{"id":2572,"date":"2021-01-05T19:46:11","date_gmt":"2021-01-05T19:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/?p=2572"},"modified":"2021-01-07T19:03:35","modified_gmt":"2021-01-07T19:03:35","slug":"not-home-and-alone-freshman-faces-homesickness-covid-19-in-first-semester-of-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/2021\/01\/05\/not-home-and-alone-freshman-faces-homesickness-covid-19-in-first-semester-of-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Not home and alone: Freshman faces homesickness, Covid-19 in first semester of college"},"content":{"rendered":"

Students heading off to college for the first time can expect loneliness like they\u2019ve never felt before. But Richards, a first-year in communication, was not prepared for the isolation that came with the coronavirus.<\/span><\/p>\n

Richards said she went into fall semester with the intention of putting herself out there to make new friends. However, COVID-19 made it difficult for her to meet new people, leaving her to sit alone in her room during the first few weeks of classes.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a weird feeling,\u201d Richards said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Richards said she was ready for COVID-19 to take away introductory handshakes and high-fives. But she realized at college how much she missed the support of her family through hugs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents would hug me at home,\u201d Richards said. \u201cAnd now I\u2019m sitting in a room by myself and I\u2019m like, \u2018Wow, I need a hug.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To combat the loss of human contact and loneliness, Richards said she reassured herself that everything would be OK.<\/span><\/p>\n

Richards said she was one of few first-year students on her floor in Blackburn House, which made it difficult to find another freshman.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, one day she decided to talk to Lexi Feser, a first-year in business, on the elevator. Feser became Richards\u2019 best friend and she began to feel less alone.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe always watch \u2018The Bachelor\u2019 every Tuesday night,\u201d Feser said. \u201cOver the weekend we spend every day, every hour together just hanging out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Richards said Feser filled in the gap of her nighttime loneliness, but then her roommate tested positive for COVID-19.<\/span><\/p>\n

She left Feser and her life at Blackburn House, spending five days in Staybridge Suites to quarantine before getting tested for COVID-19. After receiving a negative test result, she went home to Wyoming, Ohio, to finish the remainder of her quarantine.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe days that I was in the hotel were probably the loneliest I\u2019ve ever felt,\u201d Richards said.<\/span><\/p>\n

While at Staybridge Suites, Richards experienced a high fever, cough, body chills, a terrible migraine, nausea, severe body aches and fatigue. She said she didn\u2019t feel well enough to eat food and her migraine prevented her from watching TV or listening to music.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI called my mom crying because I was lonely,\u201d Richards said. \u201cIt was just really hard being that sick and totally alone for the entire day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

After she returned from quarantine, Richards said she made the most of her remaining semester by cherishing the time she had left with her friends. Now that she has gone home for winter break, Richards said she feels lonely again without having Feser right down the hall.<\/span><\/p>\n

Richards said she plans to keep in touch with her friends over break so she can reunite with them when she is back on campus.<\/span><\/p>\n

To maintain a positive outlook, Richards said she reminded herself that although she might spend some nights alone at college, especially because of COVID-19, there will always be another weekend to spend time with her friends.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to keep a positive attitude about it because at least we\u2019re here,\u201d Richards said. \u201cI know a lot of people who don\u2019t get to be on campus, and don\u2019t get to have at least some normalcy. So I\u2019m just trying to keep a positive attitude about that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sick to her stomach, Alex Richards laid in bed in a dark room at a hotel near Ohio State\u2019s campus. It was the first time that she had to deal with an illness completely by herself. Laying there, she realized how much she missed the support of her family through hugs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4077,"featured_media":2442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[193],"tags":[],"coauthors":[194],"class_list":["post-2572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faces-of-ohio-state"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/files\/2020\/02\/Mary-Kidwell-2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4077"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2572"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2623,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2572\/revisions\/2623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2572"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelantern.com\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}