Dealing with Grad School During a Pandemic

Grad school is hard. Grad school during a pandemic is even harder. It’s almost like being on a rollercoaster and being asked not to grip the bars, not scream and not be scared.

“That’s not a fair ask,” said Robert O’Brien, MS, ATR, LCP, a counselor in Salus University’s Center for Personal and Professional Development (CPPD). “What’s fair is to say that you can go on this rollercoaster and hold tight. And, if you get scared, you’re human.”

May is Mental Health Month, a time to raise awareness of trauma and the impact it can have on the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of children, families, and communities.

While the pandemic has created additional and sometimes unbearable pressures on everyone, including alumni, Salus students have had the added stress of transitioning to a hybrid educational format complete with online classes and limited face-to-face instruction. That’s on top of trying to navigate challenging academic waters in the healthcare professions, a laser-focused field still struggling with trying to control the pandemic. Students very likely could go right from the academic frying pan into the professional fire hypothetically speaking.

“It does add another thick layer to the grad school experience and what is expected,” said O’Brien.

Many students experience struggles with adjustments to the life transitions involved in undertaking a graduate degree. CPPD is committed to the personal well-being, as well as the professional growth, of Salus students. It offers confidential services in academic counseling, individual counseling, group counseling, referrals and advice on developing study skills.

But the forced adjustments from the pandemic has been a first-time experience for everyone. According to O’Brien, when individuals come to CPPD for guidance, they do so as living in their own individual context. That context has a big effect on what is already a challenging time in a grad student’s life.

“The difference in this context is that we’re all going through it. As a mental health practitioner, it has been a little bit of a new thing for us because we’re counseling people parallel to our own experience of what we may be experiencing too,” he said.

For example, some students prefer online learning. Those who are self-starters and independent learners love not having to go to a classroom for their instruction. Others, however, who don’t have a schedule and know that their body doesn’t need to be somewhere physically, can find it difficult for them to stay on top of things virtually. 

“Salus students took to the virtual delivery really quickly. They didn’t even bat an eye,” said O’Brien. “That has been an adjustment for me because I’m used to seeing people and body language and things that I can’t get virtually. So, I had to adjust my skills in that way.”

One of the biggest things O’Brien has seen is how the pandemic has affected the all-important social interaction aspect of University life, especially for those students who are new to the campus and Philadelphia and Elkins Park, Pennsylvania area. 

“People who are just arriving here don’t really know anyone and have had to limit their contacts generally to whoever they’re living with, and that might just be themselves,” said O’Brien. “That piece of it has been a real challenge because making connections is a big part of any program. Your classmates become your colleagues and creating that support system is an important piece of becoming a professional, like knowing how to behave with one another.” 

And, when that aspect is virtual, it’s different.

“You have to make social contacts very deliberately, whereas they might happen more organically if you were in person,” said O’Brien. “Just going to the same building every day brings you in contact with dozens of people that you see on a regular basis.”

Much of that is gone now, and even though it might be a little thing, it matters. Human beings in general are all about connection, O’Brien said, and if that is interrupted, people are going to notice it and feel it. The need for CPPD has been way up during the pandemic and that has changed some of the strategies the counselors have employed. Pre-pandemic, when counselors were seeing students in person, they were limited to those times when the counselors were in their offices on campus. Now seeing people virtually, the counselors’ schedules can be more flexible, which has expanded the number of students they can see in any given week. 

Additional outside pressures — like how a student’s family is regarding taking precautions against the virus as opposed to how the students preparing themselves for careers in the medical field are regarding precautions — matter. As does the context in which everyone is experiencing social turmoil — the effects of systemic racism, uncertainty in the government — these things are in the mix as well. To deal with it all, O’Brien works with students within their own context to help them cope. 

“Again, it hits everybody differently, but if there was a propensity toward depression and anxiety, yes it can be that much harder now for people with those conditions,” he said. “I often work with students within their context to help them understand here’s why you’re responding the way that you are. Here are your circumstances, you’re going to have to find a way to get through this.” 

Oftentimes, though, O’Brien said a lot of his job involves encouraging people to give themselves permission to feel what they’re feeling. “What I find myself repeating is that you can’t expect yourself to not feel a certain way,” he said. “It’s about your context and your ability to reach out for support.”