Utah State students react to classes going online

By Sydney Kidd

Students at Utah State University had mixed reactions to the news that their school was suspending face-to-face classes in an effort to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

“My entire life is focused on Utah State, and now it’s not,” senior Shelby Black said, “and I don’t really know what to do.”

Most classes will be moved online under the new policy, announced Thursday, which sent shockwaves across campus as students tried to come to terms with how they would be affected.

Some students were initially excited about the announcement, happy with the prospect of being able to sleep in a few more hours in the morning. With a little more time for reflection, however, going online lost some appeal.

“It'd be kind of hard to do everything online, and it might get really boring,” freshman Hannah Leong said. “It's kind of weird to think about.”

Leong she doesn’t expect most of her professors will have too much trouble moving classes to a digital space. She isn’t so sure, though, about her human development class. “I'm not sure how testing is going to work,” she said.

Freshman Janae Teichert said the sudden shift has been off-setting.

“I just think it's super crazy right now,” she said. “There's a lot of decisions that I need to make.”

Teichert isn’t sure, for instance, whether she’ll stay in Logan or head home to Wyoming.

Like about two-thirds of students at Utah State, Teichert is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And, like many young Latter-day Saints, she has been preparing for entrance in a Missionary Training Center, or MTC, in advance of serving a mission for her church.

The pandemic has made her wonder if she should “postpone going on a mission until things calm down a little bit,” she said. “Because I'd rather go to an MTC and have it be, like, normal.”