COVID, college and coming home

How the pandemic led three students to healing and growth

Universities across the country are starting their second semester since the rise of COVID-19. As remote learning continues for the sixth month running, you might wonder how the shift in college culture has affected young people so far.

Back in March, a lot of undergraduate students returned to stable homes and finished their classes online. Others were not as lucky. Schools often tried to accommodate those who had less-than-ideal living situations off campus, but due to budget cuts, remaining on campus was difficult. As a result, many students found themselves living with their parents for the first time in years, sometimes in spite of distanced or strained relationships.

I interviewed three students at my own alma mater, Kenyon College, who had such experiences. Although it was difficult reconnecting with relatives and hometowns, for them, doing so was an opportunity for personal reconciliation.

Jade — growth after grief

“Now that I have to be here, and I’m forced to pay attention to things, I’m remembering things in a more positive light than in a pained way.”

The pandemic had a surprisingly positive effect on Jade’s relationship with her family. In March of 2019, her mom had passed away after a five-year battle with cancer. “I spent a lot of that spring and summer hanging out with friends, trying to get my mind off of it,” she said. “I wasn’t with my family a ton. I would go out every night and sleep out if I could, because I was just trying to escape.” The following fall, she started as a transfer student at Kenyon, far from her hometown in Texas.

When she returned a year after losing her mom for what became the rest of second semester, social distancing made it impossible for Jade to spend each night out of the house.

“Now that I have to be here, and I’m forced to pay attention to things, I’m remembering things in a more positive light than in a pained way,” Jade said. “I guess there’s been enough space between [now and when she passed away].”

In addition to alleviating her grief, Jade’s time at home has brought her closer to her father and brothers, one of whom lives at home and the other who has an apartment nearby. In April and May, they gathered each Sunday night to watch The Last Dance, a documentary series on ESPN about Michael Jordan. “We’d all sit around and watch and get super hyped,” Jade said. “We’ve spent a lot more time together than before.”

The pandemic has also brought Jade, whose parents immigrated from South Africa before she and her brother were born, closer to relatives there and in Lebanon. Jade and her immediate family found it easier to coordinate video calls with their relatives on the other side of the world when everyone was working from home. “In a weird way, we’re all in the same time and space because it doesn’t really count anymore,” Jade said. “They’re also trapped inside their house, and it connected us that the exact same thing was happening in both of our lives.”

Birhanu — facing culture clash

“Why is my exposure to the things I have done in the past five years so defining of who I am now?”

Birhanu found that moving back home involved both reconnecting with his family and readjusting to his Ethiopian culture. Now 23 years old, he had not lived in the nation’s capital, Addis Ababa, since he was 17. After moving to the United States, he experienced profound changes in his lifestyle and perspective on the world.

“I was raised as an Orthodox Christian and most of my upbringing was colored by going to church [and] having a very strong spiritual essence,” Birhanu said during a May interview. That “sort of disappeared in the past five years.”

Much of Birhanu’s coursework at Kenyon promoted an understanding of society from an epistemological and scientific standpoint. “I [took] sociology, philosophy, women and gender studies and political science,” he said. “These are important things to learn, but of course, they put a question mark on some sort of spiritual understandings you may have had before you’ve come to encounter them,” he said.

“I left Ethiopia when I was 17 and a half for the first time, and [those] 17 and a half years [had been] solid Ethiopian upbringing,” Birhanu reflected. “I haven’t even lived one third of [my life] outside of Ethiopia. What does that mean? Why is my exposure to the things I have done in the past five years so defining of who I am now?”

For Birhanu, the pandemic has been as much about staying safe as it has been about examining these aspects of his identity. He has been impressed by the ability of officials in Ethiopia, a nation with a variety of strictly practiced religious traditions, to promote public health standards without challenging the beliefs of its citizens. “As much as we’re doing the scientific side, we really value the religious side of things,” he said. “Our priests … don’t say, ‘you will be okay,’ they say you have to wash your hands and put in the effort. So it’s a very synchronized effort which I think is [being done] very well.” Birhanu supposes that the health crisis has humbled people regardless of their convictions. “There are certain ways that the world goes and how life carries itself,” he said. “We’re just part of it.”

Shane — healing family wounds

“I’m not just gonna abandon what is because it’s not what I want it to be.”

Shane, now 23, has had a tumultuous relationship with his family since he was a teenager living at home in Nashville, Tennessee. “I left when I was 19 and didn’t talk to them for like a year [except] in a very spotty way,” he explained. His departure from home was in part driven by his sexuality — his mom, a conservative Christian, had reacted negatively when he came out as queer in high school.

It was last fall that Shane began making amends with his family. “As of October, I started working through a lot of different stuff,” he said. “I actually went and I saw them over Christmas break this year, and that was the first time I’d like been to their house [since they moved in July].”

During the break, Shane came out again, this time to both his mom and stepdad. He said that his mom supported him while his stepdad, with whom he has never been very close, reacted with vague discomfort.

When the pandemic struck, Shane was on campus for spring break. One of fewer than ten officially self-supporting students at Kenyon, he had registered his apartment there as his permanent address since starting college as a first year. When states across the country began enforcing restrictions, though, he was nervous about staying. “I didn’t have a car at that point, and I didn’t know what the hell was happening and what things would look like,” he explained. “I didn’t want to get stuck in Ohio where I couldn’t get to a grocery store.”

So Shane called his mom. She offered for him to stay in an extra bedroom above the garage at her house until May, when he would return to campus for summer housing. “The way things chilled out for me was, I’m not just gonna abandon what is because it’s not what I want it to be,” he said. At the same time, “[that] doesn’t mean that I think all of this is okay.”

Although his mom and step-dad have come to terms with Shane’s sexuality, they still disagree with him on most ideological points and have trouble relating to him. They also keep a number of guns around their house, a safety concern for Shane due to his history of suicidality.

Despite continuing tensions, Shane’s mom “is very willing to listen and have conversations and change perspective more than a lot more than she was when I was growing up,” he said. “We can relate on the things that we would be friends over, [and] the rest of it, we can talk about [because] we’re adults and there’s no weird power thing.”

In May, Shane learned from Kenyon that he would be unable to return to campus for summer housing because the school was no longer allowing students to come back once they had been away. Because he did not have the means or desire to continue living at his mom’s house, he decided to get a job and move into an apartment nearby, in Knoxville, Tennessee. He will not have time to work and continue remotely as a full-time student, so he plans to take the year off from school.

Although he wishes that he had been able to go back to Kenyon, Shane is grateful that he has improved his relationship with his mom.

“She has actually been ridiculously sweet and was really excited to help me decorate my apartment,” he said. “It’s nice to have that relationship and be no less independent.”

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Kenyon is one of 15% of colleges which will offer a hybrid of online and in-person classes this fall, according to data from the Chronicle of Higher Education. What are your school’s plans, and what do you think about them? How is the restructuring of higher education during the pandemic impacting you? Let me know in the comments below or reach out via email to dorasegall@gmail.com.

For more stories like these, check out COVID College, an account on Instagram and Facebook which documents the impacts of pandemic and recession on undergraduate students.

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This article was published with editing from Samantha Stahlman— thank you for all your recent and past help!