Nearly 4,800 students are receiving degrees from the University of Oregon this month. The graduates are being honored at a ceremony at Autzen Stadium on Monday morning.
For much of UO's Class of 2024, the end of college looked a lot different than the beginning, when they were freshmen in the middle of a pandemic.
A New Chapter
Cecilia Gibbons lost her prom and high school graduation to COVID. Just a few months later, she’d move across the country to attend school in Eugene.
“It's like, how do you close the high school chapter and then start a new chapter when it's this really confusing mess of a time?" she said.
In the fall of 2020, UO’s freshman experience was starkly different from how it is today. Nearly all of the university’s classes were remote, and residence halls restricted student meet-ups in order to stop the spread of the virus.
Then a freshman, Sara Krell said she took most of her classes from the same dorm room every day. She said this was a difficult environment to learn in, and it became easy not to care.
“You're learning all of these basic but key concepts that are going to help you through all the rest of your classes," said Krell. "And you're learning them on Zoom, where it's really easy to get distracted.”
The students also say it was hard to make friends online, as many of their peers kept their mics muted and their cameras off.
However, Gibbons and Krell were roommates in the dorms, and they say they found support in each other. With time, Krell said the pair became like sisters.
“We kind of used each other to help us get over the bridge of, okay, we were with our family and we did everything with them," said Krell, "and now we're basically on our own.”
At the same time, some freshmen were struggling to find connection at all. Chloe Scheid lived off-campus in an apartment in Eugene, and she said she felt the distance.
“I actually don't think that I made a single friend at UO that entire year," said Scheid.
Scheid said she practiced social distancing to avoid catching or spreading COVID. But from her apartment, she recalls hearing the sounds of other students partying in the middle of the pandemic.
Opening Up
By the fall of 2021, many at UO were vaccinated, and the university moved back to primarily in-person classes.
Gibbons was nervous. After spending most of her time with her roommate, she said it was a hard transition back to separate schedules.
“I felt like I was getting on the bus to go to first grade again, and you have to wave goodbye to your parents and there you go," said Gibbons. "Sara and I did have to really discover who we were without each other.”
Meanwhile, Krell was feeling the after-effects of online learning. When she enrolled in a statistics class that built on material from her freshman year, she struggled.
“I would call my parents just crying and feeling like such a failure," said Krell, "because I didn't understand the concepts that I needed."
Scheid said the years after lockdowns weren't as normal as some might remember. As a sophomore, she still faced hybrid classes, and the emergence of the Omicron variant.
“I was still really conscious. I was still not willing to go to large gatherings, especially inside," she said. "I was wearing a mask all the time.”
However, Scheid said she felt the university grew less accommodating around COVID. When she caught the virus in 2022, she said she took a poor grade in a class because she couldn't get enough of an extension.
"I think we started to see COVID like 'you got the cold for a few days, but you need to come back to class,'" said Scheid. "That is definitely something that I know affected a lot of people's experiences."
Moving Forward
Today, the graduates said they've mostly recovered from lockdown-era loss-of-learning. Krell credits the work of the university's professors.
"If that first year had just shut down, or if the teachers weren't willing to take the time to help us learn, when they were also going through so much, we wouldn't be here," said Krell.
And as time went on, Scheid said she ultimately did find a community through her acapella group. But in some ways, she feels there’s at least a year she’ll never recover.
“I listen to my parents talk about college, and what it was like to move, and how much fun they had," said Scheid. "And they don't really talk about the classes—they talk about all of the other things. I don’t have as many of those experiences to remember.”
Scheid said it’s impossible to know exactly what college would’ve been like without the pandemic, but she thinks the experience made her and her peers more existential.
“Now, I don't think anything is a given," said Scheid. "And I think all of the normal life milestones that we expect to have—I see them as very, very fragile.”
Today, Gibbons said it's an odd feeling to be on campus, and see students packed in the dining halls which were once so heavily distanced.
But as she prepares to graduate, she said her relationship with Krell remains the silver lining of this experience.
“While I do feel cheated in some aspects, I wouldn't give up the friendship that we developed because of it," said Gibbons. "And to me, the biggest takeaway from all of this is having each other."
