COVID and the in-person comeback

The new school year has started this fall 2022 for all universities in New Brunswick, after the government took down the covid restrictions, most institutions don’t ask for the use of masks in public areas of their institutions.

For most students sound like a relief, after almost three years of having to study through a computer screen and later having to go to classes wearing masks while social distancing. But at the same time these new laws are causing new doubts to appear.

Since the comeback to full in person classes the fear of another outbreak, a spike in cases, or a full regression to online classes for a short period of time has been present in the mind of students. As some campuses ask their attendees to remain wearing masks inside their classrooms.

For some students like Sebastian Rubi of St. Thomas University, that was strongly affected by the pandemic and had to stay in his home country for over two years. He was finally able to come back to university on the other half of his third year.

“Honestly I feel very excited, I feel as it’s something that many students at this university needed…we are able to share our classes as the virtual setting was very hard for us,” said Rubi.

The excitement of coming back to classes, seeing new friends and meeting others that the only contact that they had with them was through cameras and computer screens. As the need for human interaction increased during the online years, students now have the full university experience.

The fear of covid has decreased exponentially over the few months and it’s mostly gone by now, as students that have got all their doses to avoid another outbreak that could cause major repercussions on their faculties.

Others just think that now we just need to get to live with covid, or as Daniel Calvo a third year Student from St. Thomas said.

“I don’t think so, as I said before we have to l normalize this situation, we have to learn how to live with covid,” Calvo said.

In the current date, the idea of covid causing major problems for large numbers of population is seen as a minor threat, as the long period of time that the world was shut down and how many students were affected by it.

It has desensitized them from the fearing the major virus that still roams around. Implementing it as a part of our daily life is the best option that has been presented, as the government allowed the use of masks to be taken from mandatory to being just implemented if wanted.

People, especially in this case students, feel that it has given back many of the aspects that they didn’t have in online learning. Al of them feel relieved that they can have an in-person year now, as they don’t have to wait for all the restrictions to change so that they could live their countries, or hometowns.

The complete comeback of all university service alongside with the welcoming f old and new students to all the facilities, has given a new beginning to many of the students that had a rough couple of years thanks to covid.

In the case of international students, they get to experience the whole university experience on campus. They can experience everything that they wanted to live while choosing to move abroad, but everything got shut down and had to wait for it for a few years until the eagerly awaited day of in person comeback occurred.