“It was definitely not what you sign up for when you decide to go to graduate school.”
In August 2020, when many were adapting to new work patterns enforced by COVID-19, Danielle Vander Horst and more than 400 other new graduate students were beginning their journeys toward a Duke Ph.D. Their first year was unlike that of any other cohort.
No welcome social. No bumping into lab mates in the hallway. No finding new restaurants in a new town.
“You sign up for the department, you sign up to be there with people, with those faculty members and those students,” Vander Horst, a second-year Classical Studies Ph.D. student, continued. “Not having access to any of that really puts a damper on your introduction to the experience.”
Those faculty members, students and staff were still looking out for them, though, extending a virtual hand for them to grab onto. And now, 2021 has brought these students a second chance at the right start.
Jingxuan Zhang, a second-year Ph.D. student in Music, visited Duke in March 2020 as a prospective Ph.D. student. He was one of the last people allowed on campus before it was closed for most in-person activities.
“We had dinner with the professors in the evenings, and they mentioned that Duke was sending out travel advisories,” Zhang said. “It was right at that time when people were aware of COVID but didn’t really know how bad it was. We bumped elbows instead of shaking hands, but everything else was normal.”
Many Ph.D. students didn’t even make it that far before having to change course. Vander Horst’s campus visit would have taken place in late March. Mere days before jumping on a plane, she received an email announcing that the visit would move to an online format.
“It took them a couple of days to figure it out,” she said, “but the department did a great job. They had very little time to shift everything and still managed to make everybody feel welcomed and supported. They did the best that they possibly could, considering the circumstances.”
Students had to plan their move to Durham from afar, crossing their fingers in hopes that the apartment they picked online wouldn’t turn out to be a drafty disaster.
“You're packing up your life and going somewhere else. There’s that excitement of starting anew somewhere fresh,” said Vander Horst. “Then you end up picking a random, decently priced and clean-looking apartment online and move somewhere that you’ve never even seen. It took a lot of the fun out of it.”
Zhang lucked out. Parents of a good friend of his, both Duke alumni, opened their doors and welcomed him into their home for his first few months at Duke.
“I can’t imagine not having had them,” Zhang said. “They opened their doors to me even though COVID was raging, and they treated me like family. It was very touching.”
Getting settled during a pandemic was just the beginning. In August, students' Ph.D. programs started. Working alone in front of their computers all day in an unknown town discouraged many students from venturing outside, and their motivation quickly dwindled as the adrenaline of starting something new faded into anxiety.
“It was really depressing,” Vander Horst said.
“I felt really burned out really quickly,” said Melodie Najarro, a second-year Ph.D. student in Biology. “I could barely show up. It was just so hard to be motivated, to do assignments or to stay focused.”
Najarro wasn’t alone, and she used that to help build relationships. In one particularly difficult morning, Najarro gathered her courage and typed in the Zoom chat: “Hey, is anyone else just struggling to even get to the computer today?”
“Some of the other students were just like, ‘Yes, I'm so glad you said that!,’” said Najarro. “It was a bonding moment.”
Slowly and carefully the bonds extended beyond the computer screen. Outdoors, socially distanced get-togethers were organized — at least while the weather permitted it. “The silver lining to being in Durham during COVID is that it’s warmer than the north,” said Zhang, who moved from Boston. “Meeting people outside was still doable in November as long as you had a coat.”
Larger cohorts, like Biology’s 14 incoming Ph.D. students, had to play round robin to meet everyone.
“The first time we tried to get together only a few of us were able to make it,” said Najarro. “We all sat outside, around the fire, six feet apart from each other with our masks on, so we're basically just yelling at each other. But despite how awkward it was, we were just so happy to just get to know each other.”
Some departments stepped in to make things easier. Lauren Ginsberg, associate professor of Classical Studies and the department’s director of graduate studies, organized online graduate student happy hours, where students could drop in, say hello and catch up with each other. She also held her own official office hours.
“It was really nice knowing that if I ever needed to just jump in and say ‘Lauren, help, I feel like the world is crashing down around me,’ she was always present,” said Vander Horst.
“All the faculty in the department made it very apparent that they were available for us if we needed them, that they were going to do whatever they could to lessen the isolating factor. It was good to feel so supported.”
Some academic work also proved difficult on Zoom.
In Biology, Ph.D. students typically dabble in lab or field work for their first semester, as they refine their research ideas. Many start their experiments or field seasons as early as their first spring. Being alone in the lab meant having to find creative ways to jump start their research.
Najarro says that spending an entire semester at home gave her the impression of falling behind, despite her advisor’s reassurances. “I felt like I wasn't going anywhere, all I was really able to do was read papers.”
Seeing her restlessness and anxiety, Najarro’s advisor, Professor of Biology John Willis, assigned her an experiment at the Duke Greenhouse. There was only one problem: it was a plant species and method Najarro had never worked with before.
“I was being trained through text messages, FaceTime, phone calls, email,” said Najarro. “I would sometimes be alone in the greenhouse, texting people basic questions like ‘Where's the soil?’ or ‘How do I water this?’ but I felt like I was learning something new. And that was fun.”
“It was nice to do something that wasn't just sitting behind a computer all day, not only resting my eyes, but resting my mind as well,” Najarro said. “The greenhouse is such a relaxing place, and the staff is so welcoming and caring. Every time I got there I would think ‘Okay, I'm more peaceful now.’”
In the humanities, students fine-tune their research questions over a couple of years, so the pandemic didn’t necessarily alter their first-year research plans. It still made for a very unusual summer.
An archaeologist, Vander Horst was supposed to join an excavation team from Cornell in Pompei. The normally smooth travelling process turned into a nail-biter as virus prevalence and travel authorizations changed seemingly every day. At the last minute, the Cornell team cancelled their plans.
Maurizio Forte, William and Sue Gross Professor of Classical Studies and Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, offered her a spot with his team at an excavation at the archaeological site of Vulci, also in Italy.
“It was all very last-minute, but being on site again was great,” Vander Horst said. “It's outdoor work, everybody got a test before they got there, we're all living together and going everywhere together, so we have our sort of bubble.”
Then came August, and with it a bustling campus, in-person classes and finally a chance at a normal graduate school experience. Now, with fall break around the corner, these students have a baseline against which they can compare their first year.
“It's interesting coming back in person,” said Najarro. “As hard as it was, I'd gotten used to it, and I developed all these coping mechanisms to make it work. If I was in a three-hour class, I could turn off my camera for a minute and stretch, walk a bit around the room.”
“There’s something interesting about the Zoom experience,” said Zhang. “Graduate seminars have very few people, and on Zoom we can all be facing each other. In class everybody is facing the front, wearing masks, and you lose people’s facial expressions. It makes the conversation a bit unnatural.”
Vander Horst feels differently. “Being in person has its own set of anxiety-inducing episodes, but there's just something so vitally disconnected about trying to have those small-group in-depth discussions with people across the computer screen,” she said. “There's something really intrinsic to the experience that gets lost when it’s switched to a virtual platform.”
In-person classes weren’t the only thing these students had to get reacclimated to. Like so many people, they had to learn how to rejoin the world and re-establish social connections.
“I had moments in those first weeks where I just felt incredibly overwhelmed. I forgot what it was like to be around so many people, so much energy,” said Najarro. “But seeing this lovely campus full of life and energy is exhilarating. I met more people in the past two weeks than I did in the past year.”
“Sometimes I feel like the pandemic taught me to be flexible and resilient. I don't like getting upset when things don't go the way I expected. Whatever happens, I’ll just make it work.”
Department of Biology