Author: HYUN JI KIM

By: Hyunji Ashley Kim

Host Intro: The pandemic has upended what many people think of as normal. MayoClinic reports that since the pandemic, the rates of anxiety and depression have increased substantially especially for college students as a study found that 1 in 3 students experience significant anxiety and depression. One of the famous memes on Tiktok is the sound of someone  screaming “I want to go home” as it writes “When it’s 10 pm and you want to be in bed but your friends insist on going out” on the screen. Ashley Kim visited one college in New York City where students say the social scene has been… a little weird since being back on campus.

AMBI: Students chatting in the lobby, by the elevators, etc.

TRACK: I’m here in the plaza outside Baruch College’s vertical campus. Students are eating lunch, skateboarding, and chatting with each other in between their busy schedules. It’s been over a year now since students have been back in person, but Jobaer Hossain says things are still not quite the way they were.

ACT: “The pandemic did have an effect on me as it made me more of a recluse because I was at home most of the time and didn’t interact with my friends physically. So when we came back, I had a hard time speaking up publicly or just even being social with people again.” 

TRACK: Hossain is a lower senior majoring in CIS at Baruch College. Alan Koyfman, a junior at Baruch majoring in Finance, says he’s observed the same thing.

ACT:  “This was something that was super prevalent when I went back to campus as you would see that most people didn’t want to talk to people and make friends even when ‘in person’ classes resumed and it was really frustrating on my part”

TRACK: But for Koyfman, the silver lining was that it served as a bit of a wake-up call.

ACT: “The pandemic certainly changed my perspective of conversations and how I view my relationships with people. I started focusing on improving my communication skills as I felt that I have been super introverted before, especially when I saw that everyone was going into their shells.”

TRACK: I spoke with Teresa Hurst, the director at the Baruch College Counseling Center about the effect she saw in students’ social skills and mental health due to COVID. 

ACT: “A lot of students were isolated being far from friends or peers here at Baruch, or their families in other countries for international students. A lot of students struggled feeling disconnected which then could affect someone’s skills in terms of making friends or knowing how to build relationships, or communications… Across the nation, the symptoms of anxiety and depression has gone up in general for college students across time, especially during the pandemic,too. The stress from taking courses, nervousness about grades, and getting jobs. There was added stress as students might have lost jobs which increased financial stress and anxiety about if they were going to be able to pay for school and finish their degrees…”

TRACK: 

As people around the globe are finding the balance between the new normal after the pandemic and the inertia to go back to the life we once lived before COVID-19, I hope and wish that everyone but especially college students’ mental health sees a huge improvement. 

For Baruch College, this is Ashley Kim in Manhattan.

By Hyunji (Ashley) Kim