Post-secondary institutes are now open for their fall semester, albeit with a much different start then ever before.
Global News talked to some post-secondary students to see how they are transitioning to their new normal.
“It’s definitely a huge change; there are a lot less people than I expected,” said Anibe Abba, a UBC-Okanagan student.
“I wake up in the morning and no one is on the streets. It’s kind of unnerving.”
“It’s a strange experience to be honest,” said Dima Zhurvel, an international student at UBCO.
“Since I’m an international student, I had two weeks of quarantine at the dorms, so it felt weird but it’s getting even more weirder.”
Zhurvel, an international student from Ukraine, said the new semester poses a lot of new challenges he didn’t expect.
“I was here last semester and it felt like I had a lot of communication. I had a lot of friends, now I’m just sitting in my room most of the day.”
The vast majority of course are now online, creating a new set of issues for students.
“I think the biggest challenge is, due to not being in a classroom, you can’t really engage with other classmates as much as you normally would,” said Moataz Abdelraouf, a computer engineering student at UBCO.
“It’s really weird. A few people have different experiences. For me I’m really annoyed by all the different pieces of software I have to use,” said Abba.
Okanagan College’s vice president, Allan Coyle, said the college is doing everything it can to make the campus safe for students and faculty.
“We’ve been following our provincial health officer protocols, WorkSafeBC protocols — our first commitment is a safe work and learning environment for our staff and students,” said Coyle.
Coyle says the Kelowna campus for Okanagan College is down from 6,000 daily students to 500.