It’s graduation season, meaning I’m reminiscing on my college days again.

I’m also realizing that it’s only been two years since I graduated from college, and yet it feels like it’s been much longer than that.

Further, I’m thinking about COVID, which cut my freshman year short, and that feels like forever ago.

I often wonder how different my college experience would have been if it weren’t for COVID.

For one, I would have finished out my freshman year on campus rather than moving back home.

Freshman year was the only year I lived on campus — the other three I lived just off campus. There was this sense of community in “freshman land” — or where all the dorms were — that I’ll never have again. I think I took it for granted, not realizing that my time there would be cut short.

Maybe there are things I would have done differently, or more memories I would have made, had I known.

I went from living with my best friend, exploring campus almost daily, to trying to figure out online classes in my childhood bedroom.

By my sophomore year, most classes were still online, but I still had one in-person course each semester, so I ended up moving back near campus.

There were a lot of pros and cons that year. One of the major cons, of course, was the online classes. I was paying to go to a university while spending very little time on campus.

Dining halls and other community buildings on campus were closed, so even when I was on campus, there wasn’t much to do, and everything was pretty quiet.

And online courses never had the same effect, so I wonder what I missed out on by having to learn through a screen rather than in class.

A pro of that, though, was that we were usually able to do classwork on our own time. Lectures were recorded, assignments were open all week, and attendance wasn’t really a thing. We did our work on our own time, logged in when we had to, and spent a lot of time at home.

Another pro was that my roommates and I, who are all great friends, spent a lot of time together. We really bonded during that time, doing homework in the common area, making meals together, and relaxing at the end of the day, watching TV or a movie.

When my junior year rolled around, things were on their way back to normal.

Most classes were back in person, but the ones that realized they could get away with being virtual continued to do so.

As an art major, a lot of my classes were back on campus. Which is helpful because I’m not sure I would have been taking a jewelry and metalworking class, seeing that I don’t typically have an anvil or soldering tools at home.

But as a writing major as well, it was much easier to work from home, seeing as we’d all just be on our laptops in a classroom anyway.

Yet I’m back to wondering, what would those classes have been like before the pandemic?

Senior year was the closest I saw to normalcy again in college.

We were back in the classroom, with the exception of a few classes still, and we were no longer required to wear masks. The campus was more active than it had been in years, but some things were still post-pandemic affected.

For example, the dining halls didn’t have the variety of options they had when I was a freshman. Some of the buildings remained COVID-friendly with less seating, or more spread-out seating, and other characteristics that I hope return to the way they were if they haven’t already.

Looking back, though, I’m grateful I was able to attend my graduation the way it was meant to be attended. I’m also grateful that I at least had (most of) one year where I saw what college was like before COVID.

The pandemic forever changed the way we go about things, as any major event might.

Now, in my career and working here at The News, it has me wondering what the industry was like before COVID. And while I hear the stories and am taught how things used to be, I’ll never have that first-hand pre-COVID experience.

I fear what the next big event might be that will forever change our world as we know it.

Torianna Marasco can be reached at 989-358-5686 or tmarasco@TheAlpenaNews.com.