You probably can guess what was foremost on their minds this semester.
“There have been so many things about my senior year that I’ve wished I could change,” one wrote. “I wish that I was still safely going to classes to see my professors in person. I wish that I was still able to go to parties and experience the downtown life in Grand Forks with my friends. I wish that I could stand in the crowd at graduation and throw my hat to the class of 2021. I wish that I could celebrate graduation with my grandparents and see the pride in their faces at their first grandkid to graduate from college.
“Most of all, I wish that it didn’t have to end. … I’m angry because I feel as though I’ve had a whole year of the ‘best years of my life’ taken away from me.”
From another student: “I miss walking on campus to study at the library. I miss my friends, sorority sisters and Greek events. I miss attending tailgates and celebrating football wins with the boys. I miss the classroom … interacting with classmates … and staying after class to have my professors walk me through life.”
On the bright side, though, “I was forced to grow and adjust,” she wrote, “and that is something positive I will keep with me.”
One student wrote thoughtfully about the challenges and rewards of being in a sorority and how she missed living in the house during quarantines. Another told of a rare social event where he and several other students bonded over an impromptu discussion of their various physical and mental health issues. “Within the span of roughly 15 minutes, I had gone from feeling alone … to engaging in deep conversation with people I didn’t know,” he wrote. “Yet no one seemed uncomfortable in that situation. In fact, we all seemed rather excited to share our experiences.”
Shared experiences. That’s college. Remember?
“I want more thrills,” another student wrote, voicing the frustration so many feel, “more moments, more memories, more time.”
The most touching personal column came from a young woman who recounted the day her mother told her she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. “Driving to school after having my world shift under me, I was careless and didn’t slow down for a curve. I slipped into the ditch near our house. My dad came and silently pulled me out, gave me a tight hug, and sent me off to school. I barely spoke the rest of the day.”
A young woman who excelled in science, math and other STEM fields in high school told how she came to UND to study engineering, then after three semesters decided that wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life. “I ‘followed my heart’ and switched my major,” she wrote, but she then had to deal with a fear that friends and family might think she was giving up, taking the easier way. “I want to tell people that I’m still valuable, even though I’m not an engineer,” she wrote. “Perhaps the truth is that I don’t need to tell others that but rather myself.”
Some chose lighter topics: Fights with Parking Services (which must employ a permit enforcer, the student wrote, for every car on campus). Or how the pandemic discouraged “darties” – daytime parties. Thank goodness, she wrote, that two fraternities opened their adjoining front lawns for a darty on a warm, sunny day recently, and she quoted a friend: “We were all meeting new people, getting caught up with old friends, and petting all of the dogs. It felt like freshman year all over again. It felt like UND.”
A former high school hockey player wrote about coming to terms with not being a college hockey star. Another student told how social media “can be brutal, setting bars people can’t reach, breeding insecurities, self-esteem issues, loneliness, the fear of missing out.” Another, here from a distant land, offered that many of UND’s roughly 1,000 international students “constantly walk on the tightrope between two countries,” and pandemic isolation has complicated the journey to belonging and acceptance.
Most people with some connection to UND would agree with my student writers that the year just ending has been difficult.
“This year has been hard,” Liz Legerski, associate professor of sociology and chair of the University Senate, said last week in opening – on Zoom – a University Council meeting. President Andy Armacost agreed. It has been “a really tough year,” but it also has been a good year, he said, as he saluted his digital audience for their efforts to deal with the coronavirus threat and the disruption to routines and traditions.
And he struck a hopeful note about the academic year to come.
“I’m looking forward to the campus opening this fall and the chance to engage with you face-to-face,” he said. “Our campus should and must exude the excitement of creativity, discovery, and learning.”
Chuck Haga had a long career at the Grand Forks Herald and the Minneapolis Star Tribune before retiring in 2013. He can be contacted at crhaga@gmail.com.
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Chuck Haga: Students' personal columns outline a difficult year for so many - Grand Forks Herald
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