{"id":6268,"date":"2021-09-10T18:36:55","date_gmt":"2021-09-10T23:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/?p=6268"},"modified":"2021-09-10T18:36:55","modified_gmt":"2021-09-10T23:36:55","slug":"campus-culture-shock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/?p=6268","title":{"rendered":"Campus Culture Shock"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Kristi Rolf<\/p>\n

Roanoke College is a different place in September 2021 than it was in May. During the last school year, I grew accustomed to a campus that seemed only half-alive. Many students spent the year at home, taking classes online. Those of us who remained spent more time in the library and the dining hall than in academic buildings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Last year, I grew accustomed to strange habits. My favorite place from which to log on to my Zoom HHP class during the fall semester was a study room on the third floor of Fintel Library. In the spring, I routinely rushed out of my morning shifts at Freshens to attend afternoon Psychology classes from my bed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning, I find myself scurrying back and forth across the courtyard from Life Science to Trexler and back to Life Science to claim my seat in classrooms full of masked students.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a member of the class of 2023, I have vague memories of college life pre-pandemic. I spent one and a half normal semesters at Roanoke during my Freshman year before the pandemic hit. After eighteen months, it\u2019s been jarring to see parts of campus return to normal. Last week I realized that I had forgotten how difficult it is to navigate around the tables in a crowded Commons dining room.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I certainly didn\u2019t miss cruising up and down every row of the Market Street parking lot searching vainly for a parking spot before accepting defeat and retreating to the distant Hawthorne lot. This semester, my roommate and I have made a game of watching the lot from our window in Blue Ridge Hall, sometimes shouting encouragement to approaching cars when we spy an empty spot from our lookout.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even though a full campus can annoy me in some ways, the benefits far outweigh the negatives. For example, greeting professors and classmates in the halls during a block change makes my extraverted heart happy. The beginning of this year has reminded me that a college campus is supposed to be full of life and bustling with activity. It feels right this way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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By Kristi Rolf Roanoke College is a different place in September 2021 than it was in May. During the last school year, I grew accustomed to a campus that seemed only half-alive. Many students spent the year at home, taking classes online. Those of us who remained spent more time in the library and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-6268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-summer2019"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}