Though the pandemic has taken a terrible toll around the world, some people, like Ethan Chan, a finance major at the University of Texas at Austin have found opportunity among the hardships and changes.
The threat of the pandemic pushed schools to switch to online learning during the spring 2020 semester to prevent the spread of the virus. For students at UT, online classes continued through the entirety of the 2020-2021 school year. The pandemic brought a lot of uncertainty, and some students were unsure if attending classes online would live up to the same standards as in-person classes. Taking a gap year became an option for Chan and others.
A representative from UT’s registrar’s office said the university did not track or report the number of students that took the year off as in the past the number had never been large. While the exact number of students who took a gap year or semester off during the pandemic is unknown, the National Student Clearinghouse reports that nationally, there was a 2.5% drop in enrollment for the fall 2020 semester and a 3.5% drop in the spring 2021 semester. Time will tell whether those numbers return to what was normal as society grapples with the pandemic.
As an out-of-state student from Seattle, Washington, Chan had a lot of adjusting to do when he first arrived at UT in 2019. Coming from a high school where no other students were attending UT, he had been surrounded by crowds of new faces in unfamiliar territory. He spent his first year at UT building friendships, joining student organizations and settling into Texas. The biggest concern Chan had when taking a gap year was that he would be putting the friendships he made during his first year at UT on hold, and uprooting everything he built, he said.
Taking a gap year was never in Chan’s plans before the pandemic, he said. In fact, he once jokingly brought up taking a gap year to his parents and they said, “absolutely not.” Then classes moved online, and his mother came up with the idea of taking a gap year.
“Ethan is a business major, and for him to do a distance study online through UT courses, we just didn’t see the benefit of doing that,” Carol Liu, Chan’s mother, said.
Liu grew up in Taiwan. She raised her kids in the United States, and Chan never had a chance to get to know her parents, she said. When the pandemic caused schools to move classes online, she knew Chan wouldn’t get the school experience he needed. She saw it as an opportunity for him to take a gap year, live with her parents, and get to know them and learn Mandarin.
“My mom always said the best thing that ever happened from this pandemic is that Ethan went back home to live with them for several months,” Liu said. “She felt like it was a gift coming out of nowhere.”
While most students were opening books for the 2020-2021 school year, Chan packed his bags and flew to Taiwan to spend seven months with his grandparents. With his parents being essential workers and a younger sister still in high school, he would be making the journey alone. Arriving in Taiwan, Chan faced a language barrier, a 15-day quarantine and an overall harsh adjustment for the first months, he said.
Chan lived with his grandparents in the apartment his mother grew up in and attended classes at a university in Taiwan to learn Mandarin. He spent his time outside of class getting to know his grandparents, exploring the country and experiencing his mother’s history.
“I got to go to her home country, I got to stay in the same apartment complex she grew up in, I got to walk the same roads and trace back her steps,” Chan said. “Really it was just retracing my mom’s history.”
When it was time for Chan to come back to the states and return to school, he said there was no question about his return to UT for the fall 2021 semester. He was excited to be a student and be around fellow students again, even if he was a little hesitant with the state of the pandemic in Austin.
In early August, the city was in Stage 5 of Austin Public Health’s risk-based guidelines, which recommend even vaccinated individuals wear masks and avoid gatherings. With the state of the pandemic in the city, the university provost announced some classes would temporarily be taught online or with reduced density until Sept. 17. Additionally, students returning to campus were required to be tested for the virus within the first week of class.
Aside from being tested before the start of class, the university has not required any further testing. As for vaccinations and masks, the university has not required either, but encourages both and has made them readily available.
As the fall semester approached, Chan said he understood the university’s urgency to get back to in-person classes and that he felt more comfortable being vaccinated. The only thing that made him nervous was the threat of breakthrough cases.
When returning, Chan said it was great to see people and catch up with familiar faces, but the biggest difficulty Chan faced was being surrounded by new people and changes again, because of this delayed degree schedule, he said. He rejoined as a member of the class of 2024, and now his classes are full of different students. The classmates that he entered college with were now in the back half of their degree while he was starting his sophomore year. In addition to new classmates, Chan also has to take new classes, as the finance degree plan was changed during his gap year.
“It was just those little minor adjustments that pose as small challenges, but you figure it out and you push forward ahead,” Chan said.
Chan had to relearn how to arrange his schedule and how to manage classes. He’s already facing midterms and he hasn’t written an essay in over a year. He’s still trying to get back into the swing of things, but his first month back at UT has been wonderful, he said.
Chan had never considered a gap year before, but after school moved online, he knew it was the right decision, he said. He spent a year away from school to explore his mother’s history and now he’s back to working towards his goals.