Stopping Out and Stepping Back
College can be a Rollercoaster for Post-Pandemic Students
Every night, the Zaragoza family sit down to have dinner. Tonight, Carlos Zaragoza shuffles around the small kitchen, opening drawers and slicing vegetables, preparing a meal for his four-member family. At the small, square, table, adorned with its usual white tablecloth,
Food is an expression of love in the Zaragoza household and Zaragoza cooks a lot. Cooking has become a staple for Zaragoza, now that he’s away from home, a way to stay connected to his family roots. Zaragoza now resides at a fraternity house in upstate New York. The house, with more than ten occupied rooms, is where he enjoys his meals, securing his rent by working five hours a day at the local liquor store.
College is Zaragoza’s first time living away from home. He grew up in a three-bedroom home in Boyle Heights, before his family nestled in the small suburb of West Covina, 18 miles east of Los Angeles. Zaragoza attended the Catholic high school across the street.
“I had to walk across town to school,” Zaragoza jokes, recalling how the city border between La Puente and West Covina divides his street. Despite his location in the suburbs of Los Angeles county, Zaragoza regards himself as a product of the city. “I’m not from some small town,” Zaragoza says with some pride. “I was born and raised in LA.”
So, what made Zaragoza swap the familiarity of Los Angeles for quiet, upstate New York? The small city of Troy, with just over 50,000 residents, located just north of the capital, Albany, is where Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is located. RPI, as it’s known, is a prestigious university (ranked #51 by U.S. News and World Report) with a reputation for engineering and technological inovation. The institution primarily focuses on research and STEM courses, which appealed to Zaragoza’s scientific mind.
As a child, Zaragoza teetered back and forth between wanting to be a zoologist or a genetic scientist after watching Jurassic Park for the first time. Now, as an adult, he is aiming for a career in pharmacology. Given his interests, Zaragoza applied to Masachussetts Institute of Technology and RPI. After he was rejected from MIT, perhaps the most difficult school in the world to get into, RPI was it.
“I wanted to go to a school known for STEM,” Zaragoza explains. “RPI was the best option that checked all the boxes, it was polytechnic.” RPI, with its east coast appeal, resembles an Ivy League school according to Zaragoza.
“My family expected me to go to an Ivy League. I planned on going to one,” he says.
My family expected me to go to an Ivy League.
When that seemed out of reach, Zaragoza turned his attention to polytechnic schools because they had more “esteem” than “regular schools.”
“Regular schools,” according to Zaragoza, are the local Cal States and the reputable UC Irvine, less than hour commute from his family’s home. Caltech, another prestigious polytechnic school, located in Pasadena that is just a 32-minute drive from home was a possibility, but Zaragoza did not have a driver’s license at this time. Not to mention, his prized family heirloom — a busted 1960s VW Karmann Ghia had taken thousands of dollars to repair.
Ultimately, though, it wasn’t a lack of transportation that convinced Zaragoza to head east. “I didn’t want to go to school nearby because I’d fall into the cycle of nothing really [changing],” he said. “I’d get some cheap job, but I’d still feel dependent on my parents for much longer. I felt [that] to mature, I had to be independent…and not rely on my parents as a crutch,” explains Zaragoza.
In high school, Zaragoza maintained better-than a 4.0 GPA, and was involved in various extracurriculars. Multilingual, Zaragoza was the president of the French club and was awarded Summa Cum Laude for the National Latin Exam as well. He also taught himself languages such as Arabic and Italian on the side. Zaragoza’s first language is Spanish, and he speaks English fluently.
Zaragoza continued his language journey into college, where he enrolled in a Mandarin course, but quickly dropped it due to a failing grade. A biochemistry major, Zaragoza found himself failing his science classes as well.
Zaragoza recalls feeling “out of place” the moment his airplane departed from LAX. While at a layover in Chicago, he remembers someone calling him “LA boy” because of the way he spoke. And the weather, Zaragoza claims was “difficult to adjust to.” He had to rely on one heavy coat throughout winter.
Being a fish out of water, though, did not taint his optimism initially.
I felt that to mature, I had to be independent.
“I wanted to meet new people,” explains Zaragoza. “I had this idea of who I wanted to be and who I was becoming, and RPI was the school I needed to go to to be the person I wanted to be.”
After some time in New York, stress from academics and a recent breakup snowballed. Soon, Zaragoza was at risk of losing his academic scholarship. By mid-October of his first year, with the threat of suspension from RPI hanging over his head, Zaragoza withdrew and returned to California. As a straight-A student, Zaragoza’s downfall was shocking, but not entirely surprising.
Depending on how it’s measured, up to 70-percent of first-time, residential students experience homesickness, which can interfere with academic behavior, according to a study by National Library of Medicine. While homesickness, according to Dr. Rebecca Eberle-Romberger, a licensed psychologist and director of Whittier College’s Student Counseling Center, is not a “clinical term,” it can encompass many frustrations faced by college students, especially in their first years, including financial and academic stresses.
Other factors can contribute to problems, especially for Zaragoza’s cohort, which faced an unprecedented challenge on the way to college: Covid-19. Zaragoza is a 2020 high school graduate. The second half of his senior year was interrupted by Covid-19 quarantine regulations, including sheltering at home. He recalls experiencing a period of pandemic-induced restlessness, one that extended into college.
“Immediately before leaving home, I was excited because it was mid-COVID, and I felt like that chapter in my life was over. I was excited to enter a whole new world. But the pandemic was still a huge factor and I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do,” says Zaragoza, who came down with his first case of COVID at college and had to quarantine in his college dorm room.
“It was quite romantic, actually, sitting there, watching the snow fall,” he recalls.
Since the start of the pandemic, college campuses have been experiencing an increase in mental-health issues for students, with clinical depression rising five percent between 2019 and 2021, according to a study conducted by the Healthy Minds Network. Dr. Romberger has seen an increase in mental health services for students at Whittier College in the aftermath of the pandemic. Unfortunately, at the height of the pandemic, Whittier College’s Student Counseling Center had to limit its clientele to in-state residents via telehealth services, as a result of both public-health precautions and state licensing limitations.
Zaragoza says his leave from RPI will be short-lived, that he intends to return to school there. This is an increasingly common phenomenon among graduate and undergraduate students. In an article titled, “Emotional Stress Remains a Top Challenge to Keeping Students Enrolled” for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Julian Roberts-Grmela calls this “stopping out.” Roberts-Grmela defines it as “temporarily withdrawing from higher education” with a purpose to resume classes. In a study conducted by Gallup, about 61 percent of those who considered stopping out cited “emotional stress” as the reason, including academic and personal stressors.
After leaving college, Zaragoza started attending in-person therapy in California, while working at a lab near home. Zaragoza found himself back at square one, living the life he left to avoid — scrubbing up lab spills 9 to 5 and relying on his parents for money and food.
Then, after reapplying to RPI, Zaragoza was readmitted last semester. He’ll soon be back in Upstate New York and in school. He doesn’t regret “stopping out” and refers to his time back in California as “the best descision I’ve ever made.” Therapy allowed him to “re-evaluate” where he stood in the world, not just as a student, but as the person he wants to be.
“I feel like if I’d never left I wouldn’t have the chance to grow so much as I did,” states Zaragoza.
Still, it’s not like everything is suddenly easy. Zaragoza has a 1.9 GPA and is at academic risk, though he says he’s spent significant time committing himself to his academics. “I wish it was higher for appearance sakes,” says Zaragoza. “It makes it easier to get job interviews and is impressive…But it’s not a reflection of who I am.”
Post-college, Zaragoza plans on enrolling in grad school. Where exactly? He doesn’t know. Just somewhere far away from New York. “That chapter in my life [will be] closed”, he sighs. “Maybe I’ll continue the L.A. chapter, part two. Who knows?”
Despite his setbacks, Zaragoza maintains his optimistic nature. He discusses renting an apartment with his girlfriend, Daphne, and possibly attending grad school together. They talk of living in Louisiana or Missouri when school finally ends. Anywhere far from the bookends of the United States.
“I’m okay,” Zaragoza says, reclining on a leather couch, sipping a sipping a glass of wine, having some calm before returning to the storm. He heads back East next week, a little anxious, but also excited.
“I’ve already proven to myself that I’m smart,” he says.
