Nice to meet you, again!

The freshman class at any school is notorious for being filled with a bunch of newbies. A symbol of inexperience and confusion, freshmen can tend to walk around campus like a lost puppy, searching for an owner. Opinions on freshmen often vary: some upperclassmen may take the role of a mentor, kindly guiding and assisting the freshmen on their new journey. Others might turn the other cheek, finding freshmen to be quite bothersome. Well, luckily for Stevens, the pandemic has given us not one, but two freshman classes to ponder over, and I’m in one of them!

As a second-year freshman, I find myself to be sitting in a weird, never-seen-before grey area in the Stevens community. I’ve been to campus before, since I was a hybrid student last year, but not enough to actually know where I’m going. I’ve experienced the challenges of a heavy college course-load, but not in a classroom setting. Perhaps most peculiarly, I’ve met almost all of my classmates before, but not in person. Everyone feels like a 3D Zoom screen brought to life that looks, sounds, acts, and is the same. Every conversation ends with: “It was so nice to meet you… again… well, in person.” If it’s impossible to meet someone more than once, regardless of how or when, then why do I feel the need to re-introduce myself to people that I already know?

I find myself asking all sorts of questions that only a freshman would ask. For example, what am I supposed to do during the hour breaks in my schedule? Last year, I’d take a well-needed nap in between classes. Sometimes, if I was feeling energetic, I’d walk my dog or catch up on my hobbies. Since none of this is possible on the Stevens campus, I’ve been struggling to find activities that will preoccupy me. I often feel that time has escaped me – it seems to be running on its own schedule while I’m stuck at a standstill. I constantly feel pulled in so many opposite directions that I end up trapped in the middle; I’m tugged one way by the feeling that I’m never doing enough, and pulled the other by the thought that I’m doing way too much. So I go with the flow and see where life takes me.

As a virtual freshman, I committed myself to a lot of responsibilities—both school-related and extracurricular. I definitely don’t regret a thing, but I must admit that it was much easier to join a Zoom meeting at home than to drive an hour to and from each in-person meeting. It’s almost overwhelming to suddenly be involved in such a whirlwind of participation when nearly the entirety of my freshman year took place within my bedroom walls. The intensity of the college world was entirely contained inside the glowing pixels of my computer screen, and I was able to escape through the simple act of powering it off. 

The moments that I did spend on campus felt empty. As I’d walk to class, I’d see a few scattered students here or there with masks covering the lower halves of their faces, making them barely recognizable. The contrast from that time to now is so starkly remarkable. Stevens is saturated with students, bursting with a livelihood that it was deprived of last year. The college world is no longer contained within my computer screen—it is no longer a figment of my mind. No, the college world is much more than me, and it is much more than I could ever imagine. 

This is all great, wonderful, amazing, but it’s also scary. I feel like I missed out on a year of valuable knowledge and experiences. It’s true, I definitely don’t feel like a sophomore, but the validity of my freshman year is unquestionable. Us second-year freshmen adapted to a huge lifestyle change during a pandemic, which was already serving as a test of our endurance. I feel more experienced at Stevens than I was last year, and I’ve made a bunch of friends and connections to account for it. 
This fall, the college world is opening back up again; the light that it carries is peaking through the darkened door. To all of the people that read The Stute last year through their computer screen, I hope you find solace and excitement in the tangibility of this printed, paper issue! And to all of the people that I met online, it is so nice to meet you… again… well, in person.

Second-Year Freshman is an Opinion column used to explore the unique experiences of Sophomore students who studied remotely their freshman year during the coronavirus pandemic, and are now experiencing campus life for the first time during the 2021-2022 academic year