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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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I Thought We’d Learned Nothing From the Pandemic. I Wasn’t Seeing the Full Picture

M y first home had a back door that opened to a concrete patio with a giant crack down the middle. When my sister and I played, I made sure to stay on the same side of the divide as her, just in case. The 1988 film The Land Before Time was one of the first movies I ever saw, and the image of the earth splintering into pieces planted its roots in my brain. I believed that, even in my own backyard, I could easily become the tiny Triceratops separated from her family, on the other side of the chasm, as everything crumbled into chaos.

Some 30 years later, I marvel at the eerie, unexpected ways that cartoonish nightmare came to life – not just for me and my family, but for all of us. The landscape was already covered in fissures well before COVID-19 made its way across the planet, but the pandemic applied pressure, and the cracks broke wide open, separating us from each other physically and ideologically. Under the weight of the crisis, we scattered and landed on such different patches of earth we could barely see each other’s faces, even when we squinted. We disagreed viciously with each other, about how to respond, but also about what was true.

Recently, someone asked me if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, and my first thought was a flat no. Nothing. There was a time when I thought it would be the very thing to draw us together and catapult us – as a capital “S” Society – into a kinder future. It’s surreal to remember those early days when people rallied together, sewing masks for health care workers during critical shortages and gathering on balconies in cities from Dallas to New York City to clap and sing songs like “Yellow Submarine.” It felt like a giant lightning bolt shot across the sky, and for one breath, we all saw something that had been hidden in the dark – the inherent vulnerability in being human or maybe our inescapable connectedness .

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But it turns out, it was just a flash. The goodwill vanished as quickly as it appeared. A couple of years later, people feel lied to, abandoned, and all on their own. I’ve felt my own curiosity shrinking, my willingness to reach out waning , my ability to keep my hands open dwindling. I look out across the landscape and see selfishness and rage, burnt earth and so many dead bodies. Game over. We lost. And if we’ve already lost, why try?

Still, the question kept nagging me. I wondered, am I seeing the full picture? What happens when we focus not on the collective society but at one face, one story at a time? I’m not asking for a bow to minimize the suffering – a pretty flourish to put on top and make the whole thing “worth it.” Yuck. That’s not what we need. But I wondered about deep, quiet growth. The kind we feel in our bodies, relationships, homes, places of work, neighborhoods.

Like a walkie-talkie message sent to my allies on the ground, I posted a call on my Instagram. What do you see? What do you hear? What feels possible? Is there life out here? Sprouting up among the rubble? I heard human voices calling back – reports of life, personal and specific. I heard one story at a time – stories of grief and distrust, fury and disappointment. Also gratitude. Discovery. Determination.

Among the most prevalent were the stories of self-revelation. Almost as if machines were given the chance to live as humans, people described blossoming into fuller selves. They listened to their bodies’ cues, recognized their desires and comforts, tuned into their gut instincts, and honored the intuition they hadn’t realized belonged to them. Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. “The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry myself have both shrunk and expanded,” she shared. “I don’t love myself very well with an audience.” Without the daily ritual of trying to pass as “normal” in public, Tamar, a queer mom in the Netherlands, realized she’s autistic. “I think the pandemic helped me to recognize the mask,” she wrote. “Not that unmasking is easy now. But at least I know it’s there.” In a time of widespread suffering that none of us could solve on our own, many tended to our internal wounds and misalignments, large and small, and found clarity.

Read More: A Tool for Staying Grounded in This Era of Constant Uncertainty

I wonder if this flourishing of self-awareness is at least partially responsible for the life alterations people pursued. The pandemic broke open our personal notions of work and pushed us to reevaluate things like time and money. Lucy, a disabled writer in the U.K., made the hard decision to leave her job as a journalist covering Westminster to write freelance about her beloved disability community. “This work feels important in a way nothing else has ever felt,” she wrote. “I don’t think I’d have realized this was what I should be doing without the pandemic.” And she wasn’t alone – many people changed jobs , moved, learned new skills and hobbies, became politically engaged.

Perhaps more than any other shifts, people described a significant reassessment of their relationships. They set boundaries, said no, had challenging conversations. They also reconnected, fell in love, and learned to trust. Jeanne, a quilter in Indiana, got to know relatives she wouldn’t have connected with if lockdowns hadn’t prompted weekly family Zooms. “We are all over the map as regards to our belief systems,” she emphasized, “but it is possible to love people you don’t see eye to eye with on every issue.” Anna, an anti-violence advocate in Maine, learned she could trust her new marriage: “Life was not a honeymoon. But we still chose to turn to each other with kindness and curiosity.” So many bonds forged and broken, strengthened and strained.

Instead of relying on default relationships or institutional structures, widespread recalibrations allowed for going off script and fortifying smaller communities. Mara from Idyllwild, Calif., described the tangible plan for care enacted in her town. “We started a mutual-aid group at the beginning of the pandemic,” she wrote, “and it grew so quickly before we knew it we were feeding 400 of the 4000 residents.” She didn’t pretend the conditions were ideal. In fact, she expressed immense frustration with our collective response to the pandemic. Even so, the local group rallied and continues to offer assistance to their community with help from donations and volunteers (many of whom were originally on the receiving end of support). “I’ve learned that people thrive when they feel their connection to others,” she wrote. Clare, a teacher from the U.K., voiced similar conviction as she described a giant scarf she’s woven out of ribbons, each representing a single person. The scarf is “a collection of stories, moments and wisdom we are sharing with each other,” she wrote. It now stretches well over 1,000 feet.

A few hours into reading the comments, I lay back on my bed, phone held against my chest. The room was quiet, but my internal world was lighting up with firefly flickers. What felt different? Surely part of it was receiving personal accounts of deep-rooted growth. And also, there was something to the mere act of asking and listening. Maybe it connected me to humans before battle cries. Maybe it was the chance to be in conversation with others who were also trying to understand – what is happening to us? Underneath it all, an undeniable thread remained; I saw people peering into the mess and narrating their findings onto the shared frequency. Every comment was like a flare into the sky. I’m here! And if the sky is full of flares, we aren’t alone.

I recognized my own pandemic discoveries – some minor, others massive. Like washing off thick eyeliner and mascara every night is more effort than it’s worth; I can transform the mundane into the magical with a bedsheet, a movie projector, and twinkle lights; my paralyzed body can mother an infant in ways I’d never seen modeled for me. I remembered disappointing, bewildering conversations within my own family of origin and our imperfect attempts to remain close while also seeing things so differently. I realized that every time I get the weekly invite to my virtual “Find the Mumsies” call, with a tiny group of moms living hundreds of miles apart, I’m being welcomed into a pocket of unexpected community. Even though we’ve never been in one room all together, I’ve felt an uncommon kind of solace in their now-familiar faces.

Hope is a slippery thing. I desperately want to hold onto it, but everywhere I look there are real, weighty reasons to despair. The pandemic marks a stretch on the timeline that tangles with a teetering democracy, a deteriorating planet , the loss of human rights that once felt unshakable . When the world is falling apart Land Before Time style, it can feel trite, sniffing out the beauty – useless, firing off flares to anyone looking for signs of life. But, while I’m under no delusions that if we just keep trudging forward we’ll find our own oasis of waterfalls and grassy meadows glistening in the sunshine beneath a heavenly chorus, I wonder if trivializing small acts of beauty, connection, and hope actually cuts us off from resources essential to our survival. The group of abandoned dinosaurs were keeping each other alive and making each other laugh well before they made it to their fantasy ending.

Read More: How Ice Cream Became My Own Personal Act of Resistance

After the monarch butterfly went on the endangered-species list, my friend and fellow writer Hannah Soyer sent me wildflower seeds to plant in my yard. A simple act of big hope – that I will actually plant them, that they will grow, that a monarch butterfly will receive nourishment from whatever blossoms are able to push their way through the dirt. There are so many ways that could fail. But maybe the outcome wasn’t exactly the point. Maybe hope is the dogged insistence – the stubborn defiance – to continue cultivating moments of beauty regardless. There is value in the planting apart from the harvest.

I can’t point out a single collective lesson from the pandemic. It’s hard to see any great “we.” Still, I see the faces in my moms’ group, making pancakes for their kids and popping on between strings of meetings while we try to figure out how to raise these small people in this chaotic world. I think of my friends on Instagram tending to the selves they discovered when no one was watching and the scarf of ribbons stretching the length of more than three football fields. I remember my family of three, holding hands on the way up the ramp to the library. These bits of growth and rings of support might not be loud or right on the surface, but that’s not the same thing as nothing. If we only cared about the bottom-line defeats or sweeping successes of the big picture, we’d never plant flowers at all.

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How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

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Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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The pandemic has had devastating impacts on learning. What will it take to help students catch up?

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, megan kuhfeld , megan kuhfeld director of growth modeling and data analytics - nwea jim soland , jim soland assistant professor, school of education and human development - university of virginia, affiliated research fellow - nwea karyn lewis , and karyn lewis vice president of research and policy partnerships - nwea emily morton emily morton research scientist - nwea.

March 3, 2022

As we reach the two-year mark of the initial wave of pandemic-induced school shutdowns, academic normalcy remains out of reach for many students, educators, and parents. In addition to surging COVID-19 cases at the end of 2021, schools have faced severe staff shortages , high rates of absenteeism and quarantines , and rolling school closures . Furthermore, students and educators continue to struggle with mental health challenges , higher rates of violence and misbehavior , and concerns about lost instructional time .

As we outline in our new research study released in January, the cumulative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ academic achievement has been large. We tracked changes in math and reading test scores across the first two years of the pandemic using data from 5.4 million U.S. students in grades 3-8. We focused on test scores from immediately before the pandemic (fall 2019), following the initial onset (fall 2020), and more than one year into pandemic disruptions (fall 2021).

Average fall 2021 math test scores in grades 3-8 were 0.20-0.27 standard deviations (SDs) lower relative to same-grade peers in fall 2019, while reading test scores were 0.09-0.18 SDs lower. This is a sizable drop. For context, the math drops are significantly larger than estimated impacts from other large-scale school disruptions, such as after Hurricane Katrina—math scores dropped 0.17 SDs in one year for New Orleans evacuees .

Even more concerning, test-score gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by approximately 20% in math (corresponding to 0.20 SDs) and 15% in reading (0.13 SDs), primarily during the 2020-21 school year. Further, achievement tended to drop more between fall 2020 and 2021 than between fall 2019 and 2020 (both overall and differentially by school poverty), indicating that disruptions to learning have continued to negatively impact students well past the initial hits following the spring 2020 school closures.

These numbers are alarming and potentially demoralizing, especially given the heroic efforts of students to learn and educators to teach in incredibly trying times. From our perspective, these test-score drops in no way indicate that these students represent a “ lost generation ” or that we should give up hope. Most of us have never lived through a pandemic, and there is so much we don’t know about students’ capacity for resiliency in these circumstances and what a timeline for recovery will look like. Nor are we suggesting that teachers are somehow at fault given the achievement drops that occurred between 2020 and 2021; rather, educators had difficult jobs before the pandemic, and now are contending with huge new challenges, many outside their control.

Clearly, however, there’s work to do. School districts and states are currently making important decisions about which interventions and strategies to implement to mitigate the learning declines during the last two years. Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) investments from the American Rescue Plan provided nearly $200 billion to public schools to spend on COVID-19-related needs. Of that sum, $22 billion is dedicated specifically to addressing learning loss using “evidence-based interventions” focused on the “ disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on underrepresented student subgroups. ” Reviews of district and state spending plans (see Future Ed , EduRecoveryHub , and RAND’s American School District Panel for more details) indicate that districts are spending their ESSER dollars designated for academic recovery on a wide variety of strategies, with summer learning, tutoring, after-school programs, and extended school-day and school-year initiatives rising to the top.

Comparing the negative impacts from learning disruptions to the positive impacts from interventions

To help contextualize the magnitude of the impacts of COVID-19, we situate test-score drops during the pandemic relative to the test-score gains associated with common interventions being employed by districts as part of pandemic recovery efforts. If we assume that such interventions will continue to be as successful in a COVID-19 school environment, can we expect that these strategies will be effective enough to help students catch up? To answer this question, we draw from recent reviews of research on high-dosage tutoring , summer learning programs , reductions in class size , and extending the school day (specifically for literacy instruction) . We report effect sizes for each intervention specific to a grade span and subject wherever possible (e.g., tutoring has been found to have larger effects in elementary math than in reading).

Figure 1 shows the standardized drops in math test scores between students testing in fall 2019 and fall 2021 (separately by elementary and middle school grades) relative to the average effect size of various educational interventions. The average effect size for math tutoring matches or exceeds the average COVID-19 score drop in math. Research on tutoring indicates that it often works best in younger grades, and when provided by a teacher rather than, say, a parent. Further, some of the tutoring programs that produce the biggest effects can be quite intensive (and likely expensive), including having full-time tutors supporting all students (not just those needing remediation) in one-on-one settings during the school day. Meanwhile, the average effect of reducing class size is negative but not significant, with high variability in the impact across different studies. Summer programs in math have been found to be effective (average effect size of .10 SDs), though these programs in isolation likely would not eliminate the COVID-19 test-score drops.

Figure 1: Math COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) Table 2; summer program results are pulled from Lynch et al (2021) Table 2; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span; Figles et al. and Lynch et al. report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. We were unable to find a rigorous study that reported effect sizes for extending the school day/year on math performance. Nictow et al. and Kraft & Falken (2021) also note large variations in tutoring effects depending on the type of tutor, with larger effects for teacher and paraprofessional tutoring programs than for nonprofessional and parent tutoring. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

Figure 2 displays a similar comparison using effect sizes from reading interventions. The average effect of tutoring programs on reading achievement is larger than the effects found for the other interventions, though summer reading programs and class size reduction both produced average effect sizes in the ballpark of the COVID-19 reading score drops.

Figure 2: Reading COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; extended-school-day results are from Figlio et al. (2018) Table 2; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) ; summer program results are pulled from Kim & Quinn (2013) Table 3; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: While Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span, Figlio et al. and Kim & Quinn report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

There are some limitations of drawing on research conducted prior to the pandemic to understand our ability to address the COVID-19 test-score drops. First, these studies were conducted under conditions that are very different from what schools currently face, and it is an open question whether the effectiveness of these interventions during the pandemic will be as consistent as they were before the pandemic. Second, we have little evidence and guidance about the efficacy of these interventions at the unprecedented scale that they are now being considered. For example, many school districts are expanding summer learning programs, but school districts have struggled to find staff interested in teaching summer school to meet the increased demand. Finally, given the widening test-score gaps between low- and high-poverty schools, it’s uncertain whether these interventions can actually combat the range of new challenges educators are facing in order to narrow these gaps. That is, students could catch up overall, yet the pandemic might still have lasting, negative effects on educational equality in this country.

Given that the current initiatives are unlikely to be implemented consistently across (and sometimes within) districts, timely feedback on the effects of initiatives and any needed adjustments will be crucial to districts’ success. The Road to COVID Recovery project and the National Student Support Accelerator are two such large-scale evaluation studies that aim to produce this type of evidence while providing resources for districts to track and evaluate their own programming. Additionally, a growing number of resources have been produced with recommendations on how to best implement recovery programs, including scaling up tutoring , summer learning programs , and expanded learning time .

Ultimately, there is much work to be done, and the challenges for students, educators, and parents are considerable. But this may be a moment when decades of educational reform, intervention, and research pay off. Relying on what we have learned could show the way forward.

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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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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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Remote Teaching: A Student's Perspective

By a purdue student.

As many teachers are well aware, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 required sudden, drastic changes to course curricula. What they may not be aware of are all of the many ways in which this has affected and complicated students’ learning and their academic experiences. This essay, which is written by a student enrolled in several Spring and Summer 2020 remote courses at Purdue University, describes the firsthand experiences (and those of interviewed peers) of participating in remote courses. The aim of this essay is to make teachers aware of the unexpected challenges that remote learning can pose for students.

Emergency remote teaching differs from well-planned online learning

During the past semester, many students and faculty colloquially referred to their courses as “online classes.” While these courses were being taught online, it is nonetheless helpful to distinguish classes that were deliberately designed to be administered online from courses that suddenly shifted online due to an emergency. Perhaps the most significant difference is that students knowingly register for online courses, whereas the switch to remote teaching in spring 2020 was involuntary (though unavoidable). Additionally, online courses are designed in accordance with theoretical and practical standards for teaching in virtual contexts. By contrast, the short transition timeline for implementing online instruction in spring 2020 made applying these standards and preparing instructors next to impossible. As a result, logistical and technical problems were inevitable. I've listed a few of these below.

"...students knowingly register for online courses, whereas the switch to remote teaching in spring 2020 was involuntary..."

Observed Challenges

When teachers are forced to adjust on short notice, some course components may need to be sacrificed..

Two characteristics of high-quality online classes are that their learning outcomes mirror those of in-person classes and that significant time is devoted to course design prior to the beginning of the course. These characteristics ensure the quality of the student learning experience. However, as both students and faculty were given little chance to prepare for the move to remote teaching in spring 2020, adjustments to their learning outcomes were all but unavoidable. Instructors were required to move their courses to a remote teaching format in the span of little over a week during a time when they, like their students, would normally be on break. It was a monumental challenge and one that university faculty rose to meet spectacularly well. However, many components of courses that were originally designed to be taught in person could not be replicated in a remote learning context. Time for the development of contingency plans was limited, which posed additional challenges for the remainder of the semester.

Students' internet connections play a big role in their ability to participate.

At the start of the remote move, many instructors hoped to continue instruction synchronously, but this quickly became infeasible due to technological and logistical issues (e.g., internet bandwidth, student internet access, and time differences). A large number of my fellow students shared internet with other household members, who were also working remotely and were also reliant on conferencing software for meetings. The full-time job of a parent or sibling may be prioritized over a student’s lecture in limited-bandwidth situations. Worse, students in rural areas may simply not have a strong enough connection to participate in synchronous activities at all. These common realities suggest that less technologically reliant contingency plans are necessary and that course material should be made accessible in multiple formats. For example, in addition to offering a video recorded lecture, instructors could also consider providing notes for their lecture.

"These common realities suggest that less technologically reliant contingency plans are necessary and that course material should be made accessible in multiple formats."

It’s also important to design assignments carefully in online courses. For example, group projects, which can pose challenges even when courses are held in person (e.g., in terms of communication, coordination of responsibilities, and access to needed materials), can nevertheless offer students valuable opportunities for personal growth. However, these challenges only become more significant when group projects must be completed remotely. In these cases, access to secure internet and needed materials becomes critical to student success. Partnered students may be in different time zones or may even have been affected by COVID-19 in a way that hampers their ability to contribute to the project. Therefore, teachers may find it advisable to provide students with the option to complete work that would normally constitute group projects as individual assignments.

Teachers underestimate how much harder it is to focus in online courses.

When students no longer share a single learning environment, environmental diffferences can cause significant differences in their engagement. Students forced to use their home as a mixed work/academic space may encounter distractions that wouldn't be a factor in a traditional classroom. These distractions challenge students’ abilities to focus and self-regulate. The shift to remote leadning may also disrupt students’ academic routines. Experts in educational psychology and learning design and technology I spoke to for this piece argued that students’ abilities to handle this transition is partly age-dependent. Older students may not only have more familiarity with online classes, but also with the sort of self-regulation and planning that is required for academic success in the university. Thus, age and course level should be taken into consideration when devising ways to engage, challenge, and support students in remote learning contexts.

"...age and course level should be taken into consideration when devising ways to engage, challenge, and support students in remote learning contexts."

When students are new to taking classes online, explicit prompting from the instructor can be needed to replicate the missing human interactions that normally spur enagagement in the classroom. Thus, it is especially important that instructors closely monitor online learning spaces like discussion boards, looking for appropriate opportunities to chime in. An expert in learning design and technology I spoke to said that instructors should ideally be in touch with their students twice per week. They should frequently outline course expectations and maintain some availability to answer questions. This is especially true in instances where course expectations change due to the shift to online learning. This expert also noted that it is important that instructors provide timely feedback on assignments and assessments. This communicates to students where they stand in their courses and helps students adjust their study strategies as needed.

Students need opportunities to connect and collaborate.

One of the most special parts about being a student at Purdue University is being part of a single large learning community made up of a spectrum of smaller learning communities. At Purdue, students can form bonds with classmates, neighbors, and roommates with a diverse range of skills and interests. Through these friendships and connections, social networks develop, providing emotional and academic support for the many challenges that our rigorous coursework poses.

The closure of the university's physical classrooms created a barrier to the utilization and maintenance of these networks, and it is important that students still have access to one another even when at a distance. One way in which instructors can support their students in remote learning contexts is to create a student-only discussion board on their course page where students can get to know one another and connect. Students may also have questions related to course content that they may feel uncomfortable asking an instructor but that can be easily answered by a classmate.

Many students are dealing with a time change/difference.

For personal reasons, I finished the spring 2020 semester in Europe. Navigating the time difference while juggling the responsibilities of my job, which required synchronous work, and my coursework was challenging (to say the least). One of my courses had a large group project, which was a significant source of stress this past semester. My partner, like many of my instructors, did not seem to understand the significance of this time difference, which often required me to keep a schedule that made daily life in my time zone difficult. When having to make conference calls at 10:00 p.m. and respond to time-sensitive emails well after midnight, work-life balance is much more difficult to achieve. This was abundently clear to me after dealing with time difference of merely six hours. Keep in mind that some students may be dealing with even greater time differences. Thus, try to provide opportunities for asynchronous participation whenever you can.

"Navigating the time difference while juggling the responsibilities of my job, which required synchronous work, and my coursework was challenging (to say the least)"

While flexibility is necessary, academic integrity is still important.

Both teachers and students in my courses expressed discomfort and concern over issues relating to academic integrity. Some students questioned why lockdown browsers (i.e., special browsers used to prevent students from cheating during exams) were not used. According to a learning design and technology expert I spoke to, the short timeline for the transition to remote teaching and learning made the incorporation of such software infeasible. In addition this software can be incredibly expensive, and many professors do not even know that it exists (much less how to use it effectively).

However, several students I spoke with reported that, in their efforts to maintain academic integrity via exam monitoring, some of their professors mandated that students take exams synchronously. This decision disregarded the potential for technical issues and ignored the time differences many students faced, placing unfair stress on students in faraway countries and those with poor connections. Other faculty took an opposite approach by extending the window of time in which students could take exams. Receiving changing and often unclear instructions led to confusion about what students' instructors expected of them. Incorporating this software more consistently in online or remote courses may be a good way to ensure both students and teachers are familiar with it in the future.

The most difficult part of this pandemic has not been the coursework, nor the transition the remote learning, but instead the many unknowns that have faced students and teachers alike. We at Purdue are lucky that our education has been able to continue relatively unabated, and we can be grateful for that fact that most of our instructors have done their best to support us. This coming fall, nearly 500 courses will be offered as online courses, and many others will be presented in hybrid formats. With more time to prepare, courses this fall can be expected to be of higher quality and to have more student-centered contingency plans. As long as it strives for flexibility and gives consideration to students’ evolving needs, the Purdue educational experience will continue to earn its high-quality reputation.

Thank you. Boiler up!

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Meaningful learning experiences in everyday life during pandemics. a qualitative study.

• Department of Psychology, Institute of Educational Research, University of Girona, Girona, Spain

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the lives of people all over the world. In particular, an unprecedented educational crisis has occurred due to the circumstances of physical distancing and remote learning. This article focuses specifically on the meaningful learning experiences in the everyday lives of adolescents during the pandemic. 72 meaningful learning experiences were identified from 11 participants who recorded their specific learning experiences for a week by a means of a journal recorded by themselves. A content analysis was undertaken in order to identify the ecology (what, how, where, and who with) of the different learning experiences. The results show a prevalence of personal and conceptual learning, a presence of both formal and specifically informal, everyday activities among the meaningful learning experiences detected, the importance of peers, teacher and “learning experiences while alone,” and the use of digital technologies as learning resources; they also reveal the assistance of others in the learning process. The main contribution of this study illustrates how students in everyday life during pandemics are involved in a whole range of different activities both at school and at home.

Introduction

In recent decades, the impact information and communication technologies have on the transformation of both learning processes and educational practices has been documented ( Jenkins, 2009 ; Coll, 2013 ; González-Patiño and Esteban-Guitart, 2014 ; Bender and Peppler, 2019 ; Gee and Esteban-Guitart, 2019 ). In particular, recently, different studies have documented the impact of remote education, as well as the emergence of hybrid models (online-offline), on educational inequalities, as well as teaching and learning processes ( Arora and Srinivasan, 2020 ; Iglesias et al., 2020 ; Jena, 2020 ; Paudel, 2021 ). However, this literature did not address the impact of pandemics on learning experiences of the young. This article aims to contribute to the existing literature by considering the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has on the meaningful learning experiences of young people from different socioeconomic and sociocultural conditions.

We understand meaningful learning experiences as being those that, due to their cognitive-emotional impact, the learner identifies as being especially relevant. Additionally, the learner grants a particular meaning to the set of recognized learning experiences achieved throughout the day, beyond the bounds of context and place where the learning experiences occur ( Esteban-Guitart, 2016 ; Esteban-Guitart et al., 2017 ). According to Esteban-Guitart (2016) meaningful learning experiences mean “those that the learner selects and chooses from his/her prior learning experiences, for their positive or negative impact. These experiences are the most relevant from the learner’s point of view, for whatever reason, and are connected to their needs or interests” (p. 52).

Previous research suggests that educational times and spaces have both been modified and that this is mainly due to the porosity of digital practices and cultures. In this sense, we speak not only of learning throughout life but also life-wide: the result of participation in different contexts, situations and daily educational practices, both social and in the community ( Esteban-Guitart et al., 2018 ). Based on the Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory ( Bronfenbrenner, 1979 ), the notion of learning ecologies, in this sense, considers the set of physical and/or virtual activities, the help, collaboration and guidance of other people, as well as the different resources, inside and outside the school education context, as potential opportunities for learning available to a learner ( Barron, 2004 ).

Taking the very notion of “learning ecologies” as a reference ( Barron, 2004 , 2006 ), Coll (2013) argues that we are facing a profound revision of the fundamental parameters that characterize educational practice (where, when, what, who with, why and how we learn). From a model focused on universal schooling, belonging to the twentieth century, we are now in a moment of transition toward distributed and interconnected emerging models. In this sense, we speak of “local learning ecosystems” ( Hannon et al., 2019 ) to refer to a great multiplicity of interconnected educational scenarios and agents, linked to the development of basic competencies or skills for the 21st century, through participation in affinity groups or communities of practice, in different physical and digital mediums, as well as in distinct narrative formats ( DiGiacomo D. et al., 2018 ; Lacasa, 2018 ).

In a previous study, the importance of informal situations and practices was identified, as generators of even school-type learning (aspects related to the science or history curriculum, for example); the importance of the peer group, and the “self-taught” situations—learning that one claims to have undertaken alone—, as well as in digital format (for example, YouTube, social networks, Internet content search) and from the participation in communities of affinity or interest, such as a Facebook group, or online gamers, as geography/format of a large part of the meaningful learning experiences identified in adolescents aged 15 and 16 ( Esteban-Guitart et al., 2017 ).

These results are in tune with the literature linked to “connected learning” according to which, a large part of learning is currently generated from the link or connection between a certain interest and curricular, professional or civic opportunities, through collaboration and support from others, forexample through social networks ( DiGiacomo D. K. et al., 2018 ; González-Patiño and Esteban-Guitart, 2019 ; Esteban-Guitart et al., 2020a ).

However, often these learning experiences that take place in non-formal or informal spaces of activity, are neither taken advantage of, nor linked to, the curricular type learning that takes place in school. “The majority of young people do not find ways to connect learning in their online affinity networks with in-school, civic, or career-relevant opportunities” ( Ito et al., 2019 , p. 2).

In any case, it seems clear that the opportunities and sources of learning today transcend the walls and borders of the school educational context and practice, as digital mobile devices allow access, construction and exchange of knowledge, skills, and competences. What Jenkins (2009) refers to as the concept of “participatory cultures” characterized by the ability to produce and exchange content and experiences through different media such as amateur videogame design, films or songs shared through YouTube, blogs, Facebook, Instagram, or other social and digital media.

The aim of the study presented here is to identify, and analyze, meaningful learning experiences experienced over the course of a week by 16 and 17-year-old adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic situation in order to illustrate the potential impact of the pandemic situation on learning processes and ecologies.

Materials and Methods

With the aim of achieving the aims of the research, and in accordance with the unit of analysis described in the introduction, meaningful learning experiences, a qualitative approach was used in the consideration of the identification and analysis of the subjectivity as a proposal for the generation of knowledge ( Mruck and Breuer, 2003 ). In particular, and in the same line as previous research ( Esteban-Guitart et al., 2017 ), a content analysis, described below, was carried out.

Participants

An intentional sample, deliberately chosen, of 11 participants was selected from a first-year high school class of 28 students from a state school in a neighborhood characterized by its high sociocultural diversity in Girona, Catalunya, Spain. The sample was composed of five boys and six girls between 16 and 17 years of age, balancing gender distribution. Of the total, six are of local origin (Catalan, Spanish), while five students come from abroad (two from Honduras, one from Colombia, one from Bolivia, and one from Morocco). The purpose was to reflect the diversity of both the school and context of the region. Table 1 describes the sociodemographic characteristics of the participants. For reasons of confidentiality, a code was assigned to the different participants.

Table 1. Sociodemographic characteristics of the sample.

Table 2 additional data regarding the participants in relation to their learning ecologies ( Barron, 2004 ), specifically the availability, or otherwise, of an Internet connection, together with available devices and usual practices carried out during the week as well as going to high school.

Table 2. Some characteristics of the participants’ learning ecologies.

All participants have an Internet connection, as well as personal mobile phones and seven personally owned laptop computers, in four cases shared with either siblings or parents. With regard to after-school activities, what stands out are sports and physical activities. Two participants did not report doing any after-school activity during the week (see Table 2 ).

With the aim of identifying meaningful learning experiences, an adaptation of the personal journal of meaningful learning experiences proposed by Esteban-Guitart et al. (2017) was used. The original version consisted of five questions, in our version we used four questions that the participants had to answer at the end of the day for a week (see Figure 1 ). Specifically, the data was collected between Monday, 25th January and Sunday, 31st January, 2021. The questions were: (a) What is the most important thing you learned today? (b) Where did you learn it? (c) Who with? (d) How did you learn it? The instructions were: “Using the four questions in this diary, I would like you to collect, over 7 days of a week—weekend included-, the situations, occasions or experiences where you learned something. It is important, that of all the things learned throughout the day, you focus on the one that is most relevant or important to you.”

Figure 1. Example of a personal diary of meaningful learning experiences.

With the aim of identifying some of the characteristics of the participants’ learning ecologies, information was collected via an on-line questionnaire. This information consisted of: the availability or otherwise of an internet connection, the digital devices available; as well as the after-school activities carried out during the week (see Table 2 ).

Firstly, the study was approved by the research ethics and biosafety committee (CEBRUdG) of the University of Girona. Next, the research proposal was presented to the director of the school, and to the classroom teacher of the participants. After its approval, a sample of 11 participants was taken from the class group. They were contacted and informed of the purpose of the research, and authorization was sought to participate in the study based on informed consent. Once the instrument, a personal diary of meaningful learning experiences, was provided by the research team, the participants filled it out during the week of 25th–31st January, 2021. Finally, an on-line questionnaire was administered to each participant to identify the availability or otherwise of digital devices, the availability of an Internet connection, as well as the activities carried out during the week. During this period, classes were physically attended in the formal educational context with mask and hygiene measures, although 1 day a week, on Wednesday, classes were not attended in person and were held on-line. On the other hand, there was a situation of semi-confinement, since at that time there were measures affecting bars, cultural facilities and shops in the region of Catalonia. Specifically, non-essential shops were ordered to close at weekends, as well as shopping centers of more than 400 m 2 . On the other hand, restaurants and cafes were allowed to open but only between the times of 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. There was a limitation to interior capacity of 30%. There was also confinement on a municipal level in that entering and leaving Girona was restricted except for a justified reason. This measure affected the mobility of the population. One of the exceptions was that of attending school. However, all university lectures were online and face-to-face classes at the university were suspended.

Data Analysis

In order to analyze the empirical data obtained, thematic content analysis procedure was used with a deductive-inductive category system procedure in a round-trip iterative process between the data and the initial categories that were enriched and modified from the analysis carried out ( Vaismoradi and Snelgrove, 2019 ). In particular, an answer was found to the research question related to the characterization of the ecology (what, where, how, who with) of meaningful learning experiences. To do this, we initially based our research on the a priori categories developed by Esteban-Guitart et al. (2017) from the parameters of the new learning ecology described by Coll (2013) . However, the category “what” was added, which was not analyzed in the study by Esteban-Guitart et al. (2017) . It was decided to include this category because although it is contemplated in the parameters of the new learning ecology ( Coll, 2013 ), it was not included in the research undertaken by Esteban-Guitart et al. (2017) . This was considered to be a limitation in itself as it was not possible to obtain any analysis about the content of the meaningful learning experiences identified. In order to operationalize this category, the conceptual, procedural, and/or personal-identity learning contents were used. To this end, the learning types described by García-Romero et al. (2018) , Lalueza and Macías-Gómez-Estern (2020) , and Macías-Gómez-Estern et al. (2019) in research on the evaluation of the learning service by university students is used. In order to readjust the previous categories inductively based on the data obtained, inclusion criteria were introduced. Table 3 shows these categories, codes and inclusion criteria finally used in the study.

Table 3. Categories, codes and inclusion criteria used.

In relation to the coding process, the codes that appear in Table 3 have been assigned to the text segments of the diaries written by the participants about their meaningful learning experiences. This analysis allows collection of the frequencies of citations associated with the different categories and analysis codes.

“High intercoder reliability” (ICR) ( Burla et al., 2008 ) is used in qualitative content analysis carried out for ensuring concordance in data analysis. In particular, transcripts were coded independently by two researchers from the categories, codes and inclusion criteria used (see Table 3 ) by two researchers, and ICR was calculated. A resulting kappa value of 0.91 can be regarded as solid.

A total of 72 meaningful learning experiences were identified as a result of the seven experiences that each participant has selected on each of the 7 days of the week; With the exception of BCT007 and BCT009, who stated, on 3 days in the first case and on 2 days in the second case, that they had not learned anything relevant throughout the day.

Regarding the content category of the meaningful learning experiences (the “What?”), the identity-personal subcategory stands out (with 32 citations), followed by conceptual (with 30) and procedural (with 10). Regarding the “Where?”, the formal educational context stands out, either at the educational institution (24 associated citations) or at home (with six citations) but in activities, such as homework, extension of time, and homework. However, most meaningful learning experiences originated in informal contexts or situations. In relation to the “Who with?” The code that obtains a greater association of citations is “Alone,” followed by the peer group and the teacher. To a lesser extent with the family. Finally, at the level of “How?” what stands out is the consideration of learning without any type of cultural mediation, without the use of artifacts; however, in the case of the use of artifacts, the digital format stands out. Finally, it is worth highlighting social interaction as a generator of a large part of the meaningful learning experiences, compared to self-learning (see Table 4 ).

Table 4. Citations associated with the different categories and analysis codes.

For the purposes and context of this research, and of this monographic issue, the presence of COVID is highlighted in four of the meaningful learning experiences reported. As can be seen in Table 5 , these are current issues in the pandemic period in which the study was carried out, for example, vaccines.

Table 5. Meaningful learning experiences associated with COVID-19.

Taken as a whole, meaningful learning experience linked to identity-personal aspects (for example, linked to the organization of tasks, values or aspects linked to knowledge about oneself) have been derived from informal situations and contexts of life and activity. For example, BCT002 (day 5) claims to have learned that doing things in advance (for example homework) frees up time for leisure. The participant says she learned it alone, at home, specifically “doing all the homework she had for the following week in order to make the most of the weekend, even though we can’t go out much.” Meanwhile the curricular-conceptual type learning takes place in the formal sphere. However, conceptual learning carried out at home is also highlighted, acting as a support and extension of school activities, as well as derived from informal situations in seven of the total experiences with formal content (30). For example, derived from a chat with friends, BCT010 claims, on the second day, to have learned the equation of the trajectory of movement. However, the majority of conceptual learning took place in the school and was basically facilitated by the teacher. While learning carried out in informal life situations or practices is associated with situations in which the learner claims to be alone, or with peers—basically connected through digital devices. In relation to this, the use of social networks such as Instagram, video games, or search engines such as Google stand out. For example, BCT008, on the seventh day, claims to have learned to play 1-min games of chess with the computer, through an online chess game; or BCT007 (day 2) claims to have learned with Instagram that the first love one must receive is one’s own love. In reality, a large part of the situations considered self-learning are characterized by the use of digital devices. For example, BCT003, on the third day, learned how to install an application on the computer without paying by searching for information on the Internet.

The exceptional situation, derived from the COVID-19 pandemic, has had an impact on different aspects of people’s daily lives. The aim of the study presented here was to identify different meaningful learning experiences in the pandemic situation. In a previous study, the importance of informal learning situations and contexts was identified, as well as the importance of social and digital media as spaces for interaction and learning ( Esteban-Guitart et al., 2017 ). This study is in tune with the previous study, despite the fact that the formal educational context also appears as relevant, perhaps as it is the main activity of young people, as well as being at home, as they are in a moment of semi-confinement; with restrictions in shops, bars and cafes and mobility. In fact, the study illustrates how the learning processes took place either in high school or at home. Highlighting learning undertaken alone. A situation that can also be explained due to the social restrictions of personal contact and mobility. However, a large number of the experiences have been categorized as resulting from social mediation (47) as opposed to those without social mediation (25), since the peer group at school and through their contact with digital devices is observed as an element which is highlighted from many of the meaningful learning experiences identified. This is in agreement with the work of DiGiacomo D. K. et al. (2018) that shows the importance of social and material conditions in the development of interests and learning objectives in adolescents and young people.

Compared with the study by Esteban-Guitart et al. (2017) , the aforementioned difference in terms of the presence of the formal environment in meaningful learning experiences (not found in that study, and considerably significant in this one), the distribution and importance of the peer group, and the situations of “Being alone” are found to have the same trend. Although in this study, these situations increase proportionally, perhaps due to the pandemic situation, as well as the presence and importance of the teacher in such learning; this aspect was not identified in the previous study. Finally, in the “how,” the presence of the digital format or tools and practices also stands out. It is important to highlight here that all the participants reported having an Internet connection as well as mobile phones and either shared, or unshared, laptop computers.

Regarding critical considerations of the study undertaken, it is necessary to consider that the qualitative nature of the study, involving 11 adolescents and young people, prevents us from reaching conclusions and generalizing the results to other contexts and situations. In addition, the categories of analysis should be reconsidered in future works, since due in large part to the porosity of digital media and devices, it is difficult to identify the border of the contexts. For example, BCT011, on the first day, claimed to have learned that they had Raynaud’s Syndrome. He learned it, in fact, in a multiplicity of situations and contexts, after, as he describes it, talking with his doctor, searching on the Internet, consulting with his family and friends, and also especially from the “My Health” digital application. In the same way, learning from the formal, school environment, although it may begin in the context of the high school, continues through the internet, with the peer group and especially in this study described here, at home.

This consideration leads us to problematize the notion of context itself, understood as a physical and/or virtual environment, more or less defined in time and space, in which the learner participates directly, adopts different roles, activities and interpersonal relationships ( Bronfenbrenner, 1979 ), toward procedural considerations that take into account the hybrid and porous nature of learning situations that in fact question the traditional separation between the formal and informal sphere ( Jornet and Erstad, 2018 ; Esteban-Guitart et al., 2020b ; González-Patiño and Esteban-Guitart, 2021 ). In any case, future research should trace, through for example, life stories and case studies, the parameters considered here under the metaphor of the new learning ecology ( Coll, 2013 ). The aforementioned research would allow us to go into greater depth regarding both the conditions and the characteristics of the learning experiences, as well as to overcome certain limitations of the categories used, for example in relation to the “how?” category. This is because by reducing this category to the mere presence or absence of cultural or social mediation does not allow for an in-depth documentation of the process of acquisition and development of the learning experience described.

The aim of the research was to examine the meaningful learning experiences throughout the unusual situation experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. A content analysis was undertaken, following the same line of previous research ( Esteban-Guitart et al., 2017 ). This made it possible to document 72 meaningful learning experiences of 11 adolescents from 16 to 17 years old. The meaningful learning experiences were collected for a week by means of a personal diary. Using the “new learning ecology” ( Coll, 2013 ): what, where, who with and how learning happens, the content analysis was carried out. Concerning “what,” the results show a prevalence of learning experiences related to subjectivity (values, attitudes, beliefs, sentiments, and preferences) and conceptual learning (learning of facts and concepts); concerning where, there is a presence of both formal and informal learning experiences; concerning “who with,” the most frequent learning experiences are with peers, with teachers and alone; and concerning “how,” the results show the relevance of digital technologies as learning resources. The main contribution of this research consists in the empirical documentation of the aforementioned parameters in the context of a pandemic. However, as this is a rather unrepresentative sample, in no way is it intended to make a generalization of the results found. On the other hand, a case study would allow for a greater depth of documentation of the learning experiences as well as their characteristics and conditions. Regarding practical applications, it should be noted that the learning experiences need pedagogical consideration, not just taking into account where they have originated, as this throws light on the situational and distributional character of the learning experiences. This aspect follows the line of previous research on the analysis of different situations in formal contexts, non-formal contexts and informal contexts as generators of meaningful learning experiences ( Barron, 2004 ; Esteban-Guitart, 2016 ; Esteban-Guitart et al., 2017 , 2018 ; DiGiacomo D. et al., 2018 ; Bender and Peppler, 2019 ).

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the research ethics and biosafety committee (CEBRUdG) of the University of Girona. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

Author Contributions

ME-G conceptualized the research idea and planned the study. IG-C carried out the collecting data. MP and JS contributed to data analysis. ME-G, IG-C, MP, and JS contributed to the interpretation of the results. ME-G and IG-C wrote the manuscript. All authors provided critical feedback and helped shape the manuscript.

This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (MINECO), the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI), and the European Regional Development Funds (European Union), grant number EDU2017-83363-R.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords : learning, education, digital life, COVID-19 pandemic, qualitative research

Citation: González-Ceballos I, Palma M, Serra JM and Esteban-Guitart M (2021) Meaningful Learning Experiences in Everyday Life During Pandemics. A Qualitative Study. Front. Psychol. 12:670886. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.670886

Received: 22 February 2021; Accepted: 13 April 2021; Published: 07 May 2021.

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Copyright © 2021 González-Ceballos, Palma, Serra and Esteban-Guitart. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Moisès Esteban-Guitart, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

The impact of a global pandemic on undergraduate learning experiences: lifting the restrictions

• Published: 14 February 2024
• Volume 39 , pages 2435–2459, ( 2024 )

Cite this article

• Emilie E. Caron   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4016-3560 1 ,
• Allison C. Drody   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8366-7035 1 ,
• Jonathan S. A. Carriere 2 &
• Daniel Smilek   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0008-3349-0217 1  

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The aim of this study is to determine how students believe their learning-related experiences (i.e., attention, affect, and time perception) have changed over the course of the pandemic.

Subject and methods

This study documented students’ ( N analyzed  = 191) relative judgments of change between their current experiences (measured April 2022) and their remembered experiences from three different timepoints: (1) before the pandemic-related restrictions (before March 2020; pre-restriction), (2) immediately after the restrictions were implemented (spring 2020; early restriction), and (3) immediately after they were lifted (~ winter/spring 2022; post-restriction). This study also captured how students predicted their experiences would change in the future.

Results and conclusion

Roughly 2 years after pandemic-related restrictions were introduced, students reported perceiving reductions in their attention, affect, and time-perception compared to their remembered pre- and early restriction learning-related experiences. They also reported perceived reductions in their attention and affect even as pandemic-related restrictions were beginning to lift, though these declines were slightly attenuated. Regarding the future, students were optimistic that their learning-related experiences would improve in the coming months. These findings can support the creation of future approaches targeting the improvement of attention, affect, and productivity in learning and performance-based environments.

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Data availability.

Data from these experiments can be found on Open Science Framework (OSF) at https://osf.io/p84m3/ .

Questions measuring students’ opinions of the online video lectures were also included for course development purposes. These questions are included on OSF but responses to these items were not analyzed for the purpose of this manuscript.

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This research was funded by two Discovery grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), awarded to D. Smilek (RGPIN-2019–04071) and J. S. A. Carriere (RGPIN-2016–06749). This work has also received funding from an NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship-Doctoral awarded to A. C. Drody (PGSD-569154–2022) as well as an NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGSD-547511–2020) and a doctoral award from the Fonds de recherche du Quebec—Nature et technologies (B2X-305883) awarded to E. E. Caron.

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The survey items were extended from Hicks et al. (2021) by EEC as well as ACD and revised by all authors including JSAC and DS. Data collection was completed by EEC and ACD, while data analysis was completed by ACD. EEC and ACD composed the initial drafts of the manuscript along with editing the subsequent drafts. JSAC and DS provided revisions and edits across all drafts of the manuscript. All the authors approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Current Themes of Research.

Attention, Inattention, Mind-Wandering, Media-Multitasking, Boredom, Affect, Learning, Purposeful and Mindless Technology Use.

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Caron, E. E., Drody, A. C., Hicks, L. J., & Smilek, D. (2022). The impact of a global pandemic on undergraduate learning experiences: One year later. Trends in Neuroscience and Education , 100184.

Hicks, L. J., Caron, E. E., & Smilek, D. (2021). SARS-CoV-2 and learning: The impact of a global pandemic on undergraduate learning experiences. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology . 

Seli, P., Wammes, J. D., Risko, E. F., & Smilek, D. (2016). On the relation between motivation and retention in educational contexts: The role of intentional and unintentional mind wandering. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 23 , 1280-1287. 

Wammes, J. D., Boucher, P. O., Seli, P., Cheyne, J. A., & Smilek, D. (2016). Mind wandering during lectures I: Changes in rates across an entire semester. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 2 (1), 13–32. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000053 .

Wammes, J. D., Ralph, B. C., Mills, C., Bosch, N., Duncan, T. L., & Smilek, D. (2019). Disengagement during lectures: Media multitasking and mind wandering in university classrooms. Computers & Education , 132 , 76-89. 

Wammes, J. D., Seli, P., Cheyne, J. A., Boucher, P. O., & Smilek, D. (2016). Mind wandering during lectures II: Relation to academic performance. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 2 (1), 33–48. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000055 .

Wammes, J. D., & Smilek, D. (2017). Examining the influence of lecture format on degree of mind wandering. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition , 6 (2), 174-184. 

Wilson, K. E., Martinez, M., Mills, C., D'Mello, S., Smilek, D., & Risko, E. F. (2018). Instructor presence effect: Liking does not always lead to learning. Computers & Education , 122 , 205-220.

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Caron, E.E., Drody, A.C., Carriere, J.S.A. et al. The impact of a global pandemic on undergraduate learning experiences: lifting the restrictions. Eur J Psychol Educ 39 , 2435–2459 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-023-00790-6

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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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What can you learn as a student in a pandemic

As we embark on a new year, you might reflect on your time at Oxford so far with a lot of mixed emotions, in the midst of this uniquely challenging academic year. During this time, you may find it helpful to consider how your experience and adaptability to learn and live within the constraints of the pandemic might have positively benefited your development, for Hilary term and beyond.

Reflective learning  

Studying for a degree in the current climate requires flexibility, resourcefulness, discipline and resilience – all characteristics that will help you on your journey for the rest of your degree and life after Oxford. Take some time to consider how you have responded to the many challenges you have experienced by being a student at this time and the new skills you have developed.

Developing your self-belief  

Identifying your strengths and motivations can be a worthwhile exercise and particularly one that you might find beneficial to try at this time to help boost your self-belief. This may not come naturally at first, but taking the time to write down what you love, what you are good at and why you do it is something that can help you look ahead and plan for where you want to be. You might find it helpful to try filling out an action plan too, as a way of managing the challenges that come with uncertainty.  

Learning along the way

If you think you would benefit from finding ways to help you balance online learning and self-study this term, our study skills advice and training features guides on how to effectively take notes, how to contribute well and get the most out of discussions, time management, structuring your week and how to prioritise.

Our dedicated remote study page can help you make sure you’re getting the most out of remote learning from tips for your working environment, communication, routine and the importance of taking time out.  

Tips from the top

Learning about the experiences of others can help to view our own situations differently or encourage new approaches to try. Anne-Marie Imafidon, Keble alumna 2006 and CEO of Stemettes shares her story about entrepreneurship and being a woman in STEM.  

Support during times of uncertainty

There’s a series of blogs and podcasts  from The University Counselling Service designed to support you throughout the coronavirus pandemic, featuring topics such as coping with transitions , how to virtually connect and support each other and what to do if you’re struggling to motivate yourself to work . 

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Becoming a Teacher: What I Learned about Myself During the Pandemic

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Introduction to the Article by Andrew Stremmel

Now, more than ever, we need to hear the voices of preservice teachers as well as in-service teachers during this pandemic. How has the pandemic affected them? In what ways has the pandemic enabled them to think about the need to really focus on what matters, what’s important? What were the gains and losses? These are very important questions for our time.  In this essay, Alyssa Smith, a senior studying early childhood education, attempts to address the lessons learned from her junior year, focusing on the positive aspects of her coursework and demonstrating an imaginative, growth mindset. This essay highlights the power of students’ reflection on their own learning. But I think it does so much more meaningful contemplation than we might expect of our students in “normal” times. Alyssa gains a new appreciation for this kind of active reflection—the opportunity to think more critically; to be more thoughtful; to stop, step back, catch her breath, and rethink things. As a teacher educator and her mentor, I believe this essay represents how the gift of time to stop and reflect can open space to digest what has been experienced, and how the gift of reflective writing can create a deeper level of thinking about how experiences integrate with one’s larger narrative as a person.

About the Author

Andrew Stremmel, PhD, is professor in early childhood education at South Dakota State University. His research is in teacher action research and Reggio Emilia-inspired, inquiry-based approaches to early childhood teacher education. He is an executive editor of  Voices of Practitioners .  

I’ve always known I was meant to be a teacher. I could feel my passion guide my work and lead my heart through my classes. So why did I still feel as if something was missing? During the fall of my junior year, the semester right before student teaching, I began to doubt my ability to be a great teacher, as I did not feel completely satisfied in my work. What I did not expect was a global pandemic that would shut down school and move all coursework online. I broke down. I wanted to do more than simply be a good student. I wanted to learn to be a great teacher. How was I supposed to discover my purpose and find what I was missing when I couldn’t even attend my classes? I began to fret that I would never become the capable and inspirational educator that I strived to be, when I was missing the firsthand experience of being in classrooms, interacting with children, and collaborating with peers.

It wasn’t until my first full semester being an online student that I realized the pandemic wasn’t entirely detrimental to my learning. Two of my early childhood education courses, Play and Inquiry and Pedagogy and Curriculum, allowed limited yet meaningful participation in a university lab school as well as engagement with problems of substance that require more intense thinking, discussion, analysis, and thoughtful action. These problems, which I briefly discuss below, presented challenges, provocations, possibilities, and dilemmas to be pondered, and not necessarily resolved. Specifically, they pushed me to realize that the educational question for our time is not, “What do I need to know about how to teach?” Rather, it is, “What do I need to know about myself in the context of this current pandemic?” I was therefore challenged to think more deeply about who I wanted to be as a teacher and who I was becoming, what I care about and value, and how I will conduct myself in the classroom with my students.

These three foundations of teaching practice (who I want to be, what I value, and how I will conduct myself) were illuminated by a question that was presented to us students in one of the very first classes of the fall 2020 semester: “What’s happening right now in your experience that will help you to learn more about yourself and who you are becoming?” This provocation led me to discover that, while the COVID-19 pandemic brought to light (and at times magnified) many fears and insecurities I had as a prospective teacher, it also provided me with unique opportunities, time to reflect, and surprising courage that I feel would not otherwise have been afforded and appreciated.

Although I knew I wanted to be a teacher, I had never deliberately pondered the idea of what kind of teacher I wanted to be. I held the core values of being an advocate for children and helping them grow as confident individuals, but I still had no idea what teaching style I was to present. Fortunately, the pandemic enabled me to view my courses on play and curriculum as a big “look into the mirror” to discern what matters and what was important about becoming a teacher.

As I worked through the rest of the course, I realized that this project pushed me to think about my identity as an educator in relation to my students rather than simply helping me understand my students, as I initially thought. Instead, a teacher’s identity is formed in relation to or in relationship with our students: We take what we know about our students and use it to shape ourselves and how we teach. I found that I had to take a step back and evaluate my own perceptions and beliefs about children and who I am in relation to them. Consequently, this motivated me to think about myself as a classroom teacher during the COVID-19 pandemic. What did I know about children that would influence the way I would teach them?

I thought about how children were resilient, strong, and adaptable, possessing an innate ability to learn in nearly any setting. While there were so many uncertainties and fear surrounding them, they adapted to mask-wearing, limited children in the classroom, and differentiated tasks to limit cross-contamination. Throughout, the children embodied being an engaged learner. They did not seem to focus on what they were missing; their limitless curiosity could not keep them from learning. Yet, because young children learn primarily through relationships, they need some place of learning that helps them to have a connection with someone who truly knows, understands, and cares about them. Thus, perhaps more than any lesson, I recognized my relationship with children as more crucial. By having more time to think about children from this critical perspective, I felt in my heart the deeper meaning children held to me.

My compassion for children grew, and a greater respect for them took shape, which overall is what pushed me to see my greater purpose for who I want to be as an educator. The pandemic provided time to develop this stronger vision of children, a clearer understanding of how they learn, and how my identity as a teacher is formed in relationship with children. I don’t think I would have been able to develop such a rich picture of how I view children without an in-depth exploration of my identity, beliefs, and values.

In my curriculum course, I was presented a different problem that helped me reflect on who I am becoming as an educator. This was presented as a case study where we as students were asked the question, “Should schools reopen amidst the COVID-19 pandemic?” This was a question that stumped school districts around the nation, making me doubt that I would be able to come up with anything that would be remotely practical. I now was experiencing another significant consequence of the pandemic: a need for new, innovative thinking on how to address state-wide academic issues. My lack of confidence, paired with the unknowns presented by the pandemic, made me feel inadequate to take on this problem of meaning.

To address this problem, I considered more intentionally and reflectively what I knew about how children learn; issues of equity and inequality that have led to a perceived achievement gap; the voices of both teachers and families; a broader notion of what school might look like in the “new normal”; and the role of the community in the education of young children. Suddenly, I was thinking in a more critical way about how to address this problem from the mindset of an actual and more experienced teacher, one who had never faced such a conundrum before. I knew that I had to design a way to allow children to come back into a classroom setting, and ultimately find inspiration for learning in this new normal. I created this graphic (above) to inform families and teachers why it is vital to have students return to school. As a result, I became an educator. I was now thinking, feeling, and acting as a teacher. This case study made me think about myself and who I am becoming as a teacher in a way that was incredibly real and relevant to what teachers were facing. I now found inspiration in the COVID-19 pandemic, as it unlocked elements of myself that I did not know existed.

John Dewey (1916) has been attributed to stating, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” Learning may begin in the classroom, but it does not end there. Likewise, teaching is not a role, but a way of being. The ability to connect with children and to engage them meaningfully depends less on the methods we use than on the degree to which we know and trust ourselves and are willing to share that knowledge with them. That comes through continually reflecting on who we are in relation to children and their families, and what we do in the classroom to create more meaningful understanding of our experiences. By embodying the role of being an educator, I grew in ways that classroom curriculum couldn't prepare me for. Had it not been for the pandemic, this might not have been possible.

Dewey, J. 1916. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education . New York: MacMillan.

Alyssa Marie Smith  is currently an early childhood education student studying at South Dakota State University. She has been a student teacher in the preschool lab on campus, and now works as a kindergarten out of school time teacher in this same lab school. In the fall, she plans to student teach in an elementary setting, and then go on to teach in her own elementary classroom.

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Learning Through a Pandemic: Youth Experiences With Remote Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Nadia nandlall, lisa d hawke, karleigh darnay, mardi daley, jacqueline relihan, joanna henderson.

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Nadia Nandlall, Margaret and Wallace McCain Centre for Child, Youth and Family Mental Health, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 80 Workman Way, Toronto, ON M6J 1H4, Canada. Email: [email protected]

Collection date 2022 Jul-Sep.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages ( https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage ).

The objective of this paper was to examine the school-related experiences of youth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants represented both clinical and community youth aged 14 to 28 who were sampled as part of a larger study. Feedback from youth attending school during the pandemic was qualitatively examined and youth who planned to attend school prior to the pandemic and did ( n  = 246) and youth who planned to attend but did not ( n  = 28) were compared quantitatively. Youth appreciated the flexibility of online learning and some also reported experiencing a lack of support from their school and the need for instructor training on how to deliver virtual classes effectively. Future studies should examine what factors influence student engagement with virtual learning, what strategies could improve supports for student in their long-term career development, and the longitudinal experiences of youth who may have chosen not to go back to school due to the pandemic. This survey was conducted in Ontario, Canada. A more diverse sample collected outside of Ontario would improve generalizability. Qualitative data were based on survey responses and not interviews. Thus we were unable to discern the reasons youth decided to attend school, or not, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: adolescent, COVID-19, education, mental health, virtual learning, youth

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused major disruptions to educational systems around the world ( United Nations, 2020 ). Social distancing measures have required school closures, shifting in-person learning to remote learning or a hybrid format that combines remote and in-person formats. To comply with these measures, youth have had to substantially adapt their routines, activities, and plans. Some youth are now attending school online, have limited access to leisure activities and many rely on technology as a means of communication with friends, peers, and teachers. As a consequence, many youth are unable to engage in social interactions with friends, peers or teachers in ways that are familiar to them. Disruptions to school and social relationships present a unique challenge for youth who, at a critical stage in their social development, are at risk for mental health challenges ( Merikangas et al., 2010 ; Rogers et al., 2021 ) and rely on peer connections for social and emotional support ( Pigaiani et al., 2020 ; Steinberg & Morris, 2001 ). Some studies have quantified student experience with remote learning during the pandemic ( Godoy et al., 2021 ; Horita et al., 2021 ; Lischer et al., 2021 ; Meda et al., 2021 ), however, there is limited qualitative feedback about this experience from students while attending school. It is imperative that we understand student experience with remote learning as we navigate educational priorities in a post-pandemic world.

Early adulthood is characterized by ongoing cognitive, social and emotional changes ( Azzopardi et al., 2019 ; Patton et al., 2016 ). This is an important period underscored by several developmental tasks including independence, progress through the educational system, transition to employment, civic engagement, and the development of relationships ( Patton et al., 2016 ). This is also a time when social connectedness and social identity are salient to early adulthood development ( Matthews et al., 2019 ; Pigaiani et al., 2020 ; Power et al., 2020 ; Steinberg & Morris, 2001 ). During this period, attachment and social belonging needs are sought through friendships as youth strive to gain independence from their parents ( Meuwese et al., 2017 ; Nickerson & Nagle, 2005 ; Steinberg & Morris, 2001 ). In this respect, the school environment plays an important role, because it is a place where youth seek to establish peer relationships and develop a social identity ( Bailen et al., 2019 ; Nickerson & Nagle, 2005 ; Scott et al., 2021 ; Steinberg & Morris, 2001 ). Since opportunities for social activities like in-person interaction with teachers and classroom socialization have been disrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, youth are participating in fewer activities that are necessary for their optimal growth and development ( Adnan, 2020 ). In fact, youth report a loss of emotional connection and friend support during the pandemic even despite their ability to use technology to interact ( Rogers et al., 2021 ). The reported decline in friend support during the pandemic is associated with more depressive symptoms, conflict with friends and loneliness ( Rogers et al., 2021 ). This is particularly problematic as youth typically experience feelings of loneliness ( Matthews et al., 2019 ). Given the important role that the school environment plays in providing social support, the disruption to daily social interaction associated with the pandemic’s impact on learning institutions is of consequence to this population in the context of their developmental needs during this period ( Patton et al., 2016 ; Power et al., 2020 ).

Mental health disorders are likely to first emerge during adolescence and can extend into adulthood ( Allen et al., 2008 ; Bailen et al., 2019 ; Merikangas et al., 2010 ). Onset of depression, anxiety and suicidality have been associated with the frequency of fluctuating and intense emotions experienced by youth ( Allen et al., 2008 ; Merikangas et al., 2010 ). In Canada, approximately one in five youth had mental health and/or substance use challenges prior to the COVID-19 pandemic ( Wiens et al., 2020 ). Youth are also experiencing mental health or substance use challenges during the pandemic ( Hawke et al., 2020 , 2021 ; Liang et al., 2020 ; Shanahan et al., 2022 ; Son et al., 2020 ) and that the disruption to school routines and self-isolation are associated with increased mental health challenges ( Jiao et al., 2020 ; Singh et al., 2020 ). This is problematic as students with mental health needs are at risk of poor academic outcomes due to their higher levels of disengagement and early school leaving ( Arria et al., 2013 ; Eisenberg et al., 2009 ; Lipson & Eisenberg, 2018 ). Even though mental health challenges among post-secondary students were on the rise pre-pandemic ( Blanco et al., 2008 ; Dalky & Gharaibeh, 2019 ; Wiens et al., 2020 ), students are reporting higher rates of depressive and suicidal thoughts during the COVID-19 pandemic than pre-pandemic ( Basheti et al., 2021 ; Son et al., 2020 ). This is consistent with an earlier study in which we found significant deterioration of mental health among youth in both clinical and community samples during the early stages of the pandemic ( Hawke et al., 2021 ). Another study examining the psychological distress of university students during the COVID-19 pandemic found that students without pre-existing mental health needs were more likely to show an increased risk of mental health needs compared to students who reported pre-existing mental health needs 1 year prior to the pandemic ( Hamza et al., 2021 ). Studies have also demonstrated the deteriorating effects of lockdown restrictions; approximately 6% of students experienced depressive symptoms and disruptions to sleeping habits, daily fitness routines, and social interaction significantly affected their health during this period ( Chaturvedi et al., 2021 ; Meda et al., 2021 ).

With a lens to stakeholder engagement, the aim of the Margaret and Wallace McCain Centre for Child, Youth and Family Mental Health, at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Canada, is to advance research that is reflective of the preferences and needs of youth and their caregivers and integrate this knowledge into system delivery ( Heffernan et al., 2017 ; Henderson et al., 2013 ). We engaged our youth partners in the development of our survey questions. Our youth partners identified going back to school during the pandemic as a salient concern among youth. Specifically, they wanted to learn about the experiences of youth attending school during the pandemic, how well educational institutions were handling the pandemic and how youth were adjusting to remote learning in the context of school.

Given the uncertainties imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and educational institutions are at a crossroads when it comes to understanding the impacts of the pandemic and its implications for future resource planning. As such, it is important for educational institutions to receive feedback from youth of their experiences with school during the COVID-19 pandemic. This knowledge could not only help improve the delivery of academic programs, it also has implications for post-pandemic planning to support student wellbeing ( Hinderaker, 2013 ). This study helps to address this issue by surveying students recruited from clinical and community samples about their experiences of going back to school during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper examines the school-related experiences of youth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Quantitatively, we examine youth who attended school during the pandemic and those who planned to attend school but did not. Qualitative data on youth experiences with attending school during the pandemic, school system handling of the pandemic and experience with digital video platforms are also analyzed.

This is a multi-methods study in which both qualitative and quantitative data were collected simultaneously and analyzed in parallel ( Fink, 1993 ). Data for this study were collected as part of a broader mixed methods longitudinal study of youth experiences in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic ( Hawke et al., 2021 ). Specifically, this paper analyzes the October 2020 wave of data collection. The phases of study data collection are as follows: baseline demographic characteristics were collected in April 2020 as part of the broader longitudinal mixed-methods study; data on psychiatric and behavioral health disorders were collected in June 2020; and education-related experiences and current overall self-rated mental health were collected in October 2020. Youth were defined as young people aged 14 to 28 ( Statistics Canada, 2019b ) at the October 2020 wave of data collection.

Participants

The full longitudinal study sample consisted of 622 participants. The current study reports on a subsample of those participants who had planned to attend school in September 2020 (the new academic year) in our October wave of data collection ( n  = 419). Two groups were created from our subsample of youth who planned to attend to school prior to the pandemic for the new academic year in September 2020: those who planned to attend school prior to the pandemic and did attend school during the pandemic and ( n  = 246) and those who planned to attend school prior to the pandemic but did not attend ( n  = 28). Participants were between the ages of 14 and 28 ( M  = 20.2, SD  = 2.2), among whom 184 (67%) reported girl/woman gender identity and 10 (3%) youth whom reported transgender or gender diverse identity. Details on the full sample are described in Hawke et al. (2020) .

Participants received an email message with a web link taking them to an online survey on REDCap software ( Harris et al., 2009 ). After informed consent, youth completed a 20 to 30 minute survey about their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data collection took place between October 6 and October 29, 2020, approximately 8 months after the COVID-19 pandemic as declared by the World Health Organization (2020) and a state of emergency was declared provincially ( Government of Ontario, 2020 ) and starting a month after the 2020–2021 academic year began locally (i.e., early September). Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Research Ethics Board approval was obtained.

Demographics: Demographic characteristics were collected including age, gender identity, ethnic background, education status, employment status, and other variables.

The Youth Self-Report Baseline version 0.1 of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)-developed CoRonavIruS Health Impact Survey (CRISIS) tool was used to examine COVID-19 impacts on participants aligning with the NIH COVID-19 research priorities ( Holmes et al., 2020 ). The measure examines emotional and behavioral responses retrospectively at 3 months prior to the COVID-19 crisis and in the past 2 weeks, as well as service use, service disruption, and other constructs ( Hawke et al., 2020 ).

Psychiatric and behavioral health disorders: The GAIN-Short Screener (GAIN-SS) is a self-administered screener to identify the extent to which participants are experiencing symptoms of one or more mental or behavioral health disorders (e.g., internalizing or externalizing psychiatric disorders, problematic substance use or problems with crime and violence) ( Dennis et al., 2006 ). Responses are given in relation to how recently the participant experienced the described problem. The scale ranges from 0 (never) to 4 (past month). Three or more items endorsed per subscale as present in the past-month suggest a high likelihood of meeting diagnostic criteria during the past month ( Dennis et al., 2006 , 2008 ), including among youth ( Dennis et al., 2006 ). The GAIN-SS scores reported are from the June 2020 wave of data collection, prior to the start of the school year in September 2020, in order to examine whether pre-academic term mental health was associated with choosing to attend school.

Overall mental health: Youth were also asked in October 2020 to provide a self-rating of their mental health on a five-point scale ranging from poor to excellent, aligning with a question typically asked by Statistics Canada ( Statistics Canada, 2019a ).

Education survey: Aligning with the McCain Model of Youth Engagement ( Heffernan et al., 2017 ), survey questions were developed by the research team, including youth co-researchers. Questions were developed to understand education-related experiences during the pandemic and were embedded as part of the larger survey. Participants who identified as attending school during the pandemic were asked to provide qualitative comments about their school experiences. The specific survey questions were: if you’re a student, how has back to school gone during the pandemic?; how well is the school system handling the pandemic and how could they do better?; during the pandemic, you may have been spending a lot of time on platforms like Zoom and Houseparty. How is this going for you? How do you feel about having to be on camera so often? While the latter questions were not specific to school, youth reported their experience with using these platforms for remote learning. Participants who reported on planning to attend school were categorized by school level as reported in April 2020: those who had completed grade 11 or more as of April 2020 (i.e., were in grade 12 in April 2020) were categorized as post-secondary students ( N  = 253) and those completed grade 10 or less in April 2020 were categorized as secondary students ( N  = 21).

Frequencies were calculated to describe the sample. Frequency is a measure of the number of occurrences of a particular score in a given set of data and it is a statistical method typically used to help characterize the population ( Mihaescu, 2010 ). Chi-square tests were used to determine whether differences between school attendees and non-attendees were statistically significant; non-parametric tests were used to accommodate unequal sample sizes because this test does not rely on assumptions that the data are drawn from a specific distribution ( Mihaescu, 2010 ). For the purposes of this study, GAIN-SS domains for internalizing, externalizing and problematic substance use were analyzed; the crime/violence scale was not analyzed due to low endorsement rates. Effect sizes were calculated as phi (φ) coefficients, Cramer’s V, or Fishers Exact test as appropriate.

A qualitative thematic analysis was conducted on each open-ended question to collect participants’ feedback on different aspects of attending school and using virtual platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic consistent with criteria for trustworthiness in qualitative research ( Nowell et al., 2017 ) and methodology for thematic analyses as described by Braun and Clarke (2006) . Thematic analysis was chosen because it is a highly flexible approach that can provide a rich and detailed account of complex data ( Nowell et al., 2017 ). Qualitative comments were uploaded verbatim into Nvivo software ( Bazeley, 2013 ). Next, all comments were read through once before the researcher began coding to ensure familiarity with the data. Initial coding of the data was then conducted to identify aspects of the data which were relevant to the research questions. These codes helped to organize the content of the data around the research questions. Next, themes were developed in relation to each code. Themes and sub-themes were reread and were either combined if they were similar or eliminated based on their frequency (e.g., if a theme appeared less than two times it was eliminated to ensure accurate representation of the data). This was an iterative process. Themes were then further refined through review with a co-author (LDH). After this process, the themes were finalized. Data were analyzed separately for participants who reported attending school virtually versus in-person. However, the themes identified were consistent across groups, with those attending in-person also reported on the challenges associated with virtual learning. Thus, combined qualitative results are presented. Qualitative data were also examined by gender and level of education (i.e., secondary vs. post-secondary levels) but themes were consistent across groups and thus, combined results are presented across genders and levels of education.

Table 1 presents demographic and self-reported school, employment and mental health-related characteristics of participants from the two groups created from our subsample of participants who planned to attend to school prior to the pandemic for the new academic year in September 2020: those who planned to attend school prior to the pandemic and did attend school during the pandemic and ( n  = 246) and those who planned to attend school prior to the pandemic but did not attend ( n  = 28). These two groups were then compared.

Demographic and Self-Reported Health Characteristics of Participants by Sample.

Significance tests conducted on the following groups: 1 man/boy versus woman/girl; 2 Caucasian versus other background; 3 consistent housing versus precarious housing; 4 employed versus unemployed. 5 Fishers Exact Test results are reported to accommodate for small cell sizes.

Results show that one in ten youth (10.2%) who planned to go to school did not. Seventy-five percent of youth who reported attending school attended virtually and 23.3% of participants reported attending school in-person. However, participants who reported attending school in-person also provided qualitative comments on their experience with virtual learning, likely reflecting the use of hybrid models and/or intermittent use of remote learning during emergency lock-down stages.

Chi-square tests conducted for most demographic and clinical characteristics revealed no significant differences between those who attended school during the pandemic and those who planned to attend but did not ( p s > .05, Table 1 ). However, there was a trend toward significance for gender (man/boy vs. woman/girl) χ 2 (1, N  = 264) = 3.856, p  = .050, φ = 0.121, with a small effect size suggesting that more men/boys may have decided not to attend school compared to woman/girls. There was also a trend for current self-reported mental health status (1-item), χ 2 (1, N  = 273) = 3.583, p  = .058, φ = 0.115, with a small effect size suggesting that those who planned but did not go to school may have had worse mental health status as reported in June 2020 than those who did attend school.

Qualitative Findings

Among participants who did attend school, the qualitative findings reveal a mix of positive and negative experiences with attending school during the pandemic, with the vast majority of qualitative responses focused on experiences of virtual learning. Some participants who attended school during the pandemic reported that they enjoyed the flexibility of remote learning. Lack of clear and consistent communication and increased emphasis on self-directed learning were reported as challenges to remote learning, while participants suggested that reducing school workload would improve the school experience. Most participants reported feeling comfortable using digital platforms, but many preferred to turn off their cameras and not be seen on video during their classes. The physical effects of increased screen time and the financial burden of high tuition costs without the full school experience are ongoing concerns.

Positive experiences with attending school during the pandemic

The themes related to positive experiences with attending school include: flexibility in program delivery, student adaptability, and instructor characteristics.

Flexibility in program delivery

Participants appreciated the flexibility of remote learning, offering them the ability to set their own schedule, work at their own pace and have more free time:

“I had problems attending classes, but with courses online and no set schedule, I feel I can manage the workload a lot better and in general improve my focus, while reducing my stress.” “Remote learning and classes gave me more time to pursue interests outside of school.”

Student adaptability

After a period of adjustment, student ability to adapt to the new format helped them feel more positive about virtual learning:

“It is a different experience for sure. Trying to adapt to the online learning aspect has been a learning curve, but now I am used to it and have come to enjoy it.” “ I already got a taste of remote learning through my spring 2020 term, where I had trouble adjusting to everything (not being able to be on campus, adjusting to spending more hours on my laptop minus social in-person interaction with my friends, and test-taking). This term has gone smoother because I had a better idea of what to expect from online learning and I also knew how to better study and prepare for evaluations. . .”

Instructor characteristics

A few participants qualitatively reported that instructor support in terms of clear and consistent communication, instructor availability and capability for delivering online classes improved their school experience:

“My professors are very supportive, providing clear guidelines, and even doing check in phone calls with us individually.” “My professors are decent, and have done well acclimating to teaching online, which is good.”

Negative experiences with attending school during the pandemic

The themes related to negative experiences with attending school during the pandemic included: challenges with self-management, isolation, emphasis on self-directed learning, limited learning opportunities, lack of engaging program material/delivery, workload and lack of instructor skills in delivering virtual classes.

Challenges with self-management

Some participants reported challenges with self-motivation, self-directed learning, time-management, accountability and concentration.

“Getting used to the online environment has been very stressful. I have difficulty with time management and I have difficulty staying motivated.” “I have had a lot of trouble concentrating on school as my classes are not live and just posted. I have trouble finding the motivation to do school from home. It would be easier for me to go in person.”

As a consequence of remote learning, participants reported that feelings of loneliness and the inability to meet new people contributed to feelings of isolation.

“It’s my first year of university and I’ve moved across the country alone; feeling very isolated from others, unsure of how to connect with those in my community and feeling very distant from my friends from back home.” “This has become extremely exhausting, isolating, and numbing–hence why I dropped from full-time to part-time status.”

Emphasis on self-directed learning

The emphasis on self-directed learning by instructors has increased stress for some participants. This was problematic for some participants who were in first-year university or college, science-based courses, and/or those who expressed challenges with self-management (e.g., self-motivation, time-management and concentration):

“This is my first semester of college ever so it’s an adjustment no matter what. But I hate being in online school, I have a hard time staying on top of things and we have a LOT of work to do on our own time I have a hard time staying on top of it.” “It has been stressful trying to navigate the new format while receiving the same level of information that is supposed to be in person. We basically have to teach ourselves university-level science courses.”

Limited learning opportunities

Participants reported limited learning opportunities because they are not able to take part in regular school activities such as labs and other hands-on learning and practicums, due to social distancing restrictions.

“Only problem is the lost opportunity to work with lab equipment and perform hands-on learning activities.” “It’s been quite stressful; since I am in nursing, which is a very hands-on major, I’ve found it difficult to learn different concepts.”

Lack of engaging program material/delivery

Participants reported that program delivery was often monotonous, rigid and not adapted for online delivery; they suggested that instructors develop approaches to make program content and delivery more engaging.

“A mix of stress and sheer boredom. As any year, there’s a lot of academic pressure (tests, deadlines, etc.), but all of it happens within one screen, sitting in the same chair, at the same desk.” “I also despise the fact that these virtual courses are designed exactly the same way as in-person courses: Do these instructors not understand the toll of isolation and how exhausting it is to be in this situation in the first place? I feel that there must be adjustments made, and my classmates feel the same way.”

The large number of assignments, often with short deadlines, was a source of great stress for participants as many qualitatively reported far more schoolwork compared to in-person learning:

“Online schooling feels as if there is more emphasis on meeting deadlines rather than actually consuming the material and learning. I’m not sure if this is just to ready me for adult responsibilities or if the school is botching my learning experience.” “Professors have taken advantage of things being online and are over-assigning work. They have overlapped multiple due dates and made time management very difficult. Lack of instructor skills in delivering virtual classes.’’

Participants reported frustration with instructors’ limited knowledge or ability for delivering classes online.

“I wish the professors were more engaging and didn’t sound like they just got out of bed.” “School is very unorganized and teachers are uneducated about online and virtual classes.” “. . .It’s awful, I hate online school and a lot of my professors are not tech savvy, so its been frustrating. . .”

School system handling of the pandemic

Participants qualitatively reported both positive and negative perspectives on their schools’ handling of returning to school during the pandemic. Themes related to the school system handling of the pandemic include: insufficient communication, lack of support from instructors, need for improved student supports, reassured by COVID-19 prevention and control measures and the high cost of tuition.

Communication

Participants reported a need for frequent and consistent communication about school-related announcements; they felt that they could improve the school system’s response if they had opportunities to provide feedback to schools on their experience and ideas for improvement.

“The school system should take action to have better communication with their students about announcements and schoolwork.” “I think one thing the school could do better would be sending out more surveys to ask students how they think online learning is to continuously make improvements as it is unclear when we will return to in-person course instruction.”

Lack of support from instructors

Participants reported that a lack of support from instructors, such as unavailability to answer questions, has negatively their remote school experience during the pandemic.

“Force professors to answer questions promptly and without attitude or unhelpful responses like ‘read the rubric.’” “Computer science is really awful because the professor has burnout and is still assigning a lot of assignments and not helping us when we have questions.”

Student support

Some participants reported that they are not receiving the support they need from their school with respect to technology, financial resources, mental health, and teacher engagement.

“Providing supports for students with relief money, support with technology. They could do better by creating standards for professors to follow (ex. ensuring professors can’t lecture longer than the allocated class time, ensuring that class work is proportionate to previous years, and ensure that profs are making themselves available for questions).” “The system can also offer more support to students with regards to financial aid and mental health support.”

Reassured by COVID-19 prevention and control measures

Participants also expressed gratitude for the safety measures put in place by the school protecting them from COVID-19:

“So far so good. Online lectures aren’t ideal but I’m very thankful they are an option. I would much prefer an online lecture than COVID, so overall I’m happy.” “They are making the best of a bad situation. I don’t think they could make it any safer if they opened the campus up. I prefer to stay home.”

Participants felt that tuition should be adjusted to account for the change from in-class to remote learning and reduced use of physical resources.

“I don’t understand why I struggled to pay over 7k for tuition to only watch pre-recorded monotone videos and [slide presentation program] ” “I’m paying tuition to learn from [video platform] videos in my own home and I went to school away from my home city specifically to escape the negative energy in my home – and now I’m stuck here.”

Experience with digital video platforms

A large proportion of participants qualitatively reported that they felt comfortable using digital platforms for school, but often turned off their camera because it made them feel awkward, anxious, or self-conscious. On the other hand, some participants reported that they liked video conferencing because seeing other people gave them a sense of community and feelings of support. Themes related to the experience with digital video platforms include: uncomfortable on camera, human connection via technology, disruptive to learning, physical complaints, and security/privacy issues.

Uncomfortable on camera

Participants reported that they were comfortable using video technology but that being on camera for school made them feel awkward, anxious, insecure and self-conscious. However, some participants reported that while they were not comfortable being on camera for school, they were comfortable using this technology with family and friends.

“I do not enjoy having my camera on as it makes me uncomfortable and self-conscious.” “I don’t like being on camera, but it’s ok when it’s with family and friends. I’m really uncomfortable talking and especially turning on my camera when talking to new people such as co-workers or classmates.”

Human connection via technology

Participants reported that the use of video technology for school facilitated a sense of community, feeling supported.

“I feel great. It’s nice to see people’s faces and to show people my face it makes me feel like I am interacting as normally as I can with others.” “I didn’t mind and actually kind of preferred the extra human aspect of video/facial expressions versus just a phone call.”

Disruptive to learning

Some participants reported technical issues with video technology or Wi-Fi connection disruptive to their learning (e.g., missing lectures or class material due to technical difficulties).

“Also internet connection errors with [digital platform] happen often, which gets annoying because I miss class material, or the lecture gets disrupted (when the professor loses connection).” “Our teachers actually tell us to not have our cameras on, which is nice. Other than that, online lectures could be good and bad. It’s bad when the teacher keeps cutting out every 5 seconds and good when the Wi-Fi doesn’t cut out and you can actually hear your teacher the whole time.”

Physical complaints

Due to the extended periods of sitting and screen time, some participants reported feeling tired or drained and having frequent headaches and eye and body strain.

“Things like bad posture and worsening eyesight may be the biggest issues for me. . . especially because I get headaches easily (have a past with concussions and too much screen time is not good for me). My classes are 8 hours in a row on Tues/Thurs, so it is a lot of back-to-back screen time.” “Using technology a lot has made me more concerned for my vision, especially being exposed to high amount of blue light.”

Security/privacy issues

Participants reported issues with data security as some felt that video platform service providers could use their data without their permission. Others reported privacy concerns because their living space could be seen while on camera or their image could be captured without their knowledge during on-camera sessions.

“I hate having to be on camera so often. It makes me feel insecure and uncomfortable, especially since someone could take a picture of me and I don’t know everyone in the call, so I can’t trust them.” “I don’t care about the camera but I care that my data is being harvested on a platform I’m forced to use for school. . .”

This study examined youth’s experiences with attending school during the COVID-19 pandemic. A substantial minority (10%) reported not attending school in fall 2020 despite previous intentions to attend school. These participants tended to be of male gender and to have had previous mental health concerns, although these results only approached statistical significance. Participants reported both positive and negative experiences with various aspects of attending school during the pandemic, with some reporting that they were happy with the level of support they were receiving from their instructor and others reporting a lack of instructor support. Some participants also reported that their ability to adapt to remote learning improved their school experience, while others struggled to adapt. Participants had suggestions for ways the school system could better manage the remote learning system. Challenges with technology were also reported.

Interestingly, approximately 10% of participants who reported planning to attend school prior to the pandemic did not attend, and the majority of them also reported not being employed. This group appeared to consist of more boys/men, youth with less education, and youth with poorer self-rated mental health; however, associations were small and no other variables significantly differentiated this vulnerable group. It will be important for future research to examine why some students decided not to attend school and to what degree the COVID-19 pandemic influenced this decision. Participants not engaged in employment, education or training (e.g., NEET) are of particular interest, as they are at higher risk for economic and psychosocial problems ( Henderson et al., 2017 ). Since youth are at a critical developmental period for vocational and career development, and at a period associated with mental health challenges ( Bailen et al., 2019 ; Hawke et al., 2020 ; Merikangas et al., 2010 ), it is essential to understand the degree to which this disruption may impact youth developmental milestones or trajectory such as transition to further schooling (e.g., higher education) or entry into the workforce. This knowledge may also strengthen youth support services such as supported education and employment programs for youth ( Davidson & Arim, 2019 ; Kutsyuruba et al., 2019 ).

Attending school during the COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult for many students, but there are areas of adaptation and perseverance ( OECD, 2020 ). For youth, this is a crucial developmental period, as they are laying the foundation for their health and wellbeing that can determine health trajectories in later life, while also establishing their educational foundation leading to future careers ( Matthews et al., 2019 ; Merikangas et al., 2010 ; Patton et al., 2016 ). In previous studies, students who attended school during the pandemic have reported poor academic performance, trouble concentrating, social isolation, depressed and suicide-related thoughts, increased workload, lack of motivation, disruptions in sleep patterns and irregular eating patterns ( Rogers et al., 2021 ; Scott et al., 2021 ; Son et al., 2020 ). Previous findings suggest that a student’s adaptability and social support are related to their perceived experience with school during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Besser et al., 2022 ). Those who perceived themselves as adaptable were better able to modulate their emotions and more able to adapt to the new format ( Besser et al., 2022 ). In our sample, some participants reported challenges with self-motivation and time-management with respect to virtual learning during the pandemic. Conversely, participants who reported the ability to adapt to the new format felt more positive about their school experience, despite reporting challenges with the virtual learning. From a strengths-based lens, this is important as it likely speaks to participant’s ability to adjust to new and uncertain situations and their ability to cope and even thrive in light of new circumstances ( Besser et al., 2022 ; Waters et al., 2020 ). Focusing on these strengths will be important for supporting youth in continuing to adapt to the disruptions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and for their own growth in future years ( Waters et al., 2020 ). Future research should examine the implications of student adaptability or ability to self-manage on the delivery of learning content in an effort to develop early intervention strategies and other student supports such as mental health counseling.

The school system can have a powerful influence on youth development ( Lloyd, 2005 ; Lombardi et al., 2019 ). It is not only where academic learning takes place, but it is also a platform for promoting wellbeing through which youth learn about the mechanisms that contribute to healthy behaviors and relationships and develop a sense of community ( Patton et al., 2016 ; Pigaiani et al., 2020 ). A positive school environment can have cumulative effects for youth, including healthier behaviors, greater cognitive capacity, longer productive adult lives, better health and lower mortality among their own children, and overall greater productivity in the future workforce experience ( Lloyd, 2005 ; Patton et al., 2016 ). Positive school relationships such as the relationship between youth and instructors is important, as youth connectedness to school or teachers has been positively associated with better mental health, mental health service use and wellbeing ( Halladay et al., 2020 ; Patton et al., 2016 ; ( Moore et al., 2018 ). Instructor support is also significantly related to effective online learning ( Aristovnik et al., 2020 ; Bao, 2020 ; Wu & Liu, 2013 ) and greater academic engagement ( Ye et al., 2022 ) and connectedness to peers is associated with improved wellbeing and mental health ( Moore et al., 2018 ) With respect to how well schools are handling the pandemic, participants reported a lack of support from their schools and instructors. Some participants reported challenges, such as an emphasis on self-directed learning and lack of meaningful or relevant learning content, while other participants reported struggling to keep up with school deliverables and the toll this was taking on their mental health. Future research is needed to evaluate the impact of remote learning on student wellbeing and mental health, including longitudinal research to examine the long-term effects.

Studies examining the use of virtual platforms for school related activities during the COVID-19 pandemic found that extended periods of online activity was associated with higher feelings of stress, burnout and higher levels of depression ( Mheidly et al., 2020 ) than previously experienced prior to the pandemic ( Ellis et al., 2020 ). Similar to our own findings, participants reported feeling tired, stressed and drained. Increasing social isolation during the pandemic has been shown to predict greater mental health symptoms ( Hamza et al., 2021 ), as psychological distress during the pandemic is significantly associated with increasing sadness, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, and burdensomeness among university students without pre-existing mental health needs ( Hamza et al., 2021 ; Son et al., 2020 ). In our sample, participants reported increased feelings of isolation from family and friends and the inability to meet new people while attending school during the pandemic. Some participants also reported that they appreciated connecting with peers via video technology for social interaction and a sense of community. For youth, who need social interaction and relationships with peers ( Matthews et al., 2019 ; Pigaiani et al., 2020 ; Power et al., 2020 ; Steinberg & Morris, 2001 ) during this sensitive developmental period, it will be important to intervene early and leverage youth-serving support systems such as incorporating and strengthening the quality of online mental health and wellness supports for students ( Toquero, 2020 ). Some participants also reported technical issues with video technology or Wi-Fi connection. The digital divide, limited or no access to computers and the internet, has become more evident as schools switched from in-person to remote learning during the pandemic. Largely attributed to social inequalities, the digital divide has reduced educational access to almost half of students around the world ( Alvarez, 2021 ). As we navigate our way through a post-pandemic world, governments, policy makers, and educational institutions need to prioritize digital inclusion to ensure that every student has access to education regardless of social and economic status.

From a stakeholder-engaged perspective, we worked directly with youth members of the McCain Centre Youth Engagement Initiative (YEI) ( Heffernan et al., 2017 ) to develop our survey questions. We shared findings with three youth team members. Our findings resonated with our youth team members and with the viewpoints they are hearing from youth across Canada. They agreed with the many challenges with attending school during the COVID-19 pandemic such as video conferencing fatigue, isolation, too much focus on self-directed learning and not enough instructor engagement and the need for tuition re-adjustment. Youth team members also identified some encouraging aspects of attending school. For example, youth enjoyed the flexibility of online learning as well as the use of video technology to keep in touch with peers. They also appreciated the importance of school social distancing measures as a means for keeping everyone safe from COVID-19. They identified that adjusting to the new learning format required a steep learning curve for youth—particularly for those who struggled with self-management. Nonetheless, they expressed that most youth were persevering and trying their best to make it work.

Strengths and Limitations

This study reports on questions co-designed with youth, enhancing their relevance to youth experiences. Findings from this study provide timely feedback on the challenges of attending school during the pandemic and areas for improvement. This survey was conducted in Ontario, Canada. A more diverse sample collected outside of Ontario would improve generalizability. This survey was conducted electronically and thus it is likely that students without access to a computer and internet are not represented in this sample. Qualitative data were based on survey responses and not interviews. We were unable to discern the reasons participants decided to attend school, or not, during the COVID-19 pandemic. We were unable to determine the extent to which contracting COVID-19 or being quarantined may have impacted student’s mental health. Future research should examine what factors influenced youth’s decision to attend school during the COVID-19 pandemic, the role the pandemic played in their decision-making process, the extent to which this may or may not have subsequently affected their school experience, and differential experiences in secondary versus post-secondary education.

Conclusions

With the uncertainties imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is unclear how long remote learning will be required and what its impact will be on student learning. While participants appreciate the flexibility of online learning, some also reported experiencing a lack of support from their school and the need for instructor training on how to deliver virtual classes effectively. Disruption to regular school activities may negatively impact developmental milestones and education and employment trajectories for youth. Future studies should examine what factors influence student engagement with virtual learning, what strategies could improve supports for student in their long-term career development, and the longitudinal experiences of youth who may have chosen not to go back to school due to the pandemic. The benefits experienced by some youth in remote learning should be considered when planning post-COVID-19 recovery of educational and mental health supports.

Author’s Contributions: NN formulated the research question, analyzed and interpreted the data and drafted the manuscript. LH designed and operationalized the research, supported the analyses and interpretation, and reviewed the manuscript. EH, KH, MD, and JR supported the study design and interpretation and reviewed the manuscript. JH led the project, supported all stages of the study design and operationalization, and reviewed the manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Ethics Approval: Research Ethics Board approval was obtained from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (#046-2020).

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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.

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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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