Reflections from Kelsey Yang

 Initially when I began reading the transcripts, I was guided by an interest to see how other students were faring during the COVID-19 pandemic. After observing trends in positive and negative coping mechanisms among respondents, I decided to organize my codebook in terms of interviewees’ “perception of gain” and “perception of loss” as compared to their pre-pandemic situation. I also understood that a majority of interviewees were not only affected by general societal uncertainty stress, but also pandemic-inflicted academic uncertainty stress unique to their roles as current or prospective college students. For many, disruptions related to the novel coronavirus caused stressful uncertainties in class scheduling, internship seeking, and career planning. To further examine the intersection of widespread social uncertainties (e.g. job insecurity) with uncertainty stress in young adults aged 18-25, I organized respondents’ reported stressors in five categories: health, academic, interpersonal, financial, and social uncertainty stress. In particular, my research looked at “academic uncertainty stress” through patterns in students’ description and perception of their interaction with institutions of learning and advancement. For instance, I learned that certain career industries such as theater have unfortunately been brought to a standstill, and opportunities for theater programs or internships have been largely diminished. Students majoring in theater also reported concerns about the quality of online instruction for courses in the performance arts.

When I compared the interviewees’ various descriptions of “sources of loss,” the theme of “loss of space” had the third highest frequency among student responses. The loss of public study spaces (e.g. libraries) and the loss of workplaces (e.g. labs, offices) have contributed to a corollary loss of student identity and mentality. For instance, multiple students reported feeling less compelled to study and participate class discussions because they miss the formal aspect of everyone gathering in a classroom. My codebook is a compilation of similar codes describing these losses or gains, with codes such as “shared trauma solidarity,” “newfound appreciation,” and “nutrition.” It was a neat process coming up with these codes from the data, and I frequently referred to my research instructors’ guidance through every step of the process!

 Another important theme in the data was that of privilege and unequal coping. The pandemic clearly shows a differential impact on low- and high-socioeconomic (SES) segments of the population, evidently in terms of the unequal access to resources such as healthcare and nutritious food. Yet, low-SES students may also lack access to “soft resources” such as time for communicating with friends or ability to pursue personal hobbies, both of which are among the top three helpful coping strategies mentioned among the respondents. For example, for those students who work long hours in order to pay rent, it may be difficult to juggle regular game nights with friends with a demanding academic workload. Issues such as social unavailability may be just one of many factors explaining how low-SES students potentially have marginal access to coping resources during the pandemic.

 Finally, one of my favorite sections of the research process has been curating the practical tips section. I collaborated with two other student researchers to produce a collection of the top coping mechanisms utilized by student interviewees, and among the list are some of the most frequently mentioned strategies described by respondents. We’ve also suggested tips to remedy some of the most frequently occurring losses reported by students. For instance, the second most common loss was the loss of structure in daily life (e.g. extracurricular activities, organized sports). In response to these losses, our tips serve to help individuals manually build back some of that lost routine into their daily lives.

 I would like to conclude this reflection by thanking every member of this team for their amazing dedication and collective passion throughout the four-month research process. Professor Guanglei Hong and graduate assistant Eos Trinidad were very accessible and provided guidance through detailed personalized feedback and assigned journal readings, while supplementing our semiweekly discussions with yesterday’s newest update from the field of social-science research in COVID-19. I plan to continue developing and refining my research under their expertise and guidance. Ultimately, I hope this research can provide some topics of interest that inform strategies of positive coping during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as important ways of enacting social justice.