For Concordia student graduates of 2024, going back to school was a questionable act since their first day of college. Whether they considered it was necessary to stay right on track with their education, or take a break and come back again the following year to have a better non-Covid centered first-year experience, it was not an easy decision for most sophomore students.
Sophomore students’ experience of going to the convocation ceremony, which marks the start of each academic year, raised a lot of feelings of missing out as Concordia College resumed first-year orientation rituals for the class of 2025 normally and in-person with less strict COVID measures than last year.
Ericka Collins, a sophomore biology major, knew that it would not be the normal experience if she chose to come to college in the fall of 2020. However, Collins still expected that it would be much easier to meet people, form study groups, make friends and get closer to professors. But the reality was quite different.
“There was a big learning barrier for us, such as navigating online school and quarantine, in addition to the fact that everyone was scared to talk to each other and was extremely distanced,” Collins said.
Students like Collins expected the college experience to be better, but some students were surprised that it was actually not as bad.
“I thought it was going to be a full lockdown experience, where we just sit in our rooms. But surprisingly I had all of my classes in-person,” Ana Aguilar said, a sophomore majoring in computer science.
Every first-year student has a unique experience in terms of class combination, but most of the students in general at Concordia had a hybrid model that combined both online and in-person with the majority of classes being held via Zoom. Aguilar was one of the few “lucky students” that had all of her classes in person.
A lot of sophomores agree that their orientation was a lot different than this year’s orientation. Sophomore students tossed their beanies individually with their clubs, making the convocation ceremony “really hard to watch,” as both Collins and Aguilar reflected.
“You feel a little bit ripped off in a sense because the pandemic did take so much away from you, including the true college experience that most freshman students are living now,” Collins said.
Many first-year events students experience are first-time experiences for sophomores as well: the first football game, the first volleyball game, and the first in-person convocation.
“It is their first as well as our first, which makes it confusing because I am a sophomore that still feels like a freshman,” Collins said.
Aguilar also shared similar sentiments to Collins about orientation where most of the students were distanced, quiet and generally uninterested compared to the enthusiasm they saw in first-year students’ experience on campus.
Additionally, a lot of sophomore students also missed out on major events that shaped Cobbers’ experiences. One of them, as Aguilar coined it, was the “corn festival thing in the summer that we never got to have.”
Amanda Pieters, the director of Orientation and First-year transition recognizes that what makes sophomore students at Concordia extremely unique is not only their ability to adapt to the situation but also becoming resilient in that process. Aguilar and Collins share those feelings as well, appreciating how strong the class of 2024 is as they reflect about their “unluck” with their ending of high school and beginning of college.
Pieters also admits that the class of 2025 had a much more “Cobber experience,” but the class of 2024 had experienced one of the greatest things that make a Cobber community.
“Those things that were care, support and genuine desire to have them transition to college successfully, it was just packaged in a very different way,” Pieters said.
Pieters also urges sophomore students to join clubs and different organizations on campus, to have a campus job and to get to know their community better.
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