Things may have changed, but still we solider ahead

Amid so many aspects of life that grounded to a halt during the COVID-19 pandemic, one soldiered ahead: my school transfer deadlines.

Remote learning had already transformed my time at Bakersfield College into something new and challenging, and the idea of transferring to Cal State Bakersfield to begin working on upper-division courses felt more daunting than ever before. Not only would I have to contend with learning the material in my classes, but I would also have to learn a whole new institution’s way of communicating online.

CSUB makes use of a different suite of websites than BC to manage student records, classes, advising appointments and more, and at first it’s overwhelming to navigate. Moreover, my fellow transfer students and I no longer had the option to simply go to the campus and talk with someone face-to-face for help. We would have to be more proactive than ever to get fully up to speed, and committing to that amount of work can sometimes feel like a less than stellar idea. After all, it’s easy to think that maybe the pandemic is just a bad time to transfer schools. So much of normal life has been put on hold already, why not this, too?

However, both BC and CSUB have gone to great lengths to provide remote support for new and continuing students. The process was certainly confusing and stressful at times, but by no means undoable — just, triple check those deadlines!

Finally, it was the first day of the spring 2021 semester. I had made it to a new school and was about to begin work on my degree in earnest. To my surprise, it felt… easy. Familiar. The next day did, too — and so did the one after that. By the end of the first week, I was amazed by how seamless it felt to get back into the virtual classroom and continue learning, regardless of whether it was for BC or CSUB.

Without having the distraction of finding my way around a brand-new campus and sitting in unfamiliar classrooms, I was struck by the realization that the core of the experience is exactly the same as it was at BC and even before the pandemic: learning. The veneer had been stripped away, but I still attend lectures, pull my hair out over inexplicable homework assignments and work with my teachers and peers to get through it all. All of the student skills that I’ve spent so much time learning proved to be there when I needed them, ready to be stretched a little bit further.

In the end, my experience transferring schools online has given me faith that hard things are still worth pursuing during the pandemic. I hope that my fellow students will feel some comfort and confidence in their hard-won skills, and that all of us will remember that we are just as capable as we were before and can still have amazing experiences with a little dedication and ingenuity. Even though the way we engage with the world has changed, life soldiers ahead.