As a college student, I was still in the midst of adjusting to my spring semester schedule... as was every other college student. We had all been back from winter break for not that long, and we were all finally starting to get back into the groove of things while adjusting to a new schedule.

This was the case, of course, until the second week of March 2020, which is when colleges started initiating online courses making the students go home and pack up two months earlier than they were meant to. These are five emotions that college students, or the college students that I know at least, felt during this chaotic time.

1. Confusion

It started out with some memes, which most, if not all, of us thought were funny because we were currently not personally experiencing the virus. Although, once our colleges started sending out emails saying that we were switching to online formats, the feeling of confusion was high because none of us knew what this all meant and why it was happening.

2. Worry

After we started receiving the emails, we all had a bit of a wake-up call. This quickly went from memes to us now being told that we need to pack up our dorm rooms and head home. In a matter of days, we went from living our daily college student lives to all of a sudden having to move back home much sooner than we all anticipated. The feeling of worry was strong in this stage because none knew how serious the virus was, and no one knew what to expect from online classes and going back home.

3. Stress

This is the emotion that hit us the hardest. We all somehow had to pack up EVERYTHING that we took to college with us, and we had close to zero clue as to how our classes were going to work. Nothing in our lives made sense at this moment, and everything was happening way too quickly for us to process any emotion besides stress while we were trying to pack up our lives.

4. Anger

Anger is the emotion that, for me, came very quickly after stress. I was angry that I had to go home. I was angry that I had to leave the life that I had created at college without any warning beforehand, and I was especially angry that this was happening. College students were not prepared for the sudden uprooting of their lives, and this caused anger.

5. Sadness

The fifth emotion, which college students felt, was sadness. This was caused when we all quickly realized that we had to all say goodbye to our friends and those we built relationships with throughout the semesters. We were not expecting to say goodbye so quickly. and this sudden change in our lives caused us to get sad. We got sad over having to say goodbye to everything that we knew and to everything that we loved with close to no time to prepare for the goodbyes.