The transition to the college lifestyle is one that many students find to be difficult and that was before there was a pandemic to worry about.

The process for incoming freshman is often romanticized. Between the campus visits, orientations and moving in, there is a lot to take in outside of the class schedule.

First year students Joey Bastian, a Music major, and Steven Shaneyfelt, an Arts and Letters major and Digital Music Production minor, say they have done their best to adjust to the college lifestyle while they have hardly been on the campus itself.

While neither have spent the normal amount of time on campus, they have still experienced their own college challenges.

“If I ever had a class that was in person, I didn’t know it until I was 20 minutes late and needed to drive 20 minutes out,” Bastian said. “It was definitely my own error, but there are a lot of communication errors that happened before.”

Shaneyfelt also described his biggest obstacles to online learning so far.

“I think what’s really important to me is connecting to your classmates and we didn’t get that experience.

“The bell rings, and everybody’s walking out of class together and then you could get a coffee with a classmate in between classes, or something like that is something that I think is so important to the college experience,” Shaneyfelt said.

Both students say they were excited when the news broke that Buffalo State would be returning to predominately in person classes for the fall semester.

“I was pretty hyped to see that, because every time I’ve been on campus so far it’s just like a ghost town,” Bastian said.

“I’m excited about actually seeing people’s faces, being able to interact with other students and just connect in a much more personal way,” Shaneyfelt said.

In some ways, they said it will feel like they will be starting at Buffalo State all over again, which does slightly concern them.

“I feel like I might wish that I never asked for the college experience, because if I’m freaking out on just these online classes, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to work on campus,” Bastian said.

Shaneyfelt also expressed his concerns that have been brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“If it ends up being a situation where the pandemic gets worse, because people are more comfortable being really close to each other but the virus is there, that can be a concern to me,” he said.

However, both are remaining optimistic about getting the college experience and getting back to some form of normalcy.

“I am totally down to have a school day where I can do the schoolwork at the school and then come home and just be home,” Bastian said.