By: Madison Peek

As people all over the country grapple with their new life in the wake of the coronavirus, University of Maryland students who had to return from their study abroad trips are trying to adjust to life at home in the United States.

On March 14, the university suspended all spring semester study abroad programs due to the spread of the coronavirus, two days after President Donald Trump banned travel to Europe. Many students found themselves scrambling to make arrangements to get back.

When President Trump announced the travel ban, it was 2 a.m. in Madrid, and sophomore aerospace engineering major Ethan MacDonald waited to hear what he would say. Fearing he wouldn’t be able to come back into the country, MacDonald quickly bought a plane ticket.

“I bought a plane ticket half an hour later, at 3 a.m., and then packed everything that I owned, and was in bed by 4 a.m.,” MacDonald said. “I left by noon.”

These stories aren’t uncommon. The day before the travel ban, junior engineering major Caroline Olson was on the phone with her parents, assuring her parents that she wouldn’t need to come home from her study abroad trip in Copenhagen, Denmark. She then went to bed, only to be woken up in the middle of the night to her friends banging on her apartment door, telling her she needed to book a ticket home. Less than two days later, she was back in the United States.

While many college students are mourning the loss of the rest of the semester, study abroad students have lost an experience that they have been expecting for years.

“I basically tailored my entire four-year plan around studying abroad,” Olson said. “I’ve been planning this for two and a half years.”

Crafting a four-year plan for a demanding major is difficult, especially with studying abroad, students said.

“This was our one chance to study abroad and be on the four-year plan,” sophomore aerospace engineering major Chandler Sheatzley said. 

Students studying abroad lost out on a rare studying opportunity and many of their travel plans. Olson was planning on being in Amsterdam the weekend of the travel ban. MacDonald and Sheatzley were looking forward to traveling to Italy for the Easter mass to see the Pope, they said. 

“I really believed I was going to have the whole time,” MacDonald said. 

Despite the hectic return to the United States, study abroad students are finding themselves mostly adjusted to life in quarantine and trying to see the best in the situation. 

“I’ve been trying really hard to see the positives,” Olson said. “I was getting pretty homesick in Denmark anyways, so honestly, if this could have happened at any time, now is not the worst time.” 

With the temporary pause on travel, the study abroad students’ plans are canceled, but they optimistically look towards the future.

“Now that I came home, it’s not like the place has gone anywhere. I’ve gone on half the trips I wanted to, so I still have at least half of the money I have left. If I keep saving back up, it’s not like I can’t go back,” Sheatzley said.

Featured image courtesy of Chandler Sheatzley.