 Welcome back to Teens on Topic. I'm your host, Cedric Hughes. And today we'll be discussing college during COVID. I'm joined by five special guests representing an array of situations from students who are on site at their universities and those who have been sent home. First, over to Emma Artson, a student who has been sent home from Drexel University and is now living in Davis. Emma, how has this whole situation been for you? It's certainly a little chaotic. I was online, like most other colleges, the last quarter of last year. And right now I don't have any classes since Drexel is on the quarter system. So I don't quite know. Hopefully it'll be better than last quarter of the teachers figuring out how exactly they are going to teach given these circumstances. Luckily, most of my classes are more computer-based. So that part has been easy to transfer from in-person to online learning. Well, that's good to hear. Was the transition going away from the college campus and being with the friends that you made there and coming back to Davis and living again with your parents, was that hard or emotionally stressful? It definitely was difficult, especially since at Drexel, I had developed like sort of a community that helped with both classes and then just, you know, my friends there. But it is also nice going back and since all of my friends from high school are also online, it's nice to catch up with people I wouldn't have normally caught up with if I were in Drexel. For sure. Now over to two students who are living on campus at their universities, Benjamin Skinner and Zoe Popingay. Ben is at Tufts University in Boston and Zoe is at New York University in New York City. Ben, how was the move out process for you? Well, a lot of the people that I know from my high school graduating class don't have the privilege of being able to move to their physical university. So I'm just super grateful for that. And once I learned that I would be able to be on campus, I kind of just said that's enough for me. That's all I'm asking for. Whatever happens, happens. I'm cool with it. So it's been great. I'd say academically, just as we've been starting classes, it's not too different than how it was in our second semester of my last year of high school in terms of the classes being on Zoom and all of the coursework being virtual. So that part I'm fairly comfortable with. I would say the most interesting and the most challenging part is navigating kind of the social aspect of it, simply because when people have to wear masks, when people have to be socially distanced, it's a lot more challenging to be able to get to know people and when you're thrown into a brand new place, like college or separated by thousands of miles or hundreds of miles from all of your friends, you need to get to know people or else you'll feel really lonely and isolated. And I've been doing that and it's been going about as well as I think it possibly could be. But COVID definitely does impact the social setting. One last thing I'd say is just Hust is doing a fantastic job of managing the whole thing. They have super great protocols in place and students by and large are absolutely following the rules that have been set in place. So I think overall it's just been absolutely fantastic and about as good as we could have hoped for with the global pandemic going on. Well, thank you, Ben. That's a great take and I love your positivity. And of course we should preface this and keep in mind that students such as myself and Ben and Zoe, there's no baseline for us. This is our first year going into college. So unlike Emma, we don't have anything to compare this to. So for us, it is hard to get that shift. So we'll be talking with Emma in just a minute about the differences between in-person classes and online classes. But first over to Zoe Poppingay, now in New York City and also at NYU, home to the infamous dining food that maybe she can tell us a bit about. I am very grateful to, I'm really grateful to be in the city here, just kind of experiencing like New York City and all it has to offer in this pandemic. I definitely agree with Ben that it is really hard to kind of get in that social circle digitally. It feels like I don't quite know where to begin. In-person classes, there's kind of a formula on what to do and what to say. But Zoom, there's not really much you can do. You look at someone's cubicle and say, hey, they look kind of interesting to talk to. There's not much personality to develop, specifically over Zoom. So I guess that's pretty hard. And other than that, the city is really great and New York is handling it pretty really well because they know the judgments of COVID-19. However, the phrase mea culpa is kind of thrown around a lot because New York City, New York University has no campus. So the students roam around the city anywhere they want to at any time they want to. So that is a very strong health risk that they've been really strict of suspensions of expulsions. Like I've definitely heard stories of people not following the rules and then getting reprimanded by the university. In terms of the dining, I was quarantined here for two weeks. Luckily, I didn't have any of the mold stories. But once my breakfast was ham and cheese. But other than that, I have no dramatic food horror stories. But yeah. Well, that's good to hear. Now, before we get back over to Emma, I'd like to talk to another one of our guests here today who will be off to college, Adam Bruger. Adam, tell us a little bit about your situation. Yeah. So I'm currently on campus. I have a slightly different situation. Oh, I'm at University of California, Berkeley right now. My situation is a little bit different than some of the other students who are on campus here because I'm in a residential housing dorm. So it's more like it's a group of like 120 students. We're all there's some upper class students. There's some freshmen and it's separate than the units, which are like the main housing developments on campus. So we're kind of in like a bubble situation. But yeah, it's been good to live on campus. I feel very lucky hearing back from some people who didn't get the chance to do that. I feel lucky to be here. Everyone here is taking it really seriously, which is good. And they're still trying to control like some of the frat partying because that's been a huge problem in the past at some of these bigger schools like Berkeley. But yeah, I feel safe that the food is really good here. Yeah, I'm glad to be taking classes. Even though they are online, all online, it's good to be like with other students who are going through the same thing as me because I feel like it helps build a community. We're able to talk about our classes. Some of us are taking the same classes so we can work together and collaborate. But yeah. Well, that's all good to hear. And I'm glad to hear that people are being generally safe. And it's nice to hear from you and Zoe and Ben alike the positivity coming out and that it sounds like you three are really making the best of a not great situation. So soon we'll be talking with a new and very special guest, Hayden Talon. Hayden is still in high school and he's going to give us a bit of insight into what Davis Senior High School, the school that all of us went to, has been doing during this pandemic. But first back over to Emma. Emma, the three of us, Ben Skinner, Zoe Poppingay, Adam Brugger and myself, of course, we're all incoming freshmen. You had time at your university before you were sent back. What are the big differences, would you say? Apart from the relative obvious, you know, being on and off campus, what are some of the smaller details that people might not think of at first? Well, I would say some of the things that I noticed when I went from in-person to online classes was definitely you don't realize how much you interact with different students in classes, how the bonds you make that way that's really important, I would say, especially to your social life, and really an important part of the freshman experience, I would say the most, in my opinion, the most important part. For me, it hasn't been so bad transitioning because I had already built some of the bonds with people in my major, particularly, when I was taking in-person classes. So going online, I had that set of people that I already knew. And it's definitely a benefit of being on campus, even if you are taking online classes, to still interact with other people from college. And part of the benefit of being a freshman is everyone's new there, everyone is having the same new experience. So when you're put together, the bonds are a lot easier to form, even though they might not last the entire time you're at college, it's still a nice bonding experience to go through this new experience with everyone. But when you're online and you're sort of, and you have to follow the social distancing guidelines, you're, I would say, missing out on part of the freshman experience, but it's something that, sorry, I lost the track though, but it's not as bad as I think some people make it out to be. And especially if you're on campus, you get some of the benefits of the freshman experience though. Right. Well, I, along with the rest of my incoming freshmen, I'm positive that if not now, then soon, we will have that crucial part of the freshman experience. Now, over to Hayden Taylor. Hayden, you're still at high school. In fact, you've just started your senior year. So tell us, what is Davis Senior High School doing? Well, I mean, considering the circumstances, I think both the teachers and the administration and the students are doing really well. Last, the online kind of came out of nowhere and like nobody was teachers and staff included. So I think like considering that, we had like a first trial run and it's never going to be perfect on the learning. You miss out on a lot of the things that kind of, it's similar to college. Like you get interactions and class discussions and things just being on campus, both with learning and social actives that you don't get online. But considering the circumstances, I think it's doing really well. And what does the schedule look like for you? Well, it's block scheduled. So across the seven classes, we don't have all of them in the same. So quarters one and three, we have a certain set of classes and then quarters two and four. So it allows for more focus on specific classes at the same time. But at the same time, you aren't getting all of your classes at once. So I like it, but it's an interesting strategy. Right. Now, why do you think they're putting a break in between one class? So having say your first period during the first quarter and then again during the third quarter. So you have that whole second quarter there that's breaking up that class for you instead of finishing a class before starting a new one. Why do you think they've chosen to go down that road? Well, I think part of it is so that you get, you're still getting a mix of your different classes throughout the year. But I think the importance in their mind, like the reason that they made that decision was so that you can get that, you know, the difference between the classes and you're also able to find a specific one. And I'm sure also considering like stress load and workload was also a factor in that for sure. For sure. Well, I'd like to end today's episode by acknowledging that these times they are so different from our lives a year ago. And back in March, you know, everyone was told that this could have been a two week lockdown in and out. We are now seeing that that was far from true. And it looks like this lockdown might persist much longer than expected. So open question to everyone. What have you all been doing to occupy yourselves outside of school, outside of academics? What have you been doing to keep busy? Ben, you can start. I can start off. Cool. One thing that me and my dorm mates have been doing is playing a lot of ping pong. Table tennis probably more than we should. But you know, it just kind of you do what you can. Like I said, with COVID, we can't do a lot of things. We can't all just gather a giant group of us and go into the city of Boston and get lunch there. We can't even gather in like very large groups and just eat in our common room together. We have to keep it in smaller groups. And a large part of that is adapting the traditional social methods to a situation where we can do it in smaller groups and distanced and wearing masks. So for us kind of that's taken the form of ping pong because we can be six feet apart while playing. We can keep our distance, but it's still like a nice communal thing we can all do together and have fun to pass the many hours of quarantine that we have to go through. Very nice. What about you, Emma? I've been doing a lot of painting. I would say in my free time is something I've gotten back to that during my first college year I had kind of stopped painting for a while. So having the time to come back and spending more time on my creative pursuits has definitely been something. And then socially I have been playing video games online with a lot of my friends, which is a nice way to occupy the spot in my life that had social aspects to it. What about you, Zoe? I've also been trying to get a little bit back into artwork, like digital artwork. And then I've been taking a lot of walks, socially distanced walks around the city and embracing my inner forest, taking some photos. But yeah, mostly just trying to explore the city while it's empty like a once in a lifetime experience in terms of college and stuff. Of course. Adam, what about you? Definitely a lot of ping pong, similar to Ben. I found that that's a great activity because you can be six feet apart. Some pool, hiking, there's some fire trails around the back of our hall. Just trying to keep everything safe, take it slow. Make sure that everything we're doing is not increasing risk for the people around us. And yeah, pretty much. Well, that's great to hear. Unfortunately, it looks like we lost our fifth guest, Hayden. But thank you all for joining us today. And thank you all who are out there watching. Stay safe. This has been Teens on Topic. I'm your host, Cedric Hughes.