As the pandemic is still ongoing, students continue to feel anxious as they did from the beginning.

The pandemic doesn’t seem as though it will come to an end anytime soon and many college students continue to feel stressed and depressed.

Since there is a high percentage of dropped college courses, this indicates how much the pandemic has taken a toll on students progress.

Palomar College students have recently dropped online courses due to the struggles and difficulties with managing school work.

Current Palomar student, Amber Sosa talked about her experiences in regards to how she felt throughout the pandemic, as well as how it’s affected her progress with school.

Sosa started at Palomar College during the Fall 2020 semester and was just trying to adjust to her first semester of college. She states that during her second semester at Palomar is when the pandemic began to take a toll on her mental health.

“In my second semester at Palomar, the pandemic definitely impacted my progress with school,” she said.

Sosa also goes on to say “My mental health began to worsen during the time and attempting to keep up with my coursework online felt difficult.”

Sosa then begins explaining how the lockdown resulted in her stress with school, as well as how the pandemic made it complicated for her to accomplish and achieve her goals.

“The pandemic made it harder especially, since I wasn’t able to really go out and I did struggle a bit with managing my work online. Which did result in not reaching my personal expectation and goals for that semester which was quite disappointing,” she says.

When discussing what resources she has used to help her cope with school and stress, she mentioned going to the Student Health Center, as well as talking with friends about her struggles.

“During my second semester I actually used the Student Health Center for support in my mental health, which actually helped a lot and gave me resources to cope with school. I also reached out to friends and their support greatly helped,” Sosa said.

She then talked about how her friends have also struggled as she did. She states that they have also had a difficult time keeping up with school assignments.

“My friends at Palomar have also shared some of the same sentiments regarding the stress of keeping up and managing school work throughout the pandemic, she said.

“We’ve definitely bonded over feeling overwhelmed with the mix of the pandemic and school,” Sosa adds.

Sosa says that ever since her first semester at Palomar, conditions have changed for the better since then and is now used to the online environment.

“It’s a bit better now that I am used to it and since conditions have improved a bit since my first semester here,” Sosa says.

For more information on counseling services, go to the Behavioral Health Counseling Services on the Palomar website. Also you can go to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (cdc.gov) for more information on the Delta virus and COVID-19.