Sam Tapper – Managing Editor
On the first day of the semester while walking to my first class, I told myself: “It will feel weird for a few days.”
Now, two weeks into the semester, it still feels weird, and it will be the new “norm” for months to come.
Classrooms, simply put, are no longer what they used to be.
Gone are the days where students can walk into a classroom and pick from any seat they like. We now all sit six feet apart from each other.
Now, classroom sizes have been thrashed and limited down to a smaller capacity number, and our 171-acre campus suddenly feels small and its rooms cavernous.
Blue dots now line the floors of academic buildings to signify where it is safe for students to sit and every classroom now operates with “one-way traffic.”
As classrooms with two doors now have a labeled exit door and an entry door, direction arrows lining the floor and one door classrooms are to be navigated single-file, as the term “social distancing” continues to be etched deeper and deeper into our lives.
Students also must wipe down their desks upon arrival to ensure the space is clean.
Masks are always required everywhere on campus, meaning both indoors and outdoors, and while they help slow the spread, as a result, professors are being seen and not heard – literally.
Voices are muffled and it can be hard to follow what professors are saying at times.
It is no secret that masks make regular conversation with one-another much harder, and giving full 75-minute lectures to a class cannot be as easy as it once had been, but this is the price we pay to be back on-campus, to establish at least some sense of normalcy again is worth it.
