COVID ripped the joy from college life. Dorms emptied, classes went online, clubs and sports disappeared.
Students weren’t sprawling on the RISD beach on Benefit Street. They didn’t linger at coffee shops on Thayer. They weren’t celebrating their graduations at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center.
For three graduating seniors, the pandemic punched a hole in the college experience, leaving large blank spots where fun (and possibly embarrassing) memories should be.
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Dina Louis was juggling three majors (English, Chinese and education) and a busy life as a resident assistant when COVID shut down the University of Rhode Island.
“We left for spring break and never came back,” said Louis, whose family moved here from Haiti. “They kept saying, ‘We don’t have school for another week, we don’t have school for another week.’”
When URI announced it was going remote, Louis was asked to write reassuring letters to her dorm mates, but she was feeling just as unmoored as them.
“I felt like I wasn’t really in college,” she said.
The campus reopened in the fall 2020, but classes were remote or hybrid. Louis lost out on her classroom-teaching practicum, a crucial part of her education training, because public schools were just beginning to reopen.
“You had to eat in your room and go to class in your room,” she said. “You weren’t allowed to visit your friends in the dorms. I hated my junior year.”
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Senior year felt like a return to normal. Louis is student-teaching this year at Tolman High School in Pawtucket and hopes to land a full-time job this fall.
Like other students, Louis learned something about herself during those gloomy months apart.
“I learned that I needed help, that I can’t do it on my own,” she said. “I talked to people who cared about me. My boss was always checking on me. Without it, I would have failed my junior year.”
Julia Di Natale, who is studying international business at Bryant University, was on spring break in Puerto Rico when she got the news that Bryant was shutting down. When she returned, she went to get her laptop from campus, figuring the closure would last two or three weeks.
A friend walked in and said, “Did you see the news? They’re shutting down restaurants and stores in Boston.”
“I had tears in my eyes,” Di Natale said. “My dad said ‘you better take everything home.’”
Bryant University, she said, ensured a smooth transition from in-person to remote learning.
“There were hiccups,» she said, «but we never had to ask ‘what’s happening next?’”
“I’m very type A,” she said. “We would turn on the news and Gov. Cuomo would say, “We had so many hundreds of deaths in the past 24 hours. New York City was the epicenter of the epidemic. Then it moved to Suffolk County, where my family lives. My dad went to the grocery store one day and my mom was crying. It felt like there was no hope in sight.”
The pandemic scuttled a study-abroad program in Aix-en-Provence, a longed-for experience because her family is from the south of France and she fell in love with the city during a brief visit in 2019.
Junior year was bearable because many of Di Natale’s classes were small and could be held in person.
But senior year has been amazing.
“They recently dropped the mask mandate. Everything on campus looks beautiful. I never thought I’d get so many good opportunities.”
Undaunted by the pandemic’s countless restrictions, Di Natale was invited to present her honors thesis at two business conferences, one of them an international symposium in South Korea. While sitting in an Orlando airport, Di Natale zoomed with the attendees in South Korea.
“I’m not saying COVID was a blessing, but it gave me the time to reflect on what I wanted,” she said. “I learned to stand up for myself and create my own story.”
Goldman Sachs has offered Di Natale a job after she graduates.
While COVID was a profoundly disruptive experience for many students, it only deepened one couple’s relationship, despite the miles between them.
Matthew Lussier, a Providence College senior, began dating his girlfriend six months before COVID struck.
“We were in love,” he said this week. “But I live on one end of Massachusetts and she lives on the other.”
When the college closed, they were apart for three months. They commenced a long-distance romance carried out on Twitter and Facebook.
“We sent each other little gifts,” Lussier said. “She sent me a stuffed bumblebee. I sent her a portrait of the stars on the night we met. We had to go above and beyond to show we cared for each other. If you can’t give someone a hug, you have to do that in another way.”
Lussier and his girlfriend, Halle Pratt, plan on getting married, but they’re in no rush. In the meantime, he is thinking about attending law school or pursuing a master’s in history at PC.
“I hope we don’t have to go through COVID again,” he said. “But I think it caused us to cherish what we have so much more. While we recognize what we have lost, I hope people cherish what they have now.”
Linda Borg covers education for the Journal.
