--- title: Graduating Seniors Reflect on a College Experience That Began in Isolation | TIME description: Graduating seniors reflect on a college experience that began in isolation. canonical: https://time.com/video/RJD0NiSh/ og:title: Graduating Seniors Reflect on a College Experience That Began in Isolation og:description: Graduating seniors reflect on a college experience that began in isolation. og:url: https://time.com/video/RJD0NiSh/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/RJD0NiSh/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Graduating Seniors Reflect on a College Experience That Began in Isolation twitter:description: Graduating seniors reflect on a college experience that began in isolation. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/RJD0NiSh/poster.jpg?width=720 --- * U.S. # Graduating Seniors Reflect on a College Experience That Began in Isolation > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Graduating Seniors Reflect on a College Experience That Began in Isolation [Watch (HLS stream): Graduating Seniors Reflect on a College Experience That Began in Isolation](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/RJD0NiSh.m3u8) (5:51)  _Published 2024-05-15. Graduating seniors reflect on a college experience that began in isolation._ --- May 15, 2024 10:20 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Chief Justice Roberts Delivers Address to Graduating Seniors](/video/gHyoqKpp/) ### Chief Justice Roberts Delivers Address to Graduating Seniors [Black College Graduates Owe Almost Twice As Much As Whites](/video/bdvjPjuS/) ### Black College Graduates Owe Almost Twice As Much As Whites [Graduate Students Can Now Unionize at Private Colleges](/video/UJXpmJKv/) ### Graduate Students Can Now Unionize at Private Colleges --- ## Transcript I had never, you know, imagined a situation where, you know, my prom and my graduation would be canceled or that I would be starting that I would be starting university online. I pretty viscerally remember how um Odd it felt to be graduating virtually. Our ceremony was online. So I had my mom and my sisters behind me in the house and all of my classmates just like on a screen. I just remember the uneasy feeling when everything came to an abrupt stop because I had to really think about, like, who am I and who do I want to be? Without school, what are the things that bring me joy and what are the things that give me identity? Entering college during the pandemic was a very different experience. There unfortunately was no in person programming, especially in the very beginning. You know, there was no orientation. I was trying so hard to make friends my freshman year, but it was hard because you couldn't. Like, you couldn't really, you know, be with other people. Meeting people kind of had to be outside on our own initiative. And it was very discouraged by the university. So we ended up, you know, getting in very heightened groups with the few people that we could see that year for myself was pretty isolating. I really didn't know a lot of the people in my class, and I still really don't. It was a complicated relationship between the students, especially the ones living in the dorms, our classes were on Zoom, and then, like, the RAs and the administration, you know, were they were constantly trying to enforce, you know, rules that was, you know, went against human nature that went against our nature to want to, you know, meet other people. The fact that I couldn't, you know, be around people in the way that I wanted to be, It made me kind of question if college was for me. And it was weird because growing up college is what I had always looked forward to. I did go through a really tough a really dark period, my freshman year of college. There were times where I thought of dropping out of giving up. For me, it came to a point where I felt like I was wasting my time being in the dorm. Also with the Zoom classes just seemed kind of like a waste of time to me. I ended up taking the spring semester off. There is such a stark difference between the graduating class of 2024 and the classes that were before us and the classes that have come after us. We are a lot more insular. You know, our sophomore year, we were now kind of, like, the same as the freshman class because we were now exploring and doing things that we couldn't even do the year before. So it's almost like that experience was postponed in a way. I do remember having protests our freshman year. I think it was a little different and that those protests, though, like, the school was not stopping those ones, but the ones that we've had recently, the schools have been very vocal in stopping. The whole conflict on our campus and across the world has just caused a lot of divisiveness and tension, I would say, amongst students. And unfortunately, you know, also amongst our administration and also amongst our faculty as well. At the end of the day, you know, the response from the administration, no one is going to be pleased with it and nobody has been pleased with it. The relationship between students and administration is fractured. I'm not quite sure how administration will go about repairing that going forward. Armin commencement did get canceled. Which you know. It happens. It's just sad that it kind of came down to that. It's very hard to want to celebrate at a time like this. Sometimes you even have to force yourself to remember to celebrate things. Like, what does celebrating look like while still remembering that there's really dark things happening across the globe and that we need to be aware of those things, too. Even though this time has been so difficult for so many of us, and it started out pretty isolated. And now that we aren't, you know, we don't have the best relationship with administration. It can be, you know, a bit isolating again. I think that we have this unique ability to forge community among ourselves and mobilize in ways that are effective, concerted, and, you know, fight for peace. You know, this has been a very very difficult time for people to age, and people may think, like, you know why of all people, you know, why why is this happening to me? But I think that's a lot moving forward in your life, there's a lot of positive you could take out of these things and how they affected you. They could transform you for the good you never know. Sometimes things are going to happen that are unexpected, but that's okay because it could eventually affect you in a positive way. I think that one thing we can really take take away from being part of this class is that we're able to withstand really anything and still be empathetic to bigger picture things that are going on in the world. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Graduating Seniors Reflect on a College Experience That Began in Isolation","description":"Graduating seniors reflect on a college experience that began in isolation.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/RJD0NiSh/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2024-05-15T20:52:44.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/RJD0NiSh.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/RJD0NiSh/","duration":"PT5M51S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/RJD0NiSh/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```