By Kiersten Hacker
Each year colleges and universities welcome a new class of students to campus, but after an unprecedented year for the class of 2024, schools basically welcomed two classes of freshmen to campus.
Experiences that are usually standard for college life — in-person classes and events, roommates, residence halls, libraries and gyms being fully open — are brand new for many sophomores. For some students, this is their first time stepping onto campus and for others this is their first time seeing campus so busy.
“The first week or the first few days I didn’t know where anything was or like how to get anywhere, so it was kind of that freshman feeling of ‘Where do I go, how do I get anywhere, what do I do,’” Aanisah Husain, a sophomore journalism student said.
At first Husain said she felt overwhelmed seeing all the people on campus while being unsure of what to do or where to go. Now after four weeks of classes, she has shaken off her overwhelming feelings and grown comfortable knowing that she found a support system through different groups and events.
UMD welcomed about 11,000 undergraduate students for the Fall 2021 semester, which includes sophomores who did not get to participate in in-person orientation and welcome events to get used to campus.
“I think it’s interesting that as sophomores we don’t have that kind of freshman baby net anymore but we are still kind of babies here,” Maya Hopkins, a sophomore operations management, business analytics, and information systems student, said.
Hopkins said her experience on campus has been “different in every sense of the word” and while there is more to balance this year, she enjoys keeping busy, meeting people and staying active.
UMD understood that students missed out on opportunities to meet new friends, have fun and engage in the campus community, so they decided to do MORE for the Class of 2024. After an unprecedented year, the university wants to produce a more enriching experience.
On move-in days, staff members passed out buttons and stickers that read “I am a sophoMORE” with #UMD2024 underneath. The purpose of the buttons and stickers are for sophomore students to wear them and signal to other sophomores that they are in the same position.
The university is promoting an environment of support and community for students through wearing the buttons and stickers. Students are encouraged to do more in the campus community now that traditions like football games, the First Look Fair, and events in general are back.
Aliah Brown, a sophomore government and politics and criminology and criminal justice student, said she wishes that information about sophomore events was more clear and available. She said the little information spread left her confused.
“I feel like we’re all kind of over the whole thing, or we’re just getting over it, it’s like beating a dead horse,” Brown said. “But, I appreciate that they just didn’t completely brush over the fact that we didn’t have a proper freshman year.”
Even without the help of sophomore events, some students have been able to make connections through previous groups as they transition from Zoom conversations to long-awaited in-person introductions.
For Brown, her College Park Scholars group and fraternities helped her feel more comfortable and less alone since she knew she had a group to turn to. She said conversations can be awkward as everyone gets back into socializing, but she enjoys the comradery of seeing her group in-person.
Brown said since she was already exposed to the academic rigor last year, it helped break down the transition process and allowed her to have fewer worries. Though she is still learning about the college experience, Brown is also a peer mentor for the freshman class in her College Park Scholars.
“I’m like, ‘Guys, even though I’m technically your mentor, we’re kind of experiencing College Park on this level at the same time,’ so I definitely feel like a freshman in a lot of ways, not knowing where things are,” Brown said.
Despite the underlying threat of the coronavirus, students are finally able to partake in a more traditional college experience allowing them to engage in the College Park community, make connections and explore interests.
Husain said she is excited about the return to normality and she feels that campus traditions are back underway, especially after she attended the first football game and saw the crowded stadium.
“I finally have everything going for me like all the connections I need to make and getting in that environment because I feel when you’re in Zoom you’re kind of isolated socially, academically, whatever it is,” Husain said. “You’re really isolated from everyone, so you’re kind of lacking that conversion with other people, whereas now you can really interact with others and feel like you’re a part of something.”
