Aubrey Motherwell, class of 2020, was supposed to graduate on her birthday.
She was excited — her family would be in town, and she would celebrate turning 22 the same day she walked across the stage in a cap and gown to accept her diploma.
Instead, Motherwell received her degree in the mail. Her internship in Utah for the summer of 2020 was canceled, and her term as the captain of her ultimate frisbee team was cut short.
She was devastated.
In the five years since the COVID-19 pandemic began, former students are still feeling the loss of opportunities and socialization skills from the pause on in-person activities. Students left campus for spring break on March 16, 2020, just as they did earlier this month, thinking they had an extra week off. They never came back to school that semester.
Motherwell, who graduated with a degree in arts management with a core in music, had difficulties breaking into the industry after the pandemic began.
“All of the venues shut down,” Motherwell said. “I couldn’t even find a job that was remotely what I wanted to do.”
Cassidy McCammon graduated from IU in 2022 with two bachelor’s degrees in political science and management and human organization. She was a sophomore when the pandemic began. McCammon now works as the community engagement lead for Girl Scouts of Central Indiana.
When students were first encouraged to vacate IU’s campus, McCammon was in Washington completing an internship at the U.S. House of Representatives.
“It was really scary,” McCammon said. “I was a nervous wreck most of the time, especially because I didn’t quite — I was having all of this grieving over what would have been my internship experience.”
McCammon said that although her plans being “ripped away” caused her emotional distress, she was glad she went home to her family in Terre Haute, Indiana. Her internship was moved online due to the general uncertainty at the time.
When McCammon returned home, she began to look at her future plans with a different, dubious perspective. She had plans to work in a residence hall during summer 2020 that ultimately fell through.
“We realized, ‘Oh, okay, this is going to be around much longer than we thought,’” she said.
During this time, McCammon said, she learned more about herself and expanded her outlook.
“When there's nothing to study or work towards, and you have to choose that for yourself, that brings in a lot of freedom that I feel like many adolescents don't have the opportunity to have because our first 20 or so years are so scripted for us,” McCammon said.
With the opportunity to write her own script, McCammon said, she became a different person than she would have otherwise. She said she is grateful for what she learned about herself in that time.
Even though the extra time taught her about “enjoying the process more than the result,” McCammon said the pandemic changed the social atmosphere.
After IU students returned to school in fall 2021, McCammon said there was a clear split between “the people who cared about the restrictions and the people who didn’t.”
On Tinder, McCammon said, some people in the area would require other users on the app to post a negative COVID test on their profile before they entertained the possibility of going on a date. Others, McCammon said, didn’t wear masks and packed the bars.
McCammon said now, among people her age, socializing takes more energy than it did before the pandemic. The social distancing and apprehension surrounding hanging out with people, she said, made it easy to self-isolate. McCammon said she saw this impact dorm culture throughout the rest of her time at IU.
Research from 2020 to 2023 found that the increase in isolation from COVID-19 quarantining was associated with increased anxiety and depression among youth, and that young children especially have seen impacts on their ability to read emotions and form social skills.
Kelly Richardson, director and curator of the Elizabeth Sage Historic Costume Collection at IU, said the pandemic did bring about a culture shift regarding being sick in public. Before, she said it was normal to be in public spaces when sick.
“There was just this culture of, like, you’ve got to go to work all the time,” Richardson said. “Even if you’re sick, and that’s dumb, because nobody wants your germs.”
She said that though she was able to return to her work with the collections by summer 2020, it was difficult to lose time to work on an exhibition that went on view in May 2021.
Richardson was working with the Eskenazi Museum of Art to put together the pieces for the exhibition, which would display over 800 items donated by actress Glenn Close.
“Trying to get everything ready was really hard,” Richardson said. “We sort of lost out, because for a while, when we weren’t coming to work, we didn’t have access to those pieces.”
She also taught a class where students learned how to manage a collection, care for pieces and store them properly. Richardson said she usually brings objects to class every week but conducting class online made it more difficult.
Without traditional opportunities to work — and learn — professors and students alike felt like they’d fallen behind.
Although McCammon said she was able to work with professors to find internships, many of her friends didn’t get the same chance. They still feel the impact of those lost years on their professional life.
“We're now up against more recent graduates who haven't been impacted by those experiences,” she said.
As hiring and career development halted, so too did the world. McCammon said she and her peers at IU experienced a significant amount of mental distress. Before being forced to press pause, McCammon described herself as someone always involved in many things — working multiple jobs and having two majors.
“COVID was really the first time where everything that I had lined up for myself really fell through and I was forced to really sit and be with my own thoughts,” McCammon said.
