It goes without saying that the next nine months at Harvard will look different than any year before. The uncertainty that lies in attending college classes during a pandemic has forced students to drastically compromise their paths in their academic and professional lives.
In particular, the Class of 2024 has experienced a year of unprecedented novelty. Although a considerable number of students were able to live on campus for the fall semester, only a fraction of first-years lived on or near Harvard facilities in the spring, yielding a challenge to form human connections with their peers away from Zoom meetings. Whether to even enroll in courses this past year has been a common debate among the class. For foreign or far-away students, a combination of financial and logistical challenges discouraged spring enrollment, as it came without the benefit of living near other peers. And for the students who did choose to enroll and move on or near campus this past year, this close proximity to others is what largely justified a second semester of online learning.
“I have no regrets about [enrolling] because it gave me the opportunity to live elsewhere and experience new things while still taking classes at Harvard. I was able to spend time meeting new people, exploring a region I had never lived before, and have the time of my life all while enrolled, which is something that normally wouldn’t happen unless one takes a gap semester,” Hunter Gallo ’24, who took classes and lived with other Harvard students in Oxford, Mississippi. “This year, I’m looking forward to living with my close friends and finally experiencing everything Harvard has to offer, despite the fact that I’m very concerned this once again may become a locked down semester.”
Riley Kunz ’24, a player on the football team, also enrolled in classes the whole year. “I would have regretted enrolling if not for sports. Having my teammates as a social circle that I saw every day definitely helped with all the social restrictions,” he says.
Socialization appears to have been the most rewarding factor for students who enrolled. “I was really glad to be with friends and stay in my social class,” says Elsie Halvorsen ’24, who also enrolled in classes all year. Will McQuiston ’24, who made the same decision, says, “anything was better than a gap year in isolation.”
The common theme in positive reviews towards online enrollment is understandably and visibly attributed towards the friendships made in doing so—not in the quality of educational experiences. For students who took classes from home or strictly followed Harvard’s COVID-19 restrictions, the decision to enroll proved much less rewarding.
Samantha Galvin ’24 states that she did in fact regret her decision about enrolling, especially during the first semester. “I got put in a tiny dorm, and it was hard to meet people considering Harvard literally did not plan anything that wasn’t virtual. All the virtual events and classes really did not seem worth it to me.”
Galvin believes many students’ disappointment in their academic experiences will have lasting repercussions. “I think people were really checked out last year. No matter how good the online classes were, or how encouraging professors tried to be, it simply was not the same as real classes,” she says. “I think a lot of kids have lost interest in what they used to be passionate about, in school and in their extracurricular activities. It will be interesting to see if people check back in quickly, or if it will be a permanent change.”
Kunz sides with Galvin’s argument in the challenges that online classes posed this past year. “I think the year of online learning made it much harder to learn. I found myself much more distracted with Zoom classes and at times wished it was possible to actually meet with my professors and TF’s rather than have virtual office hours,” he says.
Many students will have to relearn tasks that used to feel second nature, says Halvorsen. “It is actually going to be a bit of a challenge to get back into full participation and studying for classes, as well as having so much less time simply because there is a lot more going on,” which, she adds, might not be a bad thing.
The extended period of a virtual education will also have consequences on socializing, as the Class of 2024 enters their sophomore year. As first-years, many of these students living on or near campus formed friendships by sneaking behind the College’s uncompromising guidelines to socialize in groups in person. For some, going against the rules for the sake of friendship may have justified a year’s worth of tuition and time; for others, this was not worth the risk of potentially jeopardizing their academic standings or Housing statuses.
As a result of this divergence in behavior, Gallo expects “a social divide between those who continued semi-normal activity during the pandemic and those who did not and likely still will have qualms about doing so.” Kunz says, “it was also mostly be incredibly difficult to make lasting friendships outside of the people we saw regularly, namely, roommates and teammates.”
Galvin reasons that people put their social lives ahead of academics because they were deprived of a complete college experience. “I think people feel really disconnected from the idea of Harvard,” she says. “Harvard to us just means the friends that we met, since there was not really a physical network for us to attach ourselves to.”
This fall, Harvard plans on shifting back to the distinguished experiences that make it so special: renowned lectures, intimate discussions, sporting events, social gatherings, and the life-changing conversations that can only truly take place face-to-face. “I hope that Harvard begins to feel more like a school, where we are supported by a network of staff and administrators, and not like a giant swimming pool we were just tossed into the deep end of and told to cling on to the nearest person,” Galvin says.
Among the Class of 2024, the void of classroom setting interactions was evidently replaced by the desperate yet ultimately fulfilling relationships—whether formed virtually or (secretly) in-person. How will the introduction of traditional Harvard social events and physical classrooms impact these friendships? How will students’ perception of Harvard change? Only time will tell what this next school year will look like, socially, academically, and through the lens of history, as almost half of Harvard’s undergraduate student body walks through campus for the first time.
Marbella Marlo ’24 (mmarlo@college.harvard.edu) is the Managing Editor of the Independent.