The Class of 2020: The COVID Class

Thaiba Sherwani moved her tassel from right to left, as she heard cheers from friends and family in the parking lot of Al-Ghazaly Jr/Sr High School. After months of Zoom classes, she hoped that an in-person graduation was a sign that the days of online school were in the past. When looking back on the onset of the pandemic in March, Sherwani recalled how she did not think it was going to have such an impact on her life.

“We all thought we were having spring break for a longer period of time,” Sherwani said. “At first, I was really excited, but then I realized that the rest of the year was going to be online. And while I didn't mind it in the beginning, my dad had to go to work because he was an essential employee, and the rest of my family wasn't with me either. So, I was home alone.”

After the months of isolation, Sherwani believed college would bring her the sense of normalcy that she and her classmates hadn’t felt since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her entire summer was filled with the hope that she’d get to return to the classroom and have a normal school year. She was excited to start out as a biology major at Seton Hall University, but it wouldn’t be until Sherwani’s sophomore year that she’d step onto her campus for the first time. It was clear the pandemic was not over.

Sherwani wasn’t the only student who dealt with these complications -- the entire high school class of 2020 underwent many changes due to COVID: the switch to online classes, the cancellation of sports seasons, proms, and even graduations. This group of students had to figure out how they would transition from high school to college during such unprecedented times. According to the College Crisis Initiative, 53.5% of universities in the United States decided against returning to full in-person classes in fall 2020. Those entering college would have to forgo their hopes of a regular school, as they had to choose between hybrid or online classes.

In fall 2021, as these sophomores fully returned to the classroom for the first time since March 2020, it’s questionable whether they were ready for the year ahead of them. Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse conducted a survey of 2,000 college students from May 24, 2021 to May 27, 2021 about the effects of COVID during the 2020-2021 academic year. For the class of 2024, or the college freshmen at the time, about 62% of them felt unprepared for college due to COVID. About 79% of them faced difficulties when concentrating on their remote lectures, and 51% of them felt as though they were academically behind despite finishing an entire year of college.

Ange Benjamin, a Student Success Advisor at Seton Hall University, explained that they had to overcome a difficult reality for the fall of 2021. The transition from high school to college is a milestone for many people, as it is their first time gaining independence and being responsible for themselves academically. But since this “transition” was primarily online for the class of 2020, they did not gain much from it. Now with the return to fully in-person classes, they had to go through a whole new dynamic shift.

“Even though the class of 2020 are now technically sophomores, they’ve been navigating from a freshman perspective because this is their first time on campus,” Benjamin said. “This is their first time acclimating to college life and meeting with professors.”

Some students opted to skip the uncertainty altogether that occurred during the fall of 2020 by taking a gap year. It was reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that in October of 2020, only 62.7% of 2020 high school graduates (ages 16-24) were enrolled in college. That number decreased from the 66.2% of 2019 high school graduates enrolled in college. I sat down with a few high school graduates who did not attend college in the fall of 2020 and asked them why they decided to wait a year before entering college.

Mai Chiaet, a freshman undeclared major at Rutgers University, decided to take a gap year once Rutgers announced it would be fully online.

“I was thinking, I really don’t want to have my first year of college from behind my computer,” Chiaet said. “I would rather have the full experience of going to the school, being on my own, rather than just taking online classes.”

Abby Patterson, a freshman economics major at Seton Hall University, also decided that she would defer for a year once she heard it would not be a normal school year.

“I was really planning on coming here up until the first week before move-in when Seton Hall announced they were switching to virtual classes,” Patterson said. “I just didn't want to do ‘only’ virtual. I didn't want my freshman year to be that way. I wanted to experience it in person. And so, I just decided to take a gap year.”

While Seton Hall University employed the HyFlex model for the fall 2020 semester, Patterson referred to an announcement sent to families on August 7, 2020. The announcement stated that due to New Jersey remaining in “stage 2” of its reopening plan, the University would be mainly remote for the semester. Patterson’s move-in day was set for August 16, but once she received the email, she decided she did not want to deal with the back and forth between whether the University would be virtual or HyFlex – opting for a gap year instead.

Before the pandemic, gap years were commonly associated with traveling to new places and gaining experience that would prepare students for a future outside of the classroom. But during COVID, gap years looked a lot different, especially for students such as Chiaet and Patterson.

“I figured I was at home, so I just focused more on myself,” Chiaet said. “I realized I could take a break, even though I was working part-time as a dining server, and it was a lot. But it was during the height of the pandemic when I couldn’t really see my friends to have lunch or go out to do typical summer stuff before they started school. It was kind of a blur.”

Patterson also explained that she mainly worked at her father’s law firm during her time off school and was able to get experience in the law field. While she did eventually become an economics major, Patterson enjoyed learning more about legal studies in a more hands-on approach.

“The only thing that was kind of rough about it was seeing all my friends who decided to go to college and seeing how much fun they were having,” Patterson said. “That was the difficult part, just feeling like I was missing out.”

While the college experience was by no means normal during the 2020-2021 school year, Patterson felt a sense of missing out on something unique in terms of attending college as the rest of her friends did. She felt behind as she heard about her friends’ moving out to college, taking different types of classes, and meeting different people. During that time, Patterson was mostly at home or working at the law firm – living a different life than her friends.

Chiaet (who prefers they/them pronouns) explained they missed feeling productive during their gap year, which they credited to all the academic validation from going to school.

“I really missed school,” Chiaet said. “The thing about school is that the deadlines are there to really push you to keep learning and I really missed learning. I felt like at some points, I’d come home from work, and I’d feel terrible, and I’d just watch TV forever and forever. And that’s not productive.”

Benjamin, as an advisor for this group of students, explained that this class of students had obstacles that went beyond missing a few weeks of their senior year.

“I think mentally what COVID-19 did for the class of 2020 was it created a lot of digital burnout, to the point where students began to really consider whether or not college was for them,” Benjamin said. “Not because they were not capable, but because they couldn’t handle anything else.”

While Chiaet and Patterson both expressed the benefits from their gap years, not all students were able to make a similar decision. Despite lacking a traditional ending to high school, many students thought they could deal with an unprecedented freshman year. For many of them, they never even considered a gap year and just enrolled right away to “get ahead” on their career goals.

What were their options then? Either attend their classes fully online or alternate with the hybrid model, with some days being online and others in-person. Maryam Ali, a sophomore diplomacy major at Seton Hall University, decided to try attending her classes through the hybrid model for her first semester of college. She said her main reason for enrolling right away was to graduate as soon as possible because of the competitiveness of the diplomacy program. While she enjoyed being able to participate during in-person class discussions, she expressed the struggles during her online days when trying to capture her professors’ attention—they were mainly focusing on the students inside the classroom. Aasiyah Khan, a sophomore biology major at Seton Hall University, remained all remote her freshman year, which made it difficult to focus on her lab-based classes.

“I would just watch my group members do the labs in person,” Khan said. “I just sat at the computer, and I would wait for them to do it.” Without being able to participate in the entry-level lab procedures, such as learning how to use a microscope or use a micropipette, Khan expressed the difficulty in trying to adjust to her more upper-level lab classes.

While Ali did attend some classes through the hybrid method during her freshman year, she ultimately went online when Seton Hall transitioned to virtual for safety reasons in November 2020 after an increase in COVID cases. Seton Hall went back to a hybrid model for the spring semester, but Ali decided to stay online because she was wary of COVID and most of her classes were all virtual. Returning to campus for the first time in a year was quite an adjustment for her, she explained.

“It’s not something I prepared for,” Ali said. “I didn’t form connections with some of the people that I share classes with this year, even though I should have last year. It feels like I’m a freshman all over again, even though I’m a sophomore. The transition has been really difficult.”

Thaiba Sherwani explained that her freshman year from home was difficult for her academically, especially when considering the isolation she faced during her virtual classes.

“I was fully online my freshman year,” Sherwani said. “I actually looked forward to turning my camera on most of the time, while my peers understandably didn’t when they were given the choice. I enjoyed taking my classes at times from the luxury of my bedroom, but I reached my breaking point around the end of my spring semester. Everyone stopped turning on their cameras and the assignments kept piling up.”

Once she finally stepped onto campus for the first time, she felt a shift after a year and a half of virtual classes.

“When the fall semester of my sophomore year came around, I was more ready than ever to get out of my house and attend my classes in person,” Sherwani said. “I will never forget my first day because although I was overwhelmed by the amount of people, I felt like a kid in a candy store who hadn’t had that type of social interaction in so long.”

One of the toughest aspects of returning to campus for the sophomores has been the expectations from their professors. As Benjamin explained, these students are still in a freshman-type mindset, and it can be difficult for them to feel prepared enough for a sophomore-level workload.

“They expect us to have some knowledge based on the last year, and sometimes we don't,” Sherwani said about her professors. “I was not productive at all at home and while my productivity is getting better now, I have become so used to being at home and doing the bare minimum that it is taking extra time and effort to accomplish my daily goals.”

As an advisor, Benjamin was considered a source of guidance for students which was not the easiest task during a pandemic. She explained the most difficult aspect was the inability to provide students a definite answer on when everything would go back to “normal.” But with all the changes happening, she explained that the students have adjusted without even realizing it.

“In terms of moving forward, I believe in the resiliency of these students,” Benjamin said. “I think with the right support and right mindset, the class of 2020 will be on their way to do phenomenal things.”

While resiliency has a positive connotation, the pressure to always be “productive” could be one of the harmful effects of COVID on the class of 2020. I noticed how the idea of productivity was one commonality with all the students I spoke with, especially regarding academic validation. Chiaet and Patterson, despite both taking a gap year, were eager to return to school because they felt a sense of incompleteness without it. Chiaet was working a part-time job yet felt as though there was something missing without any academic deadlines. Patterson was also working at her dad’s law firm but was counting down the days until she started her freshman year in the fall of 2021. Meanwhile, the current sophomores who were returning to their campuses felt academically behind and that they lacked the study habits to be successful. While they are technically “on track” to graduate, many feel that they don’t have enough information retained that is fundamental for their fields of study.

“While I study, I have realized that I have little to no motivation until about a day or two before my exams and while that may have worked in high school, it is completely different now,” Sherwani said. “I am working on it and I think it will take some time because of how 2020 impacted me as well as being fully online because I, unfortunately, did not retain any information or study techniques my freshman year.”

Returning to campus, though, has given students such as Sherwani hope that they still have time to catch up in their academic careers.

“I hope it will get better soon for all of us,” Sherwani said. “I do see an improvement in myself so I hope I can continue that and work hard to return to a sense of ‘normalcy,’ although we may never know what ‘normal’ feels like in a long time.”