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Carly Peterson

The COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting everyone’s lives—and students at the University of Colorado Boulder are no exception. From moving off campus to adjusting to classes online, the lives of students have turned upside down in a relatively short period of time.

We invited students to document their experience transitioning to remote learning. Here is what one of them said:

The shift to remote learning has been difficult. I'm not able to directly see and work with classmates whom I’ve grown close to. 

A couple of weeks ago, I was working on experiments in my phage genomics lab and getting ready to present at CU Boulder's annual research symposium. Now we are, instead, analyzing data from past students’ experiments and completing the lab online.

My lab classes were the most disrupted, as those really need to be in-person experiences. However, the rest of my classes haven’t been too affected. 

I'm still able to attend lectures online and collaborate with my classmates over Zoom meetings. Continuing to connect with friends and classmates virtually has been so important for my own mental health and sanity.

I think that COVID-19 has made me much more flexible, and I've been really impressed to see how flexible most of the professors and faculty at CU Boulder have been. My professors have been a huge support. 

They are quick to respond to emails, adaptable when we need to switch deadlines, and they know this is a difficult and uncertain time for all of us.

However, the one negative experience through all of this is that we won’t have a graduation ceremony. It's been hard to come to terms with the fact that I’ve already had my last days on campus.