When the Coronavirus pandemic began spreading across the world in early 2020, there was no way for anyone to know what the future may hold, and uncertainty was ubiquitous. When a country-wide lockdown began in March of that year, nobody could prepare for the historical events they were suddenly living through.

As a high school junior, I was suddenly catapulted into distance learning: a concept that few teachers, let alone students, had experienced before. From my U.S. government class being held over Zoom to my Spanish class doing our lessons through Rosetta Stone, suddenly everything I thought I knew about high school had been flipped on its head.

I graduated high school in May 2021 and we were required to wear masks as we walked across the stage, a luxury many in the graduating Class of 2020 never received. Soon enough, I began my freshman year at a local two-year college, a decision I and many other “COVID grads” opted for in light of the ongoing national lockdown.

My siblings had never attended college, so even as the youngest of five, I had no way of knowing what exactly I was missing out on as I attended my Intro to Public Speaking and Math Reasoning courses from the comfort of my bed; this was all I knew.

The next three semesters flew by and even as COVID restrictions lessened, I continued with my college education exactly as I had known. When I began attending CSUN, I had only ever attended one in-person course, a very casual newsroom at my two-year college, in my entire college career; I hadn’t attended a class in person since I was 16-years-old.

I very quickly realized that the CSUN campus was a completely different beast than any I had ever faced. With a sprawling campus of over 7,000,000 square feet and 91 facilities site-wide, to call it daunting would be putting it lightly.

With over 300 clubs, activities and organizations ranging from Fraternities and Sororities to social, religious and political clubs, all the way to our very own Sundial newsroom, a community unlike any other I had experienced, I began to realize that it didn’t matter what I “missed out on” in college, it was my experience.

I have realized in my time at CSUN, and in college as a whole, that even as I stepped into the huge campus with no expectations and what felt like no preparation, every single other student there experienced the COVID lockdown in their own way, everyone had a unique interpretation of the pandemic and how it affected them.

As I stepped into the Sundial newsroom for the first time in person, reeling with anxiety, it was suddenly clear that I had welcoming communities right at my fingertips, all I had to do was step out of my comfort zone and allow myself to experience the newness of college on my own accord in a post-lockdown world.

Jaya Roberts is the opinion editor of the Daily Sundial. She is a fourth year journalism major and transferred to CSUN from Moorpark College during the 2023-2024 semester.