Two years have passed since the beginning of the pandemic, and while our circumstances are returning to normal, we are not. Whether you’re a student, faculty, or staff, you’ve probably felt the collective exhaustion of the student body. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an article titled “The ‘Stunning’ Level of Student Disconnection” by Beth McMurtrie. In it, McMurtrie explores ideas like what the future of higher education can and should look like in light of students’ disconnect. 

With students like myself so utterly burnt out in the typical classroom setting, professors must stretch their concept of class or lose students’ attention. I’m surprised when something interesting happens in one of my courses. I increasingly find myself drawn more to hands-on classes like Ceramics and less drawn to lecture-dependent classes. 

I don’t think the pandemic created all of these apparently sudden problems within us. Instead, I think the way the higher-ed system functions was so fast-paced, desensitized, and unsustainable that an external factor like the pandemic caused us to crash. We’re forced to face the inadequacies of the system we’re trying to maintain, and in some cases, progress. I think to see if a social system is functioning correctly, we first have to ask how the people existing within that system feel. Are people generally energetic, happy, and able to do what’s demanded of them? Or are everyone’s abilities slowly shifting without our responsibilities adapting? 

In The Weather Vane’s Feb. 17 issue (Vol. 68 Iss. 14), there was an opinion piece by sophomore Evelyn Shenk titled “Why is the higher-ed system failing us?” In it, Shenk notes the perpetual state of just surviving while in college. I don’t think that’s what any of us imagined when picturing our futures at college; I remember hoping for something happier. 

This recurrent theme of overwhelm appeared again in last week’s issue (Vol. 68 Iss. 18) in senior Keith Bell’s “An examination of expectations.” In his piece, Bell summarizes college curriculum into a set of expectations. 

While students’ wellbeing continues to decline, I imagine professors are being stretched further than ever before without the same mental stability and energy they had for teaching pre-pandemic. 

In her article, McMurtrie asks, “is it that the world itself feels so out of control that students find it hard to care about their classes?” My answer is yes. Every single second there’s something new to worry about, some new mess that our generation is tasked with fixing. It’s exhausting and heavy. 

There are so many problems, and we’re so accustomed to isolation due to the pandemic that we feel like individuals are responsible for solving the cumulative shitshow that is the state of the world. And so we expect to have to take on the problems as individuals. That’s just not possible. Still, students go on trying to care about the classes they’re indebting themselves to take while constantly grappling with an uncertain future.