BWW Blog: Week One of Junior Year

After several weeks (and months) of anticipation, preparation, and anxiety the first week of my Junior year has come and gone. Looking back, I can kind of say it was a bit of a shock to my system complete with anxiety and stress adjusting to the new normal of this semester.

Back in June, my school announced it was going to be back in person on campus, and I was excited to return to my life away from home that had been unexpectedly and quickly interrupted. However, the closer it got to August, the less optimistic and stressed I got about the ability of the University to keep me and my peers safe against possible COVID outbreaks. I kept awaiting the arrival of a last-minute email from my University canceling the return to campus, but that never came. Despite all of this I piled into the car with my parents, luggage, and negative mandatory COVID test awaiting to see what this semester would look like.

Last Monday, I walked into my first class of the day, masked up, shouldering my backpack and none of the videos and emails outlining the procedures prepared me for what I saw. I walked in the room that once was lined with rows of tables close together and just a simple whiteboard now had fewer tables spread 6 feet apart with buckets of individual bottles of disinfectant and paper towels and a trash can; supplies for the now required sanitation before and after class. In addition to this, two big screen tv's mounted with cameras for students to join class via Zoom if necessary. In the rest of the dance building, tape marked every 6 feet on the floors, tape arrows on the wall directing the flow of traffic, hand sanitizing stations at every entrance. In the dance studios squares on the floor six feet apart for every dancer to have their own space, and because of physical-distancing guidelines, classes are capped at 11 dancers so there are zoom monitors there as well. In my other in-person class outside of the Dance school, there are two air purifiers in the room and a sanitizing station at the door with hand sanitizer and surface disinfectant to wipe down the chairs.

While I will remain anxious and still worry about an abrupt halt due to an outbreak on campus, after a full week of classes, I can say that I am confident that OCU is doing everything humanly possible to keep the entire campus community safe. From the mandatory mask policy to the rearrangement of classrooms to accommodate physical distancing guidelines, as well as giving professors the option an option to teach virtually, I believe this semester is going to go better than I anticipated, while knowing there will probably be a few hiccups-because we are under 25 and that comes with the territory.