Choices to be made–questions to be answered

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This time last year, many students faced the choice of what to do about their program come fall. Take a gap year? Try for residence? Try for mixed online classes? Try to enroll in face-to-face classes? 

This year we face the same questions, but with more hope and less uncertainty about COVID being manageable. Effective vaccines have been developed. The country is getting vaccinated. Campuses and businesses are developing plans for transitioning to fewer and eventually no lockdowns.

The questions I’m hearing this year are more about the transitioning period. How long will it last? How are my city, my campus, my family, my job affected? The devil is in the details in each case.

Here are some of the specific questions we’d all like answers to:

  • Will I be safe if not everyone has the vaccine?
  • Will my campus require vaccination? Can they do that?
  • What do I do if my choice is not to be vaccinated and my school wants me to be vaccinated?
  • How do I know whether my lab partner is vaccinated or not? What about my instructor? The students I sit next to? My children’s teachers? How does privacy work with all of this?
  • How do I deal with socializing with my friends, some of whom will be vaccinated, and some won’t. I’ll feel uncomfortable going for coffee or drinks if I’m pressured to take off my mask, and I’ll feel just plain scared if I take it off.
  • Do I have to tell people whether or not I’ve been vaccinated? If I hide the information and my lab partner gets sick, am I in trouble for that?
  • Will I have a choice about whether to attend virtually or face-to-face?
  • I’ve just finished my first year and all of my exams have been online. How do I prepare for in-class, timed, closed-book exams?
  • I really want to get back to my friends and regular classes. But I’d also like to wait until more people are vaccinated and everybody is on the same page about socializing. Should I stay out for a term, or pack my fall semester with as many online courses as possible?

I’m sharing these questions with you not because I have answers (I wish!), but to voice that we’re all in the same boat here. We’d have to be on some different planet if we didn’t have these questions, and more.

But we will have answers. We have made it through fifteen months of unpredictability and change. We will deal. And I will keep blogging about how we are continuing to do just that.

Let me know your questions, or just connect to vent. We’re close to the end of this. We will make it. [email protected]