Long Lasting Effects From COVID-19
By: Bianca Thomas
bat111@txstate.edu
TEXAS– COVID has affected many areas in people’s lives. A few of those areas are academic, social, and mental.
COVID has had a huge effect on many students. They were forced to leave campus and go back home to attend schooling online and it had a huge effect on freshman and seniors who were very close to graduating. This big change caused people to have a change in the way they perform academically. Their grades might’ve begun to slip due to the change in academics and the way they attend class along with outside factors such as losing a loved one due to COVID. This may have caused their mental health to slip which then affects their grades which creates a vicious cycle with their academics and their mental health. The reason for this decline in academics is because the style and way that a lot of students learned had changed tremendously.
A Texas State student, Christa Gant, was one of the many students affected by the change.
“COVID affected the way I perform academically by making physical and visual learning a thing of the past. Being as I learn best through with what I can interact with and see, COVID affected me because classrooms were now online and there was no way I could interact with the involvement of technology which made it more of a hindrance to ask questions if I was confused or for the professor to give each student the individual time they needed.”
Another Texas State student, Torrie Deal, was also another one of the many students who’s academics were affected by the change due to COVID.
“COVID has definitely affected the way I perform academically because it created a more unstable learning environment that was hard for me to get accustomed to. Paired with an already difficult transition from highschool to college I struggled a lot especially in my first semester.”
Online classes affected students mentally in a lot of ways socially and academically. It changed the way they interact socially due to social interaction being limited and due to the changes in their academics and social skills this also caused their mental health to decline because they were forced into isolation and forced to find a new way to conduct their academics. Online classes also affected students’ work ethic as well as their ability to retain information. Most students have no clue what they learned during the entire year they were online. They also began slacking because they didn’t have to put in that much effort into online classes as they did in-person classes which explains the change in work ethic.
“Online classes affected me mentally by decreasing my work ethic. Due to classes being from the comfort of my bedroom, I no longer was interacting with what was being taught because there were far more interesting things to do.” said Christa Gant
“Online classes affected me a lot mentally. I have ADHD so for me I struggled a lot with the online classes going from all in-person to online so quickly was awful and I still feel like I didn’t learn anything from when I was in online classes said Torrie Deal.”
After a year of being in online classes students were finally able to go back in person due to the COVID vaccine. They were able to experience social interaction again and go back to the life they once knew. Those with different learning styles were able to get better academically and get their grades up. With this change this allowed students’ mental health to improve drastically.
“In-person classes did improve my mental health a lot because of the isolation that COVID required. I was able to now interact with others and it was a liberating time of feeling that things were back to normal after nearly a year of the unknown.” said Christa Gant.
“Going back to in-person classes did improve my mental health. It had its own challenges, but it overall improved my grades and overall mental health by being able to be back in a personal classroom.” said Torrie Deal.
