It’s nice to go out and spend my Wednesday and Thursday nights interacting with people that share the same interests and beliefs that I do,” Field said. “It’s very relieving to find those type of people that are like me.”
On the other hand, students like Nicole Mazzella, tried to find other opportunities to get outside her dorm like walking downtown or playing sports like volleyball or basketball outside. Will Keane met most of his friends playing spike ball outside of the Lewis Katz building, home to the law school at Penn State. In fact, that’s where he met fellow freshman Emily Deacon.
“We just kind of created some form of comradery in this odd world,” Keane said when talking about meeting Deacon and playing sports with other people.
Deacon and Keane lived in the same area of in the suburbs of Philadelphia, but went to different high schools as their paths never crossed before college and Deacon stressed the difficulty in the ability to find new friends.
The change from high school to college that first-year college students endure is one thing. How they cope with the ups and downs the year has to offer with a Global Pandemic still ongoing is another.
“You’re in this bubble up here,” Deacon said. “I feel like I just went from being completely dependent in my parents’ house, on my laptop from senior year where a lot of things didn’t matter, to coming to [Penn State] and being completely independent.”