STRESSED FRESHMEN MISSING QUINTESSENTIAL COLLEGE EXPERIENCE
It’s a major life milestone, the first time many U.S. teens have ever been on their own. Even in normal times, freshman year in college can be a jumbled mix of anticipation, uncertainty and emotional highs and lows.
In these hardly normal times, when the quintessential college experience exists only in catalogs, freshmen are being challenged like never before.
Amid pandemic restrictions aimed at keeping students safe and healthy, colleges are scrambling to help them adjust. But many are struggling.
Social distancing requirements, mask mandates and daily temperature checks. Quarantine and isolation. Online learning glitches. Campus Black Lives Matter protests. Anxiety over whether to join partiers or hole up in dorm rooms or at home to stay safe.
This is freshman year
