When Golden Globe-winning actress and director Angela Bassett delivered the 2024 commencement address to Spelman College seniors in May, Kristen Rias sat among the more than 500 graduates, listening with excitement. It was a shining moment, markedly different from the lackluster start to Rias’ college experience during the coronavirus pandemic.
Rias began her freshman year attending classes virtually instead of in person.
“Learning online was boring and it lacked fun, leaving me uninterested,” said Rias.
The pandemic might have affected her mentally, but not academically. Rias, a political science major, graduated summa cum laude.
The 22-year-old was featured in a 2020 article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that examined the pandemic’s toll on students from primary grades through college.
At the time, Rias said she felt “emotionally drained, mentally drained” being “stuck” all day in a room taking online classes from her mom’s Union City home.
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
Online learning actually began for her before she started at Spelman. She’d been virtual since March 2020, taking classes as a senior through North Springs Charter High School. To help her cope, she turned to painting, taking walks near a lake, listening to music by new artists and engaging in online mental health checks with her peers.
The lowest point came when Rias moved out of her mom’s house into an apartment so she could have a little freedom to venture out without risking the chance of exposing her mom to COVID-19.
“During this time, I felt the most lonely because I was tasked with living alone and completing college online,” said Rias.
Seven months later, Spelman reopened and Rias moved on campus. She attended her first in-person class in August 2021 and was overjoyed.
“I felt the true sisterhood of Spelman,” she said. “I enjoy learning in person more than virtual, so that transition was great. Socially, I began to flourish again.”
Credit: Mariana Palancares
Credit: Mariana Palancares
Also featured in the AJC’s 2020 story about distance learning was Mariana Palancares, 17, now a senior at School of the Arts at Central Gwinnett High School in Lawrenceville.
In 2020 she was an eighth grader at Clarke Middle School in Athens when her father died from COVID-19. The whole family tested positive for the virus and recovered except her father, 48-year-old restaurant worker Manuel Palancares, who succumbed after a three-week battle.
Because of the restrictions on public gatherings, Mariana and her family couldn’t hold a funeral for her dad. Instead, they had a Zoom memorial. Her mother, Lina Van Bennekom, said she had to pick up her husband’s ashes “without even leaving our car.”
At the time, Van Bennekom told the AJC that Mariana was an “above-average student” whose academic performance had diminished.
“It’s obvious she can’t concentrate at a computer in her home after all she’s been through,” said Van Bennekom.
It was a tumultuous time in Mariana’s family, not only emotionally but financially as well. Her father died without a will, and their house and vehicles were in his name only.
“We were totally caught off guard; we were not prepared for his death,” said Van Bennekom. To increase her income, she switched careers, after 20 years in education, to become a worker’s comp and general liability specialist. The new job required Mariana to transfer to the Gwinnett County School system. In the process, she lost some academic credits
“While I was ahead in science, I was behind in math,” said Mariana. “I had to take my first semester of math at the same time I had to take my second semester of math.”
Credit: Rebecca Wright for the Atlanta J
Credit: Rebecca Wright for the Atlanta J
Clinical psychologist R. Johnson-Verwayne told the AJC in 2020 that the pandemic had created “the most complex psychological situation” she had even seen in her career, and she expressed concern about the long-term effects it would have on children. She believed it would fuel anxiety and depression and predicted that too much screen time from computers and smartphones would contribute to Zoom fatigue in students who spent time learning virtually.
Four years later, Verwayne-Johnson has detected “a noticeable impact on social skills as well as an increase in diagnosable social anxiety. Behavioral problems have increased for elementary school-age children who would have been in K-5 during the pandemic,” she said. “Depression and the inability to tolerate stress has been pervasive across the board.”
While she acknowledges that “there are some technological advances, particularly via telework, as a result of the shelter-in-place mandates,” she said recovering from the impact of COVID-19 will be long-lasting. “It will take us years to recover from the emotional impact of sudden isolation for such a long period of time. I would even go as far to call it shared trauma.”
She stressed the importance of acknowledging that the population’s youth has lived through an historical event in their development that no one else alive today has experienced before, and said professionals “are paying attention and trying to find solutions.”
Meanwhile, the isolation of COVID-19 had some upsides. Rias said that the time of statewide shelter-in-place orders helped to build her confidence.
“My mom and I always say I grew the most during that time,” Rias said. “I was forced to spend time with me and only me, and it helped me tremendously.”
The Grant Park resident now teaches at Ivy Preparatory Academy at Kirkwood, a charter school for girls in Atlanta, while pursuing a master’s degree in elementary education at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
As a teacher she strives “to mold young girls using the values I learned at Spelman. I teach my girls about sisterhood in everything that they do.” Ultimately, she would like to serve on the board of education for Atlanta Public Schools.
In 2022, Rias’ Maltese poodle mix Cody, which kept her company through some of her toughest times during the pandemic, died. But this summer she brought home a new puppy, Milo, which is helping fill the void.
As for Mariana, after she graduates in May 2025 she plans to go to college to study economics. On her wish list of colleges are Duke, Tulane and Emory. She’d like to work as a marketing consultant someday.
“I’m so proud of Mariana, everything she has overcome,” said Van Bennekom. “I am so proud of both of my daughters,” she added. “We’ve come together in a way that we never imagined that we could come together. We are a team, and we communicate much more openly than we used to. We know that we depend on each other to make this work. It’s been such a long journey, but I couldn’t have done it without both of them. I’m so proud every day that they put forth their best effort.”
