Singing to a new tune: How the pandemic has affected the college experience for one CSUN student.
An isolated voice rings out among the walls of Angel Corros’ bedroom. She leans over and taps one of the keys on her laptop a few times, increasing the volume of the lone voice, before sitting back in her desk chair. Roughly 20 students stare back at her, some with their cameras on, while others watch from behind their profile pictures or the displays of their name and pronouns.
Angel, a third year psychology student, prefers to keep her camera on during club meetings. Sometimes, the stuffed animals on her bed peek into the camera frame. It’s her second semester as a member of the Blues Project, a mental health organization at California State University, Northridge, and she’s finally meeting the senior members on Jan. 29. At the request of her coordinator, Angel had performed her new single, “Safe,” for the first time in front of an audience. Separated by a screen, she has yet to meet her fellow members face-to-face and spent her first semester in the organization completely online. It has been almost a year since Angel and the 20 other members in the Zoom meeting have stepped on CSUN’s campus.
Angel’s plight is the same for many college students in the United States, who have been especially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, when the pandemic first began to take hold in the U.S., colleges were forced to temporarily close and finish the spring 2020 semester completely online. Various universities across the nation opened their doors for modified classes the following fall semester, but for most university students in California, March 13, 2020 was the last time they were able to walk across campus, see friends in class or study in the library.
This sudden change and the prolonged period of separation has had a detrimental effect on the mental health of college students. A study released in 2020 by UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education reported that the pandemic has caused an increase of mental health disorders among students compared to previous years. Conducted at nine public research universities in California, this Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium survey gathered responses from 30,725 undergraduate students and 15,346 graduate students between the months of May and July 2020. Out of those populations, roughly 35% of undergraduates and 32% of graduate students screened positive for major depressive disorder, while 39% of undergraduates and 39% of graduates screened positive for generalized anxiety disorder.
The study also found that undergraduate students who identify as being low-income or working-class (50% and 42%), Black or African-American (40%), Latinx (41%), Asian (38%), female (37%), LGBTQA+ (46%, 51%, 62%, 49% and 59%), pansexual (57%) or a caregiver (41% to 45%) were more likely to screen positive for major depressive disorder. The percentages of students with generalized anxiety disorder was higher among those who identify as low-income or working-class (54% and 47%), Latinx and multiracial (44% and 42%), female (44%), LGBTQA+ (51%, 58%, 67%, 56% and 54%) or a caregiver 46% to 50%.
At CSUN, women made up 56% of the population in fall 2020. Latinx students were 54%, Black or African-American students 4.6% and multiracial students 2.9% of the population in that same year according to CSUN Counts. Some of these groups represent significant portions of CSUN’s student population, making them most vulnerable to experiencing distress within the past year.
Lori Williams, a psychologist at CSUN’s University Counseling Services, the campus’s main office for mental health services, said she had seen more rising and graduating seniors seeking help in the beginning of the pandemic because they were reluctant to enter this tumultuous environment.
“A lot of students had routines and plans that were disrupted,” Williams said in an email. “I think the unknown in general can be scary, and we really didn’t know much about this virus.”
Williams works part-time in the UCS office, and said she saw other students coming in seeking counseling for having problems transitioning to online learning, increased boredom, depression, feelings of isolation and increased family conflicts. There was initially a decrease in cases — possibly due to students not knowing how to navigate counseling remotely — but it steadily increased until she reached a point where she was seeing the same number of students as before the pandemic. However, some students have told Williams that they are uncomfortable with their sessions being online and have since taken a break from receiving counseling. Other students share living spaces with family members or roommates, so finding the privacy for these sessions has been difficult.
A year later, students seem to be acclimating, but the college experience is much different from the one that many expected.
“I feel like the spring 2021 semester is a bit easier than the fall 2020 semester because I have a better idea of what to do and how to navigate the semester, but I still deal with a lot of feelings of unmotivation and fatigue throughout the day,” Angel said in an email.
Before the pandemic, Angel was commuting to CSUN from her family’s home in Los Angeles. It was during last year’s spring break that she received an email from the university notifying students of the temporary transition to online learning after spring break. The month of virtual classes was extended to the rest of the spring 2020 semester about a week after the initial announcement from then-President Dianne F. Harrison.
Angel cycled through feelings of disappointment, anxiety, confusion and sadness during the first few months of virtual learning — some of this stemming from her own battle with COVID-19. She contracted the airborne virus in June 2020, and didn’t fully recover from its effects until September.
Due to the stress of the virus and her added isolation, Angel struggled with depression and anxiety, but sought therapy to help with coping. She also began connecting with others through the online messaging application Discord and took up singing due to its relaxing elements. It was during the fall semester when Angel first composed “Safe,” a song about an individual’s strength in moving on from a broken relationship. Now, she’s using her guitar to play spring semester to her own tune.
“My mentality going into the current semester was ‘I may struggle through the semester, but I have already overcome one semester online so I can do it again,’” Angel said in an email. “I still have a lot of anxiety because I do feel as if virtual learning is difficult for me to do, but I know that with the right support and skills, I can push through the semester again.”
Although some students have begun acclimating to the online environment and life during a pandemic, there are still many who are experiencing difficulties.
Marlon James Briggs was hired as a social worker at UCS in August 2019, roughly seven months before the start of the pandemic, and now sees roughly eight to 12 students a week alongside the group therapy workshops he leads. In March 2020, he saw students using the services at UCS to help them with feelings of fear, anxiety and the typical stress of college alongside the transitional difficulties brought upon them by the pandemic. He’s now seeing more students coming to him with general concerns as opposed to the overwhelming amounts of pandemic-related complications. The unfortunate effects of the post-pandemic world are coming to light, though.
“Now these students are dealing with losses from this pandemic — family members, friends, people in their life who have passed or been seriously affected by this pandemic,” Briggs said. “Now we’re dealing with the aftermath and the feelings and emotions about that.”
When the Blues Project meeting ends, Angel ends the call and closes her laptop with a sigh. There’s hope that she’ll finally be able to meet her fellow club members this fall, but those odds are as unpredictable as the pandemic has been. Until then, Angel and the thousands of other students at CSUN will continue to navigate the virtual landscape and cope in whatever ways they can.
