Coming back to campus

I was able to come back for a quick visit to campus last week. I have been working from home purely the entire time, and I have to admit I was quite hesitant to step foot on campus again. Maybe it was the gorgeous sunshine that day, the clear, blue sky, but oh my goodness – it was wonderful to be on campus again. I’m glad that it was still relatively quiet and there weren’t many students back yet, but being away made me realise just how much I missed campus.

I’m a PhD student and I don’t have any classes to attend. I’m also quite lucky that I have an office to myself, so I was quite surprised to find myself this happy to be on campus for a bit. Was I just missing being surrounded by scholarly buildings? Or was it the library I was missing? Or the quiet corridors I shared with my peers? Could it be that I was missing seeing other students, a reminder that I wasn’t alone in my struggles to earn a degree?

Even though I was only going to be on campus for a couple of hours, as I pick up some of my papers and books from my office, I appreciate how remarkable it was to even have the ability to do this again, to physically be on campus. Many students from interstate and even around the world are still in lockdown. This simple thing is something easily taken for granted, and I understand that we aren’t out of the woods just yet. Although I did enjoy some of the perks of working from home all these months, such as the flexibility and not needing to commute to the office. I also missed the physical cues (i.e. libraries, classrooms, offices, etc.) that reminded me that I was a part of a community. The webinars, the Zoom meetings, the online and virtual engagement and support that continued, was very helpful in keeping us students connected, but campus, at least for me, is still very much a big factor in facilitating a shared experience for most students. Or maybe I’m just a bit old-fashioned? For now, I’m grateful I had a chance to be back on campus, even for just a short bit.