Thanks for tuning in to FSU Student Life! Today we are joined by host Nicholas Campau, as well as guests Nicholas Swanson, Teresa Bailey, and Noah Bathrick to discuss life on campus after COVID.
Extroverted Student Remains Connected
Nicholas Swanson is currently a student here at Ferris and he shares his insights about life on campus after covid. In March 2020, Nick was still in his hometown Grant Michigan because he decided to take a gap year after graduating high school in 2019. COVID was a shock to him because he worked at Meijer, and they were forced to stay open for a while and there were a lot of whole new procedures. Before COVID he would go out and have fun with his coworkers but COVID stopped that which was awkward for him. Nicholas is someone who likes to see and interact with other people so it was hard for him only being able to see his friends on Zoom calls.
He is in a fraternity that he joined when he first came to Ferris in fall 2020. During COVID he stayed committed to his greek life by trying to promote scholarships, character, and brotherhood. He still tried to get people to talk to each other and he still went out on summers even if he had to wear a mask, he had connections with his fraternity brothers and he mowed yards and still wanted to help the community. In his very first semester at Ferris, his classes were all completely online except one which was a two-day class each week, on Mondays his class was on Zoom, and on Tuesdays, he had to walk to an actual building and sit down in a class which he enjoyed. COVID taught him the importance of independence and his mental health and with support from his friends he adjusted to college life.
Professor Adapts to a Virtual Classroom
Teresa Bailey, a professor here at Ferris shares her experiences of how her life changed in the spring of 2020. Teresa is a professor at the College of Pharmacy and is a pharmacist in Kalamazoo. Working in education and pharmacy created a big shift in her daily life. The pharmacy program is half on campus and half off campus. Once everything was starting to shut down, she and her students were not able to do clinics. She said when she was notified about the 2 weeks off in March, she and her children were excited. They were enthused about the 2 weeks off, but those 2 weeks took a turn rapidly. Only seeing the same three people for weeks on end gets stale fast.
Zooming friends to chat just was not the same and being socially distanced from coworkers made it difficult for her to make connections. Teresa said zooming was much more beneficial for her because she has an hour to 2-hour commute. Once everything was virtual, she was able to fit in a lot more meetings. Teresa and other Ferris professors quickly made all their lectures an online format. She realized how difficult it is to lecture to herself instead of a group of students because she cannot see if they understand the content being discussed. Once we started the transition of coming back to school, Teresa saw that many students either wanted all online or all in-person classes. Now that we have made a full recovery from the pandemic more classes offer a hybrid version of the course. Teresa also mentioned that the school made a huge push for mental health awareness during the pandemic and has since made a much greater effort when it comes to student and staff mental health.
Hall Director Promotes Finding New Hobbies
Our 3rd guest on FSU Student Life is Noah Bathrick a Hall director for housing and student life. He goes over how impactful COVID was during his college life how he was only on campus for 7 weeks for the semester and how the switch to online learning was fast and scary. Adapting to the norms of online classes and trying to complete group projects without really seeing them face to face was a challenge and how difficult it was to get some of the projects done. After graduating in 2022 Noah was bouncing between interview and interview online before he finally landed a job at Ferris State as a housing director and how different college was with all the safety norms and events that had to change to fit in these new COVID safety rules.
As they start to wrap up the episode Noah goes into detail about the importance of hobbies in covid and how taking time for yourself was a nice change of pace compared to his normal life. He talked about how he got to play board games with the family more and was able to read some more books he had been putting off.