Last time I wrote an update, there was fairly positive news about returning to campuses in the fall. Large colleges were allowing athletes back on campus, schools started announcing they would open in the fall. Things had taken a pretty positive turn. Now as more schools make announcements, come up with additional plans, we see that the future of our fall college experiences might not be what we were envisioning when we left campus in March. There a few main trends I have seen from a lot of different schools announcements that I wanted to update you all on.
Schools that are welcoming all students back to campus in fall, is not the way we all imagined. Most of us really disliked having classes completely remote. I know that even with restrictions I was looking forward to going back so that I would not have online classes anymore. Unfortunately it seems that even schools letting their students back on campus are beginning to reveal the extent to which classes will still be online. Almost all schools are offering a remote version of every class, but some are offering most classes completely online. I've heard of friends at large universities who have heard that most, if not all of their classes will be only online in the fall. Smaller schools are beginning to show similar patterns saying some classes may be all online, most will be a hybrid of in-person and remote portions. All of this to say, even if we go back in the fall A LOT of time will spent in our dorm rooms.
Another trend I have seen at some schools is not letting students back in full capacity. Some are declaring that certain grades cannot come back in the fall. Others seem to be offering that people can opt out of housing and hope that people will not choose to return. Dining halls are being closed, some entirely and mainly allowing for grab and go options.
Masks will be required at all times, social events seem that they will be minimal if at all, and social distancing will be required in most areas. This still leaves a lot of questions in all of our minds, some of which it seems won't be answered until we are actually there in the fall. With all these different plans it becomes hard to decipher which ones are necessary, which is the safest, and who are the schools really trying to look out for in some of their decisions?
It's all a lot to take in. Most updates seem to feel like, "Update, we don't really have an update." College is only four years of our lives and this is not the way anyone could have envisioned it happening. All of this can be extremely stressful but at least it is summer now. It's a lot to think and worry about but try to forget about it all while you can and relax. After all if there is a moral lesson to be learned from a pandemic it's that anything can change so quickly at any point in time. This makes me feel more than ever it's important to just live in the moment because the future, now more than ever, is extremely tough to predict. I know this, just like school's updates, has no new revelations that change your life. But, I hope that I've been able to provide some overarching insights you may or may not have heard about, and helped you to know we're all in this together.
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