Car talks with Lexi Sauder: College & COVID
Welcome to Car talks with Van. My goal is to have conversations with people from all
different walks of life and open up discussion on a unique variety of topics. I want people to laugh, cry, reflect, but most importantly I want to inspire people to have conversations with their loved ones. There are so many people I know that don’t have open and honest conversations with their moms and dads, friends, siblings, etc. It is important to talk to each other, listen to one another, and laugh with one another.
Lexi Sauder is a freshman at Colorado Christian University who is majoring in social sciences. Just like the rest of the freshman class here at CCU, Lexi is among the thousands of college freshmen who have been forced to endure the beginning years of college in the middle of a global pandemic. My freshman year of college was filled to the brim with adventures, memories, and events that could have been quickly robbed from me if I was born just a year later. Those beginning months of college were pivotal in finding out who I was on my own. As I sit here in my room – like I have for almost the last year – I couldn’t help but wonder what experiencing college for the first time during a pandemic would feel like.
The first time I met Lexi was actually in the passenger seat of my car. Lexi is a new YoungLife leader with me at Golden High School. On the Monday night before finals, we got in my car and delivered ice cream to some of our High School girls. After the first couple minutes of level one get-to-know-you questions, we quickly hit it off. I couldn’t wait to get her back into my passenger seat and listen to her college and COVID journey.
Last year when all CCU students were scrambling to leave campus in March, I couldn’t help but think, “oh my gosh, what about the Seniors!” My senior year in High School was one of the best years of my life, and if a global pandemic stripped that away from me, I’d be a mess. Lexi was a senior when the pandemic came through and uprooted our lives. When talking to Lexi about the effects on her Senior year, she said she was one of the lucky ones who graduated a semester early. The rest of her close friends had it rough. No prom, no games, no ‘lasts.’
Even though Lexi’s senior year was preserved to some degree, she was still entering into the whirlwind of college in the midst of a global pandemic. Thankfully, she knew she wasn’t going to be attending a university that was learning remotely, but she knew her college experience wouldn’t look the same.
Lexi’s main goal in High School was to get out of it. She didn’t have a ton of expectations coming into college, but she knew it was going to be harder than anything she’d done before. The pandemic just added another layer of difficulty. When trying to connect and meet new people on campus, Lexi has found it hard to recognize people with their masks on. She is someone who recognizes smiles, and everyone’s smiles are covered up. Building relationships and friendships has become work. COVID put a roadblock in front of CCU’s favorite thing, the community. Every class that Lexi walked into (besides her FYI class) was completely silent. No one talked to one another and no one really had a desire to. Granted, she wasn’t planning on becoming best friends with the people in all her classes, but COVID completely shut down all basic human interaction.
For Lexi, these basic human interactions have been completely morphed. Will it stay this way? Lexi and I began to talk about how we think COVID will affect us long term. Will people want to go out? Will people want to go to class? Will people want to go back to the office? Will people want to give hugs? Lexi’s a hugger, and she hopes that this pandemic doesn’t put hugging into extinction. For Lexi’s sake, even though we are in the middle of a global pandemic, let’s not forget to hug one another because we need it.
