Amid a chaotic semester, graduating seniors experience mixed emotions but are mostly feeling hopeful for the future.
The 2024 presidential election and Hurricane Helene have brought additional worries to graduating seniors during a time in life that already tends to be stressful.
According to the American College Health Association, 76% of college students experienced moderate or high levels of stress within 30 days of taking the survey. Adding to the baseline stress of college, a study by the National Library of Medicine found links between exposure to natural disaster and increased risk of developing mental health deterioration. As if that were not enough, 77% of U.S. adults reported the future of the nation bringing them significant stress according to a 2024 survey conducted by the American Psychology Association.
Madison Lohwasser, an environmental science major, said her semester started strong but that it was severely affected by the hurricane.
“It wrecked my hometown and pretty much every place that I’ve ever gone to. It made it hard to feel like school was important when I knew people that were actively without homes, food and water. It made it challenging to pay attention in class because it felt frivolous compared to the other things that I could be doing,” Lohwasser said.
While WCU campus sustained minor damage during the hurricane, many of the towns in the surrounding area were severely damaged or destroyed.
Jinn Hilliard, an anthropology major, also reported experiences during the hurricane making classes more difficult. They said this has been one of their most challenging semesters, but that they are handling things and working through it.
“I’ve been so out of it since the hurricane happened. We were out doing search and rescues, and that was very stressful. I’ve never been to a warzone before, but I think it probably felt like that,” Hilliard said. “Frankly going back into classes and having to do, for example, my osteology class where I am handling the bones of dead people, after having to pull a dead kid out of a car, then you go and have to handle a child’s scapula and act like it doesn’t faze you, it’s not a great experience.”
Other students reported being less directly affected. Mary Grayson Day, a communication major, said that because she and her family were not directly affected by the hurricane, she experienced imposter syndrome, survivors’ guilt and anxiety. Volunteering helped mitigate these feelings, but her academic strategy was still significantly disrupted.
“My self-pacing for assignments got all thrown off. That’s the one thing that if I don’t manage properly, it will impact other areas of my life, like sleep,” Day said.
Both Hilliard and Lohwasser said they are concerned that their fields of study will be impacted by the new political administration. During his first term in office, President Trump shrank protection for land around Bears Ears monument in Utah from 547,000 hectares to 82,000. The land holds several significant Native American cultural sites for a variety of tribes. President Biden restored the protection during his presidency, but some are concerned that it, and other natural spaces, will be at risk again under the Trump Administration.
A New York Times analysis based on research from Harvard Law and Columbia Law from 2021 found almost 100 environmental laws reversed under President Trump.
In addition to concerns about policy, Day said that election season brought social rifts into the WCU community.
“There was a lot of peer induced stress. I think a lot of people around me consumed emotionally driven media around it. I think I managed pretty well, but I tried not to think about it too much. On top of school and the hurricane, it would have caused me executive disfunction. My strategy was to just look at the facts,” Day said.
Despite all of this, students are still hopeful and excited for the future. Dakota Staiger, a sports management major, said that he is very excited for what his future holds.
“I’m not a big fan of school, so I’m ready to be out of here and done. I really like the work that I do, so it might be easier for me that some people because I’m not really scared, just excited,” Staiger said.
Staiger said he is set to begin working with the Asheville City Soccer Club upon graduation. Day is exploring leads in her field, and Hilliard and Lohwasser will find gap employment between graduation and graduate school.
“We’re in a very unprecedented space right now. I think it’s going to get better. I think we need very drastic measurable change. I think that change is going to happen whether we want it to or not,” Hilliard said.
