Penn State students review 2020
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Dread built up in his stomach. As he walked down the bustling HUB staircases, he was amazed. His fellow classmates treated day-to-day as if nothing were happening, but Greg Costanzo had friends and family in China and Italy: he knew the virus was coming. That was January 2020.
Greg Costanzo, a current sophomore double majoring in psychology and linguistics, felt the effects of the pandemic right away. It’s been roughly a year since COVID-19 gripped the United States and sent the nation into lockdown.
“People had no idea about it,” Costanzo said of Americans in the early months of 2020. “I have the most friends in China and Italy. If these governments were shutting everything down . . . I knew we were about to change for a while.”
Costanzo even foresaw the impending switch to online last spring. Others did not.
“If somebody were to tell me this were to happen two weeks before [spring break of 2020] . . . I would have laughed in their face,” said Nkosi Govere, a cybersecurity junior at Penn State.
Govere has tried to focus his time this past year on school and taking things slower. After being isolated at home for so long, he realized the true value of his time and surroundings.
“I definitely took things for granted,” Govere said. “The time you have is limited.”
His sense of time has also changed due to the pandemic.
Govere described the past year as both chaotic and boring, highlighting that at first it felt lengthy but then became a blitz of events.
“It didn’t feel like we had a 2020,” Govere said.
Ben Rudnik, a current Penn State junior, also found the past year to feel different from the rest.
“Last March simultaneously feels like it occurred during another lifetime, but also it could have been six weeks ago,” Rudnik said. “It sort of blends together.”
Rudnik currently works at Ace Hardware Store and is classified as an essential worker, meaning much of his time outside of school was spent working.
“Let’s just say I have a lot more retail employee horror stories,” Rudnik said. “Overall, it was a lot more stressful. We were constantly running out of stock and taking on a lot more work to keep people safe. Despite this, I also felt like we got treated a lot worse. We strictly enforced a mask policy and that ended up in our fair share of verbal abuse.”
Stress is a common theme that has emerged with the virus, and Rudnik is not the only student to feel its effects.
Shreyas Sundar, a junior majoring in psychology and philosophy, feels the pandemic has increased his stress levels and discussed how straining 2020 was.
“It’s been more taxing at an emotional level to get by day to day,” Sundar said.
He described the past year as unfulfilling and demotivating, but has also learned the value of his and his family’s health having lived with them for the pandemic.
“I’ve changed by becoming more focused on ensuring I’m healthy,” Sundar said. “Spending so much time with my parents instilled a value of social cohesion within me where I wanted to prioritize the well-being of my relationship with them.”
The complete move to online instruction in the spring of 2020 took Sundar by surprise. He expected things to go back to normal before the end of that semester, as did others.
“I thought we’d have something figured out by now,” said Penn State senior Gage Kephart.
Kephart feels that he was “robbed” of not only his 2020, but his college experience as well.
“You’ve had to make changes to your lifestyle and everyday living,” Kephart said.
He described the past year as chaotic and unimaginable, feeling the extent of the lengthy quarantine since last spring.
Though Kephart has felt that a year was taken from him, Penn State senior Ariel Simpson feels that the pandemic has opened opportunities.
“I feel like I’ve grown a lot within my career. I’ve become more confident in my skill set and more creative within producing. In all honesty, [the pandemic] gave me more opportunities within my career and within self care,” Simpson said.
Simpson has recently started a job working remotely for SiriusXM, which would have been in person in New York had the pandemic not hit — meaning she wouldn’t have been able to take courses and work at the same time.
Brett Fields, another Penn State senior, agrees with Simpson’s sentiment.
Fields was surprised at how long the pandemic has raged, thinking it was just another media hot topic such as the murder hornets earlier in 2020. When Fields looked back on the year, he acknowledges the oddity of the new normal, but doesn’t feel robbed.
“I’ve realized a lot from this quarantine that I wouldn’t have in other circumstances. I feel like I was given a year to do other stuff I wouldn’t have done,” Fields said. “I got something else in its place.”
