Four weeks into quarantine, students are slowly but surely beginning to adjust to living at home again. It can be a joy to live at home; however, it can also be emotionally taxing. 

Senior Stevie Gidden went home to a family of nine. Gidden said she misses having all her friends in one place, but she is close to her family and feels like they have kept her sane in this time of chaos. 

“It’s been tough, especially because there hasn’t been a whole lot of closure with this huge change,” Gidden said. “It definitely wasn’t my plan to move home this semester, but there are worse things occurring, and I am thankful that this was the only change I have had to make so far.”

With nine people in one house, it can be hard to find a place to focus. To complete her work, Gidden said she goes to her room to avoid the chaos that occurs in other parts of the house. To stay on track, she also created her own daily schedule to establish a routine. Gidden said the consistency of having a routine has helped her stay focused and level headed during the quarantine. 

Junior Sydney Elliot has four siblings also all in school. Unlike Gidden, though, she has not found it too taxing to do school at home with others around. 

“We all tend to keep to ourselves throughout the day to get our work done, and around dinner time we all come together to talk and hang out,” Elliot said. 

Although Elliot said she is functioning well with her siblings, it still has been an emotional adjustment learning to live with them again. She said she is close with her sisters, but in college, she established a different type of relationship with her friends from school. 

“My relationships with my close friends look different from my relationships with my family members, so it can be hard to feel like I can’t talk about certain things that I would have at school,” Elliot said. 

While students like Gidden and Elliot have returned to full houses, others are now in much quieter settings. Senior Brooklyn Moore is an only child now living at home. Moore said having so much change at once was tough, especially moving out so quickly. More so, the online classes have been one of the hardest transitions. 

“I felt kind of bombarded with emails of assignments and also move-out instructions sent out all at once,” Moore said. “The transition has certainly been tough, given I’ve never done online classes from home before.” 

However, Moore said moving home in the middle of the semester has given her a new perspective.

“I’ve really been thinking about how I should be looking at this strange, secluded time,” Moore said. “I know that God is not the cause of this virus, but I think he definitely wants to take advantage of this time to grow people in different ways.”

For those of faith, God is a strength and refuge. Moore said she has taken this time to see what God has been trying to reveal to her, and she encouraged others to look at it this way, too.

“My advice would be to pray and ask God what growth he wants to see in us as individuals,” Moore said. “It’s been a reality check for myself and has brought attention to how much I worship the opinion of others, like letting their opinions make decisions for me.”