Junior Helen Webley-Brown was in the car and on her way to the airport when she got the email on the morning of March 11th. Students could not come back to campus. In light of the new COVID-19 pandemic, classes would begin remotely on March 23 and maintain that format until at least April 30.

The announcement left Webley-Brown in shock; she had been staying with a friend in Los Angeles when the news broke. The shock soon turned into confusion over what she should do next. Stay in LA? Return to St. Louis? Go back home to London? The email didn’t give her much in the way of instruction, she recalls.

Webley-Brown wasn’t the only student left in disarray by the announcement. Some students were overseas when they received the notification, like senior Yarden Hahn, who was in Lisbon, Portugal, visiting friends, or senior Agam Saluja, who was in Singapore, finishing the last week of his study abroad program. Some were at home, like junior Elizabeth van Horn, and others with friends, like sophomore Jasen Vest.

But no matter where they were, no one could return to Wash. U.

We asked students to reflect on their experience with the cancellation of school in March 2020. Here are their stories in their own words:

Confusion, shock and the email that sent everyone home

Elizabeth van Horn: There was a lot of confusion and uncertainty, like, obviously, I was back in my hometown of Gulport, Mississippi, when I got the news, and pretty much everything I owned—my car, all of my possessions—were in St. Louis, so my first thought is like, ‘how is that going to happen?’.

Yarden Hahn: It was a huge shock, it just was really a moment where it turned from “Oh, this is an issue just in China” or “This is an issue just in Italy and Europe” to “This is coming home.” I think for a long time, a lot of people felt like it wouldn’t reach the states or like wouldn’t really be a big issue in the States…[the email] was the moment where it felt real.

Helen Webley-Brown: It was scary because I was actually in the car, driving to the airport. I had spent half of spring break with my sophomore suitemate. I was in LA. But I was going back to campus early so I was actually in the car with her mom on the way to the airport when I got the email. And I was like, “Oh shit,”…It was stressful in that I didn’t really know where I should be. I didn’t know if I should go back to St. Louis or stay in LA, overstay my welcome, or try and go back home [to England]…the email wasn’t just saying “don’t come back to campus.” It was like, “find somewhere else,” and I was like “well, I don’t really have a set place in America that’s not campus.”

Lina Ali: There were several things going through my mind. I knew that I had family abroad, overseas in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, which is pretty far and a huge time difference…And so, my first thought was, ‘it’s going to be a mess sort of going back right now,’ and dealing with the time difference and not knowing under what circumstances that I’d be able to like take my exams abroad and all that. And so my initial thought was to spend a few days with family in Canada who were closer by, and that way, it could be a more smooth transition… Unfortunately, the day that I arrived in Canada, the border of Abu Dhabi closed until further notice. And so it ended up being three months that the border was closed.

Agam Saluja: I heard about it at, like, 11pm-12am Singapore time…I got on the phone with my dad, I was like, “Yeah I’m ready to come home whenever.” So I hopped on the plane like at 7 a.m. the next morning…At that point I was kind of burned out in a sense, from being like abroad for so long…I kind of wanted to get back and see if I could see people before they left for home as well from school, because like, obviously the seniors are graduating and they were going to, you know, depart, along with my other friends, for the summer. So, I didn’t think I would be able to see them again so I left pretty much as soon as I got that notification.

Jasen Vest: I went to Chicago with my friend, I stayed at my friend’s house…I rolled over one morning and took my phone off the charger and it was just exploding with Snapchats and texts. And then I saw the email from Chancellor Martin, that was like, “Yeah, sorry.” It wasn’t unexpected at that point I guess it was kind of in the air, but [I was] definitely not happy about it.

van Horn: I kind of knew that it was coming…I feel like often private schools look to each other for things like that, so once my friends at other private universities were getting sent home, I knew that it was only a matter of time.

Webley-Brown: After we got the [email] about Westchester not being able to come back, I kind of thought, “Okay, maybe this is going to affect everyone any day now,” but I also was on Spring Break, so I wasn’t really thinking too much about it.

Ali: I remember being just in complete shock when I read the email. And for me it was just something that was really unexpected. It was still sort of this distant disease that was spreading, and I just definitely was not ready for it to have that direct impact on me.

van Horn: Campus was absolute chaos. There were moving trucks everywhere, there were students trying to get things together…On the 40, outside, everyone was scrambling but then once you got into the dorms, it was just nothing, no one was there, it was like everything froze in time…It just felt very eerie.

Hahn: I think chaotic is the right word but not intense enough. It literally felt like…the sky was falling, like, out of a movie. All of a sudden you get an email and you pull the plug on everything you planned for the next two or three months.

Looking back, one year later

It has been over a year since the announcement that sent everyone home, and, despite optimistic expectations during the first few weeks in quarantine, the pandemic has persisted. This has given rise to a school year unlike any before it. Students have once again been welcomed back to the University’s campus, but not without the precautions of masking and social distancing, as well as most classes being held in a virtual or hybrid format.

Saluja: It’s definitely mind-blowing to me that it’s already been a year since then, time flew by really fast…I was expecting this to be over like May, like maybe June at the latest, because they said it was supposed to spike in April and that was supposed to be the peak of it, and then it just kept going.

Ali: [This year has] definitely been really challenging for me especially being at that stage in the first few months, just sort of not knowing what was going on, not knowing when I would be reunited with my family again.

van Horn: I don’t think there was ever like a moment here [in south Mississippi] that people actually took the pandemic 100% seriously…seeing how poorly the United States has dealt with this pandemic just makes me really cynical.

Webley-Brown: At times of crisis you find out what a person is like or what an administration is like, I think Wash. U. really showed their hand over the way they’ve handled COVID and it’s one that I just don’t have the most positive outlook on how they will handle things going forward based on how they handle things in the past…especially the way they handled housing over the summer.

van Horn: I feel like often even our university itself and the mindsets that we as students are given, we’re supposed to choose productivity over our own personal care.

Vest: It’s been terrible, definitely like a huge strain psychologically on myself…I didn’t think it was gonna be as bad as it’s obviously been. I definitely had more faith in the United States government, like the handling, like this has definitely put a damper on my opinion of the CDC…I was under the impression we would be coming back to campus, I thought, like in April, like when I left. But obviously it just got worse and worse. And here we are today.

van Horn: In terms of my future, I think what COVID has impacted the most is kind of like finding employment and internships and such because, you know, as a student, the goal is to eventually transition into the real world. And it’s been so difficult to find any actual internships in my field at least because a lot of COVID precautions are still being taken and a lot of people had to make employment cuts so a lot of the internships that are available are unpaid and I’m a work study student so I can’t just work for free…I’ve at least become a lot more cynical about just like postgrad stuff and jobs because it really doesn’t ever slow down for you.

Hahn: I think COVID really showed us that life can punch you in the face and tell you that you have to cancel everything at any moment. So, it kind of changed my outlook on how I plan and things of that nature, and just don’t take any moment for granted, enjoy the present, live it to the fullest because you never know when someone’s gonna upend your plans.

Webley-Brown: I’m more willing to just kind of roll with the punches and not stress about having a five year, 10 year plan or anything like that because no one knows what’s going to happen ever. So I’m very happy to just kind of go with things now.

Vest: [The pandemic has] definitely made me miss social interaction. We used to play shows, with my band, that was one of my favorite things that I’ve ever done in my entire life…I’m looking really forward to being able to do that again…I definitely won’t be taking a single moment of social life for granted, though, for the rest of my life.

Hahn: I hope I continue to make the same effort that I do now to keep in touch with people. I think it forced us to actually put effort into relationships that we used to take for granted, people you see every day…You have to put effort in your relationships.

Ali: COVID has taught me to sort of see the best in any situation…If I were to sort of go back and give March 2020 Lina a piece of advice, it would definitely be to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Even though it might be really, really faint and it might look like it’s really not there and there’s no light… there’s always a positive in any situation, I think, is really the best piece of advice that I can give, and is really what helped me get through some of those difficult times.