‘It took the wind out of my sails’
Three university students reflect on how the pandemic has impacted their education
Earlier this spring, the COVID-19 pandemic sent postsecondary students home early. In-person lectures cancelled, graduations postponed and classes completed online.
A summer set to be spent at jobs will see thousands out of work. As for what the fall semester will look like, that remains to be seen.
The Spectator spoke with three university students to see how the pandemic has impacted their plans and how they are feeling about the future.
‘It’s just a setback’
Jenna West had planned to work two jobs this summer.
By the time September rolled around, she expected she’d have enough savings to pay off her first year tuition and live on her own in second year. But, the University of Guelph student, like many others, is out of a job.
“I can’t see myself being financially stable,” said West, who is studying sociology.
Instead of celebrating the milestone accomplishment of her first year with friends, West completed her final assignments at her home in Hagersville, without any proper sendoff with friends in residence.
She said the last weeks of school were a struggle, as she grappled with slow Wi-Fi, an unfamiliarity to online learning and the upheaval of the pandemic.
“Everything built up and it just made it a lot harder to finish up at home,” said West. “My marks did drop a bit during the online work.”
West said if school were to continue online in the fall, she is anxious about “keeping on track” of her work. She prefers to learn in the classroom, bouncing questions and answers off friends.
“Working online doesn’t work well for me. Everything is just sitting and waiting and seeing what is going to happen.”
But, if classes were to go online, West said she plans to push through the year to stay on track with long-term goals, as opposed to deferring. Once finished her degree, she plans on getting her master’s and becoming a social worker.
“That is another year of university that I don’t really have all that much time for,” said West. “It’s just a set back.”
‘A lot of stress’
Leanna Kalinowski’s summer was set to be spent in a lab alongside a team of researchers at the University of Toronto Mississauga campus.
Kalinowski, who is in her first year of a PhD in neuroscience, studies the impact of hormones on the social behaviour of naked mole rats.
But all of her in-person research has been put on pause indefinitely.
“We had to stop what we were doing and pretty much just drop it all,” she said.
Come fall, Kalinowski said she worries what continued physical-distancing measures will have on research.
At any given time, there are two other PhD students and a post-doctoral research fellow working on projects alongside her.
“The lab is definitely not big enough to have all of us,” she said. “I can’t imagine having the four of us rotate and not be there all at the same time.”
Kalinowski is also concerned about the funding for her ongoing research, as well as the future of jobs that depend on government subsidies.
“It’s definitely a lot of stress,” she said. “I don’t know what kind of jobs are going to be available after this.”
‘It took the wind out of my sails’
Nikolai Duffield’s last day of his double major at Queen’s University in Kingston didn’t happen in a lecture hall or classroom. Instead, he wrapped up his fourth year of school at his family’s home in Stoney Creek.
Visiting his parents just days before in-person classes were cancelled, Duffield said he just barely had enough supplies to finish his online work on a trip home that seemingly never ended.
“My textbooks and library books were still at school, so I was just trying to get by,” said Duffield. “I was taking it day by day, and just doing my best.”
Due to the pandemic, Duffield said he will likely not get a graduation ceremony and didn’t get to say a proper goodbye to friends.
“It took the wind out of my sails,” said Duffield. “It was a really abrupt end that really shocked me.”
This fall, Duffield plans on beginning his master’s in European and Russian affairs at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.
As for what that will look like, “remains to be seen,” he said.
“How that would even happen online is kind of tricky,” said Duffield.
Duffield said he had plans to work a retail job in Kingston this summer to save money to live in Toronto this fall. But due to the pandemic, he was laid off.
Now, he’s waiting for the Canada Emergency Student Benefit — which provides $1,250 per month from May until August to eligible students — to open for applications.
“(The virus) threw away all my work plans for the year,” he said.