Story by: Hannah Lang
Graphic by: Angie Shen
During her last week on N.C. State’s campus, senior Kaela Bath couldn’t wait for a week away from classes.
“I remember thinking to myself, ‘Oh, I wanna leave, I wanna go on break,’” Bath said.
Looking back now, there were some signs of what was coming: Wake County had already reported its first case of coronavirus. The restaurant in Cameron Village, where the patient had recently visited, had been professionally sanitized. The next week Duke University extended spring break by a week and announced a switch to online classes.
But it wasn’t until much later that she realized that the first week of March had been her last normal week of college.
“I had no idea that that was my last-ever class. Ever.” She laughs half-heartedly. “Because I’m probably not going to grad school. So I’ll probably never be in a classroom again, which is kind of crazy.”
Over the past several weeks, changes to the daily lives of nearly every North Carolinian have been swift and drastic. The state’s college students are no exception, as universities across the state shut down campuses, close residence halls and switch to online learning.
For seniors, it means the premature end of their college careers and a complete shift from what they expected from their transition to adult life.
On Tuesday, March 10, Bath still planned to keep her spring break plans of visiting a friend in Washington, D.C.. The next day, N.C. State announced a one week extension of spring break and a switch to remote classes.
After public schools closed March 16, she lost her job as a part-time nanny. And by the week after spring break, she was back home and living with her parents.
“I already had everything figured out.” she said. “I’m a planner, so not having a set plan or being able to plan out things is really hard on me… Now, it’s kind of up in the air.”
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For UNC-Chapel Hill senior Becca Daughtry, commencement was going to be an important day for her and her mother — Daughtry is the first in her family to graduate from college.
“I know that’s a big milestone for us,” she said. “I was really disappointed that it had to be moved.”
After announcing that spring commencement for the class of 2020 would be postponed, the university sent out a survey to seniors proposing potential dates for an in-person celebration, the earliest in August. Other options include a ceremony in October, in December after the fall 2020 semester, or a virtual ceremony on the original date.
Daughtry’s worried that it just won’t be as special. She ended up voting for the August option.
“I felt like all the other options weren’t focused on us.” she said. “They were placing us in other situations, like in December graduation or in October whenever people are going to be working already, during that family weekend and everything. I felt like it wasn’t as genuine for us, like it was kind of putting us on the backburner a little bit.”
For many seniors, commencement is far more than an often-sweaty ceremony of pomp and circumstance, said Mark Leary, psychologist and professor emeritus at Duke.
“Anytime we have a goal that we’ve worked on a long time, we like to have a real clear indication that that goal has now been accomplished,” Leary said.
For this year’s seniors, he said, the moment’s been lost and the transition muddied.
For Daughtry, the hardest part is not having closure — not being able to hug her friends goodbye, or celebrate the last day of classes, or walk out of the lecture hall where she took her last exam.
“That’s really sad,” she said. “The small milestones that you don’t even think about, it’s like it’s not there anymore.”
Those tiny losses add up, Leary said.
“I think when the average student thinks about it, it’s actually kind of in a much bigger set of things, any one of which would be kind of upsetting and disappointing,” Leary said. “But it’s the package, I think, that’s affecting students the most.”
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Aside from graduation and those lost last months of college, there’s other obstacles — a bleak job market, canceled summer plans, an uncertain future.
Bath has tried to use newfound free time to ramp up her job search, but has noticed the number of new postings drop sharply in recent weeks. She’s a communications major, and hopes to work in events.
“For what I want to do, people are just not hiring,” she said. “… And ideally, I think everyone wants to have a job at graduation. What I’m looking at right now, it may not happen.”
It’s affected Daughtry’s search as well. She’d hoped to work in publishing or at a law firm but, given the current economy, she’s “up for anything.”
“It’s been a lot, because before all this I was having some horrible stress with jobs and everything,” she said. “But now it’s like, what jobs are even hiring because of everything going on? And how’s that going to work out — can I find remote work to do online?”
The disruptions are both personal and professional. For Sarah Moore, another UNC-CH senior, May was going to be a month filled with celebrations — her commencement weekend was scheduled for the 10th, and two weeks later her brother was getting married at a big gathering of friends and family.
Now, both events have been canceled.
“It’s just so much to process at once, I think,” Moore said of the changes the pandemic has caused in her life. “So it’s not something that you can just get used to overnight. And I think it comes and goes in waves, a little bit.”
The couple has rescheduled a larger celebration for sometime in the spring of next year, Moore said, though nothing’s been set in stone yet. As for her graduation — she hasn’t figured that out.
“I guess I’ll have to find my own way to celebrate,” she said.
The pandemic will likely change the way many people think about their own safety, Leary said — and, for seniors, it comes at a pivotal time.
“They’re in the position right now where this is the time when you’re just beginning to start putting your adult life together… that’s rolling out right now for the graduating seniors,” he said. “So in some ways this has stymied their progress toward developing an adult life.”
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Though she doesn’t have much of a plan for the next few months of college, Bath is trying to focus on what she can control.
She’s been reading more, and dabbling in some art projects. She watches more TV, scrolls through videos on TikTok and tries not to think about the future too much.
“My mom keeps telling me ‘This too shall pass,’” she said. “Just knowing that it’s not going to be forever, I think just really focusing on what you can do right now, instead of what you can’t do, (helps).”
Some days she gets overwhelmed.
“I just wish I could help everyone. Last night I cried about it,” she said. “I was like, ‘All these people are struggling and I really can’t do anything.’”
Moore has been looking back on old photos and videos from her four years at UNC and trying to maintain perspective.
“I feel disappointed, and I feel sad. But I also have been struggling with recognizing that it’s bigger than just myself, and that there are people going through a lot worse things and that, in the grand scheme of everything that’s going on, it seems like kind of a trivial thing,” she said. “So I’ve kind of felt a little bit guilty at times for being upset.”
COVID-19 aside, Daughtry is determined to celebrate her graduation.
“If all else fails and I couldn’t have an in-person graduation, me and my family would get together. I would not even care and wear my cap and gown anywhere, just to show people, ‘I did this!’” she said. “I feel like everyone deserves that. No matter what, everyone deserves that moment.”
