Eager to socialize, CEGEP students say in-person classes outweigh risk of delta variant
After a year of screens, young Quebecers are keen to re-learn how to interact with peers
When high school friends Katia Slamani and Sarra Kehlifi would talk about the day they'd go to college, they thought one of their biggest worries would be where to eat their lunch.
But the possibility of catching COVID-19 is what's on these 17-year-olds' minds, when they should be enjoying the start of their first semester at Dawson College.
"I'm a little worried for this first semester, but I think it'll be great," Slamani said.
Unlike last year, universities and CEGEPs will be offering in-person classes this fall. This comes as a relief to many students who felt they were missing out on the college experience.
Students are expected to follow sanitary guidelines, including wearing a mask at all times indoors.
But while about one in four 18- to 24-year-olds in Quebec still haven't received their first dose, there is currently no requirement to be vaccinated on campus.
Exploring downtown
Beyond adjusting to a CEGEP course load, students like Medjine Joachim Dorcius are still wrapping their heads around pursuing higher education in English, her second language, at Dawson.
"A lot of my friends went here, so they said there's a lot of things to do," she said. "You're downtown, you can go places between classes."
Dorcius, a general social science student in her second year, spent a morning last week mapping out the most efficient routes to get to classrooms, a rite of passage normally reserved for freshmen.
"We didn't really have a graduation so I didn't really get closure from high school," she said.
Although she's eager to attend school in person, she's also worried that after two semesters of distance learning, many of her classmates will have their guard up.
"Now that I have to make connections, it's like 'Oh my God, I'm having social anxiety,'" she said. "It's like I don't know how to interact with people … it'll be hard to make friends."
Learning in a 'square box'
International student Savath Sereyketya, 18, moved to Montreal from Phnom Penh, Cambodia for school.
He says in-person classes are essential for his mental health after online learning alienated him.
"I did not leave my parents and my country just to sit in front of the screen and do nothing," he said. "That's the whole point of coming back, and it's even motivating me to study."
Once a top student, he says the fatigue from studying in a "square box" of a room all day left him unfocused, and an unstable internet connection prevented him from accessing lectures, leading him to fail a course.
"You feel empty inside," he said. "And you have no one to discuss it with."
He says he's positive sitting in a classroom full of people will help bring his grades up.
Evanthia Vlahopoulous took advantage of online learning to build a schedule she liked.
As a full-time Cégep du Vieux Montréal student, she'd listen to pure and applied science lectures by day and catch up on Dawson's humanities and English courses by night.
"It was a lot easier online because I didn't have to commute," she said.
All of her friends who went to Dawson have now graduated, so she says she'll have to get used to meeting others in a classroom under COVID-19 restrictions.
"I don't know how that's going to be in class, sweating with a mask," she said, adding that even though she's fully vaccinated, she's still concerned about the delta variant.
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