‘Earthquake inside of a tornado.’ Anxiety, isolation mark COVID semester for KY students.
It’s tough to get Transylvania University students to come out to an event, joked senior Seth Wyatt, so when they do come out, they mean business.
Nearly 50 of them did in early November. According to Wyatt, the vice president of the Student Government Association, a motley collection of athletes, fraternity and sorority members, conservative and liberal student groups and others protested in a plaza outside Old Morrison, Transylvania’s main administrative building.
Those students weren’t there to protest for racial justice, not over social distancing or any of the usual reasons to demonstrate in this pandemic, election year. They gathered over concerns over their own mental health and what a compressed, largely digital semester was doing to their own well-being.
The catalyst for the protest was a student-run survey which got 421 responses from Transy students. The majority of the responses had a negative review of the compressed modular class calendar that the university had implemented to ensure flexibility during this novel semester. According to Summer Taylor, the student government association president, the survey showed that many students were reporting increases in anxiety, depression, sleep deprivation and general difficulty in completing class work.
Transy adjusted its calendar to the module system because it was trying to keep its students “healthy and well,” wrote Taylor in an 11-page memo with a variety of proposals for adjusting the student academic experience. The spread of COVID-19 on campus was to some extent being mitigated thanks to the university’s efforts but, according to the survey, many students were not feeling well.
The university has met with student representatives multiple times, and is commissioning its own survey in conjunction with the SGA. Throughout the process, Taylor has stressed that she’s found university administrators to be receptive to student feedback.
An old problem made worse by COVID-19
Concerns over student mental health are not new and institutions across the country and Kentucky were working to provide more resources to students even before the pandemic began. But as this year’s college classrooms have been defined less by lines of desks in lecture halls and more by rows of faces on computer screens, the stressors to student mental health have been exacerbated.
For Eyouel Mekonnen, Eastern Kentucky University’s Student Government Association president, the COVID-19 pandemic has been “lighter fluid” to fires that were already burning. Yet the separation brought on by online classes is “jet fuel.”
Nearly a quarter of Americans aged 18-24 said they’d had suicidal thoughts since the beginning of the pandemic, a CDC study published in June found. A survey of over 30,000 students at nine different large universities across the country in May and June found that close to a third of students screened positive for a major depressive disorder.
Before the pandemic, the University of Kentucky was making large investments to revamp its student support infrastructure on the heels of multiple reports of student suicides and after the campus had increasing year-over-year traffic to the university’s counseling center.
But this semester much of that traffic has had to come online through telehealth counseling sessions, said Felito Aldarondo, the associate director of UK’s counseling center. Aldarondo said they haven’t seen an increase from previous years, but just like any fall semester, the center is in high demand from mid-September onwards.
Students coming into the center are reporting increases in anxiety and isolation in an unprecedented academic experience set against the backdrop of a turbulent political environment, Aldarondo said. There have been many students who say they’ve traditionally gotten good grades, told the center that they’re struggling with the organizational pieces of a largely online semester and are behind academically.
What is Zoom fatigue?
None of the students interviewed for this story expressed a desire to go back to a more traditional in-person semester while the pandemic remains a major public health threat, but many of them have expressed a general displeasure with mass online learning.
Students say they and their peers are experiencing “Zoom fatigue,” decreasing motivation and less accountability toward completing their work.
Zoom fatigue is a sort of tired isolation that has crept up on students slogging through largely online classes this fall, said Courtney Wheeler, UK’s SGA president. Wheeler said she misses the 10 to 15 minutes of walking across campus between her classes and smiling and waving to friends who aren’t on a screen. She misses casually turning to the person next to her to ask if they want to work on a project together.
“We’ve been in our rooms since August,” Wheeler said, adding that there’s an unexpected and forced formality that comes with texting and emailing classmates about working together.
For Mekonnen at EKU he said it’s been easy to get out of the rhythm that might come with attending classes in person.
“It’s very easy to forget things,” Mekonnen said. “It’s very easy to get overwhelmed. And it’s also very easy to not do the coursework until 8 p.m. on a Sunday night when it’s due at 11:59 on Sunday.”
In the past, even when he didn’t want to write a paper, the shame of going to his professor empty handed was enough to motivate him to power through. Now, Mekonnen said that social accountability is nearly non-existent.
“If you don’t open your computer,” he said, “your professor is not there.”
If a student knows that a lecture is going to be recorded and available later, they might just roll over and take a nap, said Ntambidila Gbili, Bluegrass Community & Technical College’s student government association president. Even during a lecture, staying focused can be tough when email or a browsing tab with YouTube open is just a click away, Gbili said.
‘I’m not even absorbing the material.’
At Transy, the module system adopted by the university essentially bisected a usual 15-week semester into two 7-week modules. Students would take just two classes during the 7-week period, but would have a class five days a week. In a normal college semester, a student may only have a class two or three times a week. According to the university, its made Transy more flexible in the face of the pandemic.
Taylor said that having a class five days a week has been hard for students who might have a job outside of class or may be under the rigorous daily schedule that comes with college athletics.
“With classes being every single day, it was very difficult for students to stay on top of their work, as well as accomplish their work,” Taylor said. “And there was a lot of people who said on the survey, ‘I’m not even absorbing the material, I’m just doing it to get it done.’ That was upsetting to see that because obviously, we pay so much for our education.”
After Taylor and other student representatives met with Transylvania officials in October, the administration agreed to extend the hours at the campus library for students to study. Unsatisfied with that result, the SGA decided to host a student protest in early November “to make this real to Transy administration.”
The November demonstration centered around mental health featured students speaking of their own experiences and according to Taylor, administrators came to listen.
The administration agreed to another meeting with students, which Taylor felt was more productive for students.
Transylvania will send out its own official survey of students, and according to Megan Moloney, the vice president of marketing and communications, the Dean of Students office is working with the SGA to develop those questions. They expect to send out that survey after Thanksgiving break.
Additionally, the university will review grades from after the second module session, Moloney said. After the first seven weeks of the year, students overall had better grades, she said.
The university will remain in the module system for the rest of this academic year, but its the university intent to switch back to a normal semester system in fall 2021.
Throughout the whole process, Taylor stressed that she’s felt that the administration has been receptive to student concerns as have faculty who have been generally more lenient this year.
‘An earthquake inside of a tornado’
Overall, students feeling strained by the semester should try to find activities that aren’t necessarily dependent on a screen, said Aldarondo at UK’s counseling center. Listening to calming music, meditating or reading a book for enjoyment can all be beneficial, he said.
Trying to attend social events that have safety precautions or even attending a fun online event can also help, Aldarondo said.
At many universities accessing a counseling center has never been easier, as many institutions have expanded their online services.
At BCTC, Gbili said he’s seen students become increasingly more active on the community college’s app for students. In a way, it functions as a sort of social network just for students and their instructors where they can ask for help or encouragement. Gbili said he’s taken to posting inspirational quotes and engaging often with students through the app.
Mekonnen said everyone should cut themselves some slack, as the world is going through novel times.
“It’s OK, if this semester, your grades aren’t in the tip-top shape that they always are,” Mekonnen said. “Because 2020 has genuinely been an earthquake inside of a tornado.”