Feeling of Displacement Among Carleton Students

One of our key themes going into these interviews was to try to capture feelings of displacement amongst Carleton students. While there was the odd student out who said they didn't feel displaced, the vast majority felt this quite a bit be it through physical distance from their family or friend, being in a new environment, or just having to complete an academic term in abnormal conditions.

"Looking at my camera roll, the lack of pictures, particularly pictures of people, is an accurate depiction of what is being missed during the pandemic. I live a few miles outside of the Black Hills National Forest so hiking has been a reprieve from being in my house constantly. I don't see many people outside of my immediate family and my dog and I spend a lot of time hanging out in my backyard (by myself) when the weather is nice enough. It's hard to believe that we have been away from Carleton so long, but looking at my recent photos, I have very little evidence of other humans, which makes it clear just how long it has been. My pictures are exclusively of my dog and of the landscape from hikes I have gone on. It feels very strange to be separated from the community of people that I have been so connected to for almost three years."

- Karah Haug '21 (she/her/hers)

Zaya Vijil '22 (any pronouns) had their petition to remain on campus for spring term denied and had to live with a host family.

Armira Nace '22 (she/her/hers) says that while Carleton is not perfect, it is for her a safe place with people who understand her.

Nicole Connell '20 (she/her/hers) is painfully aware of how much she missed with this being her senior year and realizes she'll never get to be at Carleton as a student again.

Yuki Nagaoka '22 (she/her/hers) talks about the importance of being part of a community, especially during this difficult time.

Joseph Luther '20 (he/him/his) is a bit bitter that his last memories of Carleton are now tainted.

"A few days ago I was walking around campus with a friend, one of my closest friends freshman year who has remained a good friend, one last time before she moved home. We'd been sitting behind Evans looking out at Bell Field and talking. As we were about to walk up the steps behind Evans, we saw, at the top of the steps, my freshman year roommate and her family, who had returned to campus to pick up her belongings. It was such a serendipitous moment, and also highlighted everything we had lost. A goodbye with my roommate is one of the many goodbyes I did not have a chance to say before leaving at the end of winter. We took a socially-distanced picture, waved by one more time, and continued our respective strolls around the deserted, locked, familiar-yet-alien-feeling campus."

- Sarah Newsham '20 (she/her/hers)

Gaby Lazo '23 (she/her/hers) mentions issues due to the time zone difference which make her feel not real as well as the weirdness of living without her roommate.

Daniel Ashurst '22 (he/him/his) talks about how strange it is to not be able to see his best friend who lives 10 minutes away.

Gray Harrison '21 (she/her/hers) talks about the performative part of zoom calls that makes it anxiety-inducing.

"Texting and phone calls make me anxious - when I see a text, I always want to respond, but then I overthink what I should say, put it off until later, and end up forgetting to respond for a week or so. I’ve done some zoom calls with my friends, but it still doesn’t feel the same."

- Nicolas Bell '23 (he/him/his)

Skyelar Ginsberg '20 (she/her/hers) says that it doesn't feel real to do school work at home and talks about the difficulty of managing school and family obligations at the same time.

Palina Buchanan '22 (she/her/hers) talks about the strangeness of staying at someone else's home and missing her own.

"Yeah, it feels so weird, because everyone left the campus and like most international students live here but because we don’t know when we’re gonna be able to go home and I’ve heard people booking six or seven tickets just in case and most of them got cancelled, and there’s also Visa thing we don’t know about and everything is very unsure. Because usually we book a ticket beforehand and we know when to expect to go home and see our family. And everything is very unsure, so when I’m doing the zoom classes, most american students are at home and they have the homey background and when we are discussing in a group, it would be like “oh sorry my mom is chopping something, so sorry for the background noise” and I just feel like oh I hope that I would be able to be sorry about that too, but I don’t even know when I’ll be able to see my parents again. So it definitely makes me feel displaced."

- Alison Hong '22 (she/her/hers)

Walt Li '22 (he/him/his) talks about how uncomfortable and out of place he feels right now.

"I don't really have a feeling of displacement or missing during this Covid-19 time. My life has always been on a move and I believe that there is no exact place where I should be. At the end of the day, a person has to live one's life by oneself. Other people and something else on which a person depends only offer a temporary escapism or comfort. Eventually, one has to decide and deal with one's life and problem by oneself."

- Sally Chen '21 (she/her/hers)

Joey Silknitter '22 (he/him/his) brings up how his siblings' are having a significantly different experience from him.

Indigo Bistrup-Peterson '23 (she/her/hers) gives an anecdote about how awkward even grocery shopping is right now.

Jeremiah Mackin-Alonzi '22 (he/him/his) talks about how he will never get this term back.

"I think the feeling that has been most strongly exacerbated by the pandemic is nostalgia. Of course, I'm worried about my family's health, I'm feeling increasingly defeatist about the future, all those standard things. But on a day-to-day basis I feel acutely the loss of a past life that I didn't think I would have to call a "past life" just yet. I've spent a lot of this spring term thinking things like "today would have been the MIAC track meet" or "I remember how close I got with my history class last spring" or even just looking at the weather forecast in Northfield and longing for those first breaths of warm air. I'm a junior, so I still have hope of another year of Carleton life. Chances are, though, it won't be that Carleton life. It'll be a different one, if anything."

- Ellie Zimmerman '21 (she/her/hers)