We asked first-year students at St. Joe’s, who have never attended a pre-pandemic campus, and only know it as a place of masks and brown paper dinner bags and tents and often empty common spaces, to capture the campus from their perspective.
Our ask is based on Bloomberg CityLab’s Coronavirus Map Project, which was published in June and features maps that people all over the world created to document their city, neighborhood or home spaces as impacted by the pandemic.
Of the more than two dozen maps we received, we find first-year students grappling, as they do every year, with trying to get to know their new home. We see sunrises and study nooks and running paths. We see exhilaration and loneliness, desires for connections and the relief of solitude. We see students coming to terms with a semester on Hawk Hill like no other, but still finding their way.
If you’d like to contribute a map to our series, please contact Giana Longo ’22, Features Editor, at [email protected] for submission guidelines.
By Colin McHale ’24:
I went from being stuck in my home, to being stuck at St. Joe’s. Other than the occasional drive, my daily activities are limited to just a few locations on campus. The repetitive day-to-day process can feel dull after a while, so I do everything in my power to make each day unique. Writing has always been something for me to do when I feel the need to escape this strange reality of life.
Sometimes this starts when I wake up. I write down my dreams. Other times, I sit down during my free time in the afternoon and compose some sort of fiction writing. This allows my mind to expand beyond the limited places of my world right now.
I start every day with the smell of coffee from my Keurig. This, too, is something that gets me through each day. My online classes in the morning consist of sitting at my desk, overlooking the chapel and Barbelin Hall. Natural light fills my room. No artificial lights in the room are on until nighttime.
After these first few classes, I have a break for a couple hours, and then I make my way to Merion Hall for English class. It is a refreshing break from learning through a computer. The most engaging part of my day is when I go straight to Campion for a late lunch with friends. The same friends then come with me to the library to get some homework done. And so, I end my days back at my new home: Villiger Hall.
As I see it, life happens through relationships. Therefore, even though I cannot go to some places or do anything I want to do, I can still make an effort to see the people I care about. I made my map with this same mindset. It was inspired by the style of a graphic novel, representing the simple routine of life, while highlighting the exciting moments.
McHale is a food marketing major from Moorestown, New Jersey.
Colin McHale’s Map
