1 — Wednesday, September 15, 2021 // The Statement

BY LANE KIZZIAH, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT

Reflections on a last first day

Public Policy senior Maddi Walsh poked her 

head into the classroom while the rest of us milled 
awkwardly around the first floor of Weill Hall. We 
all stood quietly — awkwardly — not remembering 
the proper pre-class etiquette. At what point is it 
acceptable to walk into the room? How does one 
engage in small talk? Should I leave and come back 
just to avoid the sheer awkwardness? The things 
that should’ve been second nature as I entered my 
16th year of school were now completely foreign 
after almost two years of online learning.

Growing up, I’d always gotten the pre-school 

butterflies. I’d make my mom take me back-to-
school shopping outrageously early so I could 
labor over the choices of which lunchbox would 
appropriately accent my third-grade experience 
and which brands of colored pens would improve 
my abysmal handwriting. As I’ve gotten older, the 
novelty of the first day has naturally worn off, but 
this year it all came flooding back.

I’d been looking forward to the start of 

school for weeks with the fervor of an anxious 
kindergartener. When the big day arrived, my 
roommates and I all tried on multiple outfits, and 
I’d spent an hour making sure all my books were 
in order, my water bottle filled, my iced coffee in 
just the right travel cup.

But when our professor, Megan Tompkins-

Stange, told Walsh we could come into the 
classroom, I felt an unexpected wave of anxiety. 
I was overwhelmed by the physical presence of 
the class, the rows of desks, the faces I recognized 
and those I didn’t, the professor at the front of the 
room.

And even beyond the social factors, there 

are new COVID-related taboos to think about. 
Is it rude to take a seat directly next to someone 
else? Should I leave room for them? Can I lower 
my mask and sip my water? All of these factors 
culminated in one all-important question: Where 
do I sit down?

After taking a quick scan of the masked faces 

around me, I chose a seat in the back. A few 
rows ahead of me, Walsh was having a similar 
experience.

“Something I didn’t realize until I got back here 

was that I haven’t introduced myself to someone 
in just so long in person,” she said. “That little 
small talk that you do with the people next to you 
that we didn’t get to do over Zoom, I totally forgot 
about all. It was so awkward.”

After getting to know someone over Zoom — 

at least as well as you can get to know someone 
through breakout-room chit-chat — it’s hard to 
gauge that first in-person interaction. I was sitting 
next to someone who I’ve sat on a Zoom with 
probably 100 times; I know her political opinions 
and what she thought of our professors, but I didn’t 
know her height or whether to introduce myself 
again. As I sat down, I tried to preoccupy myself 
with any task I could think of. I organized my 
pencils, took out all my books and put them back 
in my bag. I flipped through my planner, looking 
through a list of imaginary tasks to complete. A 
couple of times, I thought about saying hi, but in 
the end, I opted to sit in silence and wait for class 
to start.

Even professors felt the strange circumstances 

and first-day jitters. University of Michigan 
Education professor Matt Diemer is used to 
reading non-verbal cues from his students to 
assess their comprehension and engagement, 
something made much more difficult when 
everyone is wearing masks.

“I get 25% of the information from people’s 

faces I used to because I can’t see so much of 
people’s faces,” he said. “This isn’t to complain 
about masking — I think it’s important — but it’s 
just something I had not anticipated about what it 
would be like to be in the classroom again.”

Still, Diemer is excited to be back in person and 

looking forward to getting back to the aspects of 
teaching he missed even if it isn’t entirely normal. 
As he aptly put it, returning to the classroom is a 
double-edged sword.

“If you’re a freshman at Michigan or you’re a 

first-year graduate student, you’re excited about 
going, and it’s been a lifelong goal for you to go 
there maybe, but it’s still a new challenge, a new 
stressful situation that always kind of introduces 
normative stresses,” Diemer said. “I think just 
transition periods are difficult because they’re 
new and novel and may take us out of our habits 
and routine, so they introduce some stress. 
They’re also great things but it’s stress at the same 
time.”

Business sophomore Claire Strimling is 

essentially living the freshman transition a year 
late. Even though she was in Ann Arbor for all of 
last year, she only had one hybrid class.

“It was really, really amazing being in person 

and just being with other people,” she said. “I 
don’t even think I realize how many people went 
to Michigan.”

Though she prefers in-person learning, 

Strimling was worried that her classes this 
semester would be harder than the ones she 
took online. She went to a small high school in 
Las Vegas and is still learning to navigate the 
aspects of a big school — large class sizes and 
less face-to-face time with teachers — that most 
upperclassmen had the opportunity to adjust to as 
soon as we got on campus.

Even as a senior, I resonate with that idea 

of the freshman transition, in the best possible 
way. Underlying the awkwardness I felt was an 
overwhelming feeling of excitement. Last year, 
I would take most of my classes from my bed, 
occasionally turning off my camera to go make a 
sandwich or refill my coffee. I felt disconnected 
not just from my classes or classmates, but from 
the very idea of Michigan. This year, everything 
feels like a significant first: the first walk to class, 
the first assignment, the first time sitting in the 
library.

On my second day, I got lost in Mason Hall 

and ended up on the wrong floor. I took a quick 
lap in an effort to not look so blatantly lost and 
then snuck down the back stairs to my classroom. 
There was something in that moment that made 
me fall in love with Michigan all over again.

“(The start of in-person classes) brought 

kind of a sense of fulfillment back to my day,” 
Business senior Matt Kocsis said. “I guess just 
once again being able to go out on campus, seeing 
everybody also on the pilgrimage to class. Things 
felt certainly back to normal, and it was the energy 
and the enthusiasm that I’ve been so used to for so 
long.”

That energy has been palpable all over campus.
“It was really difficult for students and 

professors to truly have engaging conversations 
and not really being able to read body language 
and stuff (over Zoom),” LSA junior Lily Anderson 
added. “So I’ve loved being back in person with 
them and kind of having their energy to bounce 
off of and seeing how excited they are to be back in 
person as well has been really motivating.”

Even with this faux sense of normalcy, this is 

by no means a normal semester. After the first two 
weeks of classes, there have been 322 COVID-19 
cases reported on campus. By the second day of 
classes, LSA junior Stanley Wang had already 
gotten two email notifications that someone in 
his class had tested positive. COVID-19 was a 
major concern for him coming into the school 

year because many of his friends are international 
students who didn’t have access to the vaccine at 
home.

“I knew that (the email notifications) would 

happen, but I guess I didn’t know it would be that 
quick,” he said.

Kocsis is less concerned about the risk of 

infection. He feels comfortable knowing that such 
a high percentage of students are vaccinated and 
he has no underlying health concerns. Naturally, 
there’s a large range of feelings within the student 
body. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle, 
wanting to experience this year to the fullest but 
still holding a nagging sense of doubt in the back 
of our minds.

Many professors, Diemer included, have 

younger children at home who are not yet vaccine 
eligible. One of Diemer’s concerns coming into the 
semester was that students would be resistant to 
wearing masks, a fear that proved unfounded. 
Now with the first day behind us, Diemer is 
focused on being flexible.

“The challenges for professors are just trying 

to know what to expect, to try to be adaptive and 
flexible and customizable,” he said. “But at the 
same time, having a plan and a structure, so trying 
to thread some line between not being so rigid and 
totally unprepared if a student has to miss class 
because of a COVID exposure ... There’s a lot of 
invisible labor that professors are doing to try to 
be responsive and customizable, and this is labor 
I want to do. I think it’s important for students’ 
well-being and educational success, but being 
back in person, this term isn’t like every other 
term.”

It wasn’t a normal first day of school, and it 

won’t be a normal semester that follows. I’ve 
already gotten two notifications that someone 
in my classes has tested positive. The mixture of 
fear and optimism and excitement I have for the 
coming months is always changing. As Diemer 
said, we have to be adaptable.

But when my first class was over, I walked out 

alone, still unsure of how to navigate classroom 
chit-chat. On my walk home, I thought about my 
last first day of school and all the first days that 
came before it. Who knows what will happen in 
the next few months or whether we’ll be able to 
keep it up until the end of the semester. In that 
moment, I was just grateful that there were people 
on the street, backpack straps in hand, classes to 
go to.

