Student to student: How roommates have dealt with the pandemic and school

Editor’s note: Chelsea Hylton is a senior journalism and Spanish major at UW–Madison, and a writer for University Communications.

Choosing to come back to campus for the fall semester was not an easy decision. I am from Los Angeles, which has been a hot spot for the virus since the initial outbreak took the country by storm earlier this year.

I would be coming back with thousands of other students from all over the country and world. I knew I had been taking safety protocols seriously, but there was no way of knowing if the rest of the campus community was.

I decided to come back because of the time difference from being on the west coast, and because my roommates and I had re-signed our lease for our apartment for the entire year.

My two roommates also decided to return for some of the same reasons. Mia Gifford is from Minneapolis. She wanted to get away from home and be in a productive space.

“I needed to be in a space where other people are also doing school work and going through the same things I was. Being at home and doing school work in a space that wasn’t very conducive was hard,” said Gifford.

Christine Brutus, who is from Queens, New York, is my other roommate. She said one of the main reasons she came back is because she is a pre-med student.

“Being a pre-med student, we have to get hours (of clinical experience), and I spoke with one of my advisors and asked if I could still get some hours in. But also because I want to go into healthcare and I thought it would be a good experience to be in healthcare during a pandemic,” said Brutus.

Adjusting back to life in Madison was not easy for any of us. We had all been home for the last couple of months and it was not easy adjusting back to our college town.

“It’s weird not being able to see my friends being here. The vibe has also been weird with COVID and the election and it’s not the Madison that I know,” said Brutus.

Staying on top of everything given the challenging times has also been difficult.

“There is a lot more responsibility on yourself to make sure you know what all your assignments are, and that has been difficult to do,” said Gifford.

The biggest help has been professors being understanding of the chaos we are all living through. Especially surrounding the election, some of my professors made sure that we felt supported and knew that they were there for us to come to if we needed anything.

“I would just say that my professors have been understanding of everything which has helped,” said Brutus.

As there are many uncertainties with how the next semester will look like, we still have hope for the final semester of our undergraduate careers.

“I hope we are online for me personally, but I know other people want to be in-person. I’m also excited to graduate and be done,” said Gifford.

As graduating seniors, we also wanted to spend our last year of college together and we have been making the most of it. Since we cannot go out like we usually would, we have had to make adjustments in how we spend our time.

This experience has definitely brought us closer together in more ways than one. We are all very busy people, but being in our apartment more has given us the opportunity to bond.

“We have found ways to have fun with movie nights or food nights and stuff like that,” said Brutus.

I can say that one of my favorite parts has been the nights when we come together with food and sit and share memories and laugh together. I feel like when we get older we will look back and tell our children about the time when we lived through a global pandemic with our roommates.

Some days are easier than others and others are harder, but at least we have each other to help along the way.