The 2019-20 freshman class had an entirely different college experience

It felt like the end of the world

By Ileana Hubert, El Inde Arizona

When Emily Wright began attending the University of Arizona in August 2019, she expected one big thing out of her experience: parties.

Over her first spring break in 2020, she went home to Gilbert and learned like everyone else, that she wouldn’t be returning to Tucson.

She sat with her friends in a Hungry Howies restaurant, watching a television report about the early spread of COVID-19 and joked about how it felt like the end of the world.

Bombarded with vague emails from the school, Wright had to pick up her belongings from the Gila dorm before returning to Gilbert indefinitely.

For Wright, 22, spending so much time with her family was a blessing. Her parents were excited to have the whole family living together once again.

Wright was originally a deaf studies major. The combination of glitching, deaf professors and the necessity for interpreters made pandemic-era learning over Zoom extremely difficult. Eventually, she changed her major to journalism and religious studies. Now, after deferring a semester of her studies, she is set to graduate winter 2023.

A chance to reconnect with nature

By Skylar Zannini, El Inde Arizona

Although online learning wasn’t the plan for Colorado native Gillian Beauchamp when she came to the University of Arizona in 2019, she took the unprecedented situation as an opportunity to hone her digital skills and spend more time outdoors.

“At the time I didn’t think it was ideal,” Beauchamp said “but I feel like I came out of it with a lot of really good skills in technology.”

She also learned a lot of valuable online communication skills, whether it was through Zoom chats or professional emails.

Beauchamp, an education major, went home to Boulder, Colorado, to “reconnect with nature” during quarantine.

“The only outlet anyone had was going on walks,” Beauchamp said, referring to the national trend of people going for walks around their neighborhood when they were tired of being cooped up indoors.

Beauchamp said she plans to put her pandemic tech skills to good use when she graduates and pursues a career working at a nonprofit that supports young unhoused people.