BY SYDNEY HOOVER
Emily Howard said most of her time her first few weeks of her freshman year at Kansas State University was spent in her dorm room.
She said the school has been strict in its safety regulations because of the coronavirus — most of her classes are remote, she can’t sit and eat in the dining hall, and for the most part, no clubs or activities are going on at the moment.
“I would just say it's definitely different than expected and different than you hope and, like, dream about college being,” Howard said.
With colleges across the country reopening amid the coronavirus pandemic, incoming freshmen who recently graduated from Eudora High School agreed one of the biggest adjustments is meeting new people while maintaining social distancing practices.
Howard said she has spent a lot of time hanging out with her roommate, but is not allowed to have guests in her dorm. She said in addition to that, she has to wear a mask anywhere outside of her room, including the communal bathrooms.
Freshman Mason Hart said at Emporia State University, there are similar strict guidelines for guests, attending classes, etc.
And as students adjust to being away from home for the first time, parents hope their children are safe and getting as much of the “college experience” as they can. Lisa Manley said it was nerve wracking leaving her daughter, Mia, at Pittsburg State University.
Mia is her oldest daughter, making it an adjustment to begin with, but Manley said going through coronavirus testing and leaving her hours away from her Eudora community while the pandemic persists made the adjustment even more significant.
Manley said although it's difficult for Mia to meet new people on campus because of safety precautions in place, she’s grateful Mia’s roommate is one of her friends from Eudora. Mia is on the track team and her roommate, Keagan Shockley, is on the volleyball team, giving them some opportunities to meet other freshmen on those teams.
“There was some additional, I feel like, bonding going on with them [Mia and Keagan],” Manley said.
Kansas City Kansas Community College freshman Khloe Crawshaw is living at home in Eudora and commuting to campus every day. She had planned to live at home and commute prior to the pandemic, but because of current restrictions, meeting people on campus has become even more difficult.
“When you go to college, everybody always tells you that you're gonna, like, make a bunch of new friends,” Crawshaw said. “Now it's kind of like, you have a specific group of people within the one class or two classes … You don't want to go and kind of wreck the system.”
Crawshaw is on a music scholarship that requires her to take some in-person classes, so she goes to a music theory class and a choir class on campus every day. She said in her choir class, students are spaced six feet apart, wear masks and each has their own microphone that has to be sanitized after every class.
Like Crawshaw, Gretchen Herron’s son Braeden is living at home while attending Johnson County Community College. Herron said as a parent, she’s glad her son, who is studying digital electronics, is able to take some classes in-person safely at JCCC to get face-to-face interaction with his professors.
“When you need hands-on to learn how to put a circuit board together or how to make a connection to something electronic, you really need to be in place,” Herron said. “If you don't have that hands-on experience, you know, looking at it on a computer and doing it are two completely different strategies.”
From visiting campus a few times and knowing the precautions JCCC is taking, Herron said she hopes the campus will stay open throughout the semester so Braeden can continue getting that hands-on learning. She said she feels like JCCC has a “good handle on it” to keep the school functioning throughout the pandemic.
Hart said he could see ESU moving entirely online in the coming weeks. He said if that happened, he would want to continue living on campus if he could. ESU has done a good job of keeping everyone safe, he said, and he would only leave if there was a bad outbreak.
Howard said she also isn’t worried about contracting the virus and getting sick, but she wouldn’t want to take it home to her family if she were to be sent back to Eudora if K-State closed.
As long as their peers continue practicing safety measures, such as wearing a mask and social distancing, Crawshaw said she’s not worried about continuing with classes, even if her first semester looks different than what she anticipated it would.
“I think as long as every body continues to wear their masks, and we have hand sanitizer and things like that around campus, we should be OK,” Crawshaw said. “I've seen everybody's kind of being conscious of everything that they do.”
Reach reporter Sydney Hoover at eudoratimes@gmail.com.
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