University Life… but different

My son started in September his second year at Kings College university in London, and it looks nothing like the start to university life he had as she freshman 12 months ago.

Staying at a hall of residence was already out of the question last year, since we have a perfectly good and spacious home in North London, A decision we made not only for financial reasons, but also to make sure we could exercise some oversight over his study time and social life. Nevertheless he got the opportunity to attend plenty of events during freshers week and joined numerous societies and clubs, socialised in abundance and made plenty of new friends.

How different the start to the new academic year has been this time round! All the societies and clubs meet online, most lectures take place online as well, in fact they are pre-recorded, and at the moment my son is only one day a week and only every other week on campus to attend a class. Kings college made it also clear that students are not expected to spend time on one of the various campuses unless they have a lecture to attend. This means that my son only has the opportunity one day a week to socialise on campus with friends and, more importantly, to visit the library and make use of the facilities in general.

Covid-19 has changed our lives in many ways: we socialise less with friends and relatives, we work exclusively or more frequently from home, holidays abroad have been cancelled or postponed due to quarantine requirements and while our kids are back at school, some of my son’s friends are confined to university halls of residence, attending lectures online.

No doubt health is much more important, nevertheless I feel sorry for all the kids at universities around the country (and around the world) who are being deprived of what should be one of the best times of their lives. Learning is not only the result of attending lectures, but also the result of informal exchanges with staff and fellow students on campus as well as internships, most of which have been cancelled or at least postponed as well. With a vaccines now on the horizon, but mass vaccination programs unlikely to start before spring or summer, The students predicament is unlikely to improve before the end of the current academic year.

My son has the opportunity from next autumn to study for a year in Madrid. Hopefully the pandemic will have been brought under some form of control by then, to allow him and his friends a return to some kind of normality.