Two weeks

When Stevens announced that the first two weeks of the Spring 2022 semester would be remote instruction, I was anxious that in two weeks, we wouldn’t be returning to in-person operations, but continuing on remotely for the entirety of the semester. Thankfully, that is not the case as campus opened back up this week, and my final semester will not take place through a computer screen (from what we can tell right now). 

Last semester was the first fully in-person semester that I had after losing half of my sophomore year and all of my junior year to remote classes. It made me feel like a giddy freshman ready for anything, and because everything was in-person, I had the idea that everything was normal again. No more Zoom classes; everything’s fixed. It felt like I had forgotten there was a pandemic, and for that I am aware of how much privilege I have to be able to feel that way. 

But after I hit the Canvas submit button on my final assignment of last semester, and left my Hoboken apartment to go back home for the holidays, I realized how much perspective I had lost. When I got back home I was confronted with the fact that indoor masks were a requirement and no longer a store-by-store preference, my Dad’s classroom still consisted of a corner of our dining room, my sister was still working from home most days, my Mom tested positive even after three vaccinations, and cases were at an all time high. 

Because of how normal last semester felt, I never expected this semester to be remote or even partially remote –  if we got through a full semester in-person, we’d never go back to remote. But the pandemic is very much still raging on and I’m starting to realize that after graduation, it’s very likely that I’ll be working from home for my first ever job. I hope I’m not the only student who feels like a wet rag in a dryer being tossed every which way, trying to keep up with going back and forth between online and in-person classes. 

There was also residential student move-in that Stevens completely mishandled after the two week remote period, asking students to move back without a pause in classes and during the weekend of a snowstorm. Not to mention required COVID-19 testing for residential students in which home tests were left in all rooms for students to take upon arrival; the problem with this was that there wasn’t a requirement to report a negative result, enabling students to disregard the testing altogether. I’m often sympathetic to administrators and aim to understand why procedures are the way they are. However, for these I’m frustrated.

For The Stute, the two week remote period only affected us a bit. We had planned for our first issue to be last week but pushed it back; if classes should continue in-person as expected we will have a full set of 12-14 print issues this semester. Upcoming is our annual April Fool’s Day Issue, The Stupe, and hopefully our first annual Earth Day Issue. 

We also have some new faces joining us after a short recruitment program we held on Zoom during the first two weeks of the semester, and a newly appointed Assistant Business Manager to the Minor Board, Katie Bloomer. The sections in the paper are also in a bit of a different order which can happen at the start of a new semester as columnists change – Pulse will likely be in the middle of the paper each week instead of the last page. 

Knowing that I lost perspective last semester has made this one a bit different so far: I’m more aware that while it may feel normal, things are still bad out there. 

The Stute Editorial is an Opinion column written by the current Editor in Chief of The Stute to address and explain editorial decision making, discuss news and media issues, and develop a sense of trust and transparency between readers and members of The Stute.