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meEvery year, Msue Chiponda, an international student, joins her extended family in a house they rent by Lake Malawi to celebrate Christmas together. But, thanks to the pandemic, he will not go this year. Instead, she faces Christmas alone in her study room at the University of Nottingham.
Across the UK, massive tests are underway on university campuses to allow many thousands of students to travel home for Christmas during the government’s six-day period, which began on Thursday. However, like many foreign students, Chiponda, who is in the third year of a pharmacy degree, says that Covid has made it too difficult for him to fly home.
“The news coverage of all the students going home has made me a little sad every time I’ve seen it,” he says.
Due to the unreliability of the Internet connection in Malawi, you must stay in Nottingham for your last online exam on December 14, which means that your two weeks of quarantine upon arrival home would end at Christmas. Since many flights are canceled on short notice, you are also concerned about being stranded in Dubai or Ethiopia without a connecting flight home.
Christmas is “very big” in the Chiponda family. “We have rented a house together for years. I know I will see the photos. I’m so sad to lose it. “
She has already found this semester a lonely experience. The pandemic has meant that he has not been able to carry out practices and has missed face-to-face classes. “I live in a study in a student residence and at the moment I hardly see anyone, since everyone is in their rooms. The only time I see someone is if I’m doing laundry, ”he says.
You fear being on a nearly empty campus. “I think I will find it difficult. I hope I meet a friend who lives nearby on Christmas Day for some time, but I’ll be sad. ”
Meanwhile, Georgia Grainger, a PhD student at the University of Strathclyde who lives in a share house in Dundee, is also trying to mentally prepare for Christmas on her own. Grainger is from Belfast, but her mother now lives in France and feels it would be an unacceptable risk to go abroad to see her. “The current Scottish government guide is not an ‘unnecessary’ trip, and Dundee is level 3. Seeing my mom at Christmas would be lovely, but I don’t think it’s essential,” she says.
She admits that she is going to have problems. “Logically, I know it’s only one year, and last year I had a very good Christmas with my family and spent time with my nieces and nephew. But at the heart of the matter I will find it difficult. I am prone to depression and I hope it will break out. “
However, he firmly believes that Christmas is not reason enough for the government to encourage people to take risks. “In Scotland, the way the government presents this is more cautious. If you need to meet at Christmas, you can. But the message from the UK seems to be: the rules don’t apply for five days. I think that’s really worrisome. People will push things to the limit. They are forgetting that the spirit of this is that we don’t want the elderly to die, ”he says.
For some students, including those left out of care and estranged from their families, college is their only home. Chris Hoyle, a growing engagement analyst at York University, says media reports of a mass exodus of students have infuriated him, because of how isolated they make students who have no family feel. “Many of these students dread Christmas all year long. But this year is worse than ever, because not only are they constantly reminded that they are different in conversations with their peers, but they are also reminded of all the news about the students’ return home.
Hoyle, himself a high school dropout, believes it’s essential that colleges make these students feel like they belong at this time of year. “We try to show them that we really care about them,” he says.
York is donating free Christmas dinner baskets to all students staying in the city during the holiday period. Hoyle, known as “Jingle Hoyle” by his Twitter followers, has also crowdfunding £ 6,000 to buy gifts for around 100 caretakers and college students separated from their families.
The University of Nottingham will open student centers with study spaces, food and “a place to relax when other facilities, including those in the city, are closed.” A spokesperson says he’s also finalizing Christmas and New Year meal plans. The University of Exeter is hosting a Christmas lunch for students still on campus, though they will have to sit alone due to social distancing regulations.
Levi Pay, a former director of student services who advises colleges on the student experience, says institutions should help match students and suggest things they can do over the Christmas break. But with staff reps and students “really exhausted” after the added pressures of the pandemic, he says it can prove even more complicated than usual than staff at university-run Christmas events.
“There is a lot of social pressure during Christmas,” he adds. “I was traveling alone at Christmas and you feel, wrongly, of course, that everyone else is having an amazing day. There is a limit to the extent to which universities can remove that pressure. “
However, not all students left behind are miserable. Lily Delamare, a fourth-year microbiology student at the University of Aberdeen, won’t be joining her family in France because she doesn’t want to risk catching Covid on the trip. But she is happy to volunteer at the university’s Covid testing center so other students can see their families. “Both my dad and my grandparents are older and at risk,” he says. “I feel good about not coming home. I made a decision that I think is best for everyone and that’s good enough for me. “
Delamare plans to work in the university community garden over Christmas and says, “I am actually very happy to be able to help other students instead of just staying.”
Michael Shie, a senior economics student at Durham University, will not visit his mother in Brunei, but will have a Covid test on Monday so he can spend Christmas with friends in London. “Getting together with my friends means we will have that feeling of home, just in a different place,” he says.
Meanwhile, Sabrina Skyba-Lewin, a Leicestershire student studying biology at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada, is hesitant to return to the UK in case a spike in cases means return flights are canceled in January.
“More than anything I want to go back and see my family. It’s been a year since I saw them. It makes it much more difficult to focus on my finals, ”he says. “Video calls are not the same as being able to hug them.”
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