Editor’s note: Adapting to Coronavirus is a regular series spotlighting the ways a global pandemic is changing the everyday lives of people in Western Pennsylvania.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused global disruption to governments, economies and the daily lives of millions. College students haven’t been left out of that mix — students such as Claudia Huggins, whose first year at the University of Pittsburgh has been cut short.

Huggins, 19, from Beaver County, had been active in student media classes as a high school student. As a freshman at Pitt, it seemed only natural to double major in public and professional writing and psychology. She had loved her experience so far, but now, she’s been urged to vacate the campus.

Many institutions across the country are transitioning to online classes. Pitt, along with several colleges and universities in the area, extended spring breaks and eliminated face-to-face instruction for the rest of the semester. Pitt students were asked to vacate their dorms last week in exchange for a prorated refund on their prepaid room and board.

“While this is uncharted territory for Pitt and many other academic institutions, our community has already demonstrated remarkable resiliency and flexibility in the face in this pandemic,” Chancellor Patrick Gallagher wrote in a letter to campus.

For Huggins, it’s just bizarre.

During spring break, Huggins said she and her family noticed colleges and universities around the country had been implementing precautions — canceling sporting events, instituting online classes or shutting down altogether for the rest of the month. Still, knowing that there were no cases yet in Allegheny County, Huggins didn’t expect Pitt to take such drastic measures.

“We were so shocked,” she said.

The move makes sense to her in retrospect — the university houses students from all over the world. And now that Allegheny County has announced 48 cases of covid-19 as of Monday, Huggins said she feels safer at home.

Still, she is lonely. She still sees her old roommate regularly, as they live only five minutes away each other in their Beaver County town of Freedom. But she misses two of her closest friends, who returned home to California.

She also misses her life in the city, the energy of Oakland that she had gotten used to in the last five months. She’s not used to the lack of places to study, and not being able to go out for a bite to eat.

“I can’t wait to visit when this virus has blown over and in August when I move into my apartment.”

During her first months at school, Oakland became her new home. Her Maps application on her phone even started recognizing her dorm as her house. Now that she’s back home, she routinely gets notifications that she is “40 minutes from home.”

“Going from a small town to a city was so great,” she said. “Knowing I won’t be living there until at least August is kind of hard.”

Huggins heard from most of her professors, detailing how her courses will proceed online, but it’s uncharted territory.

One of her biggest projects, for a journalism class, was canceled. It was a reporting project, involving dozens of in-person interviews with sources in Pittsburgh. Now that the course is online and social distancing has become imperative, there’s no way to complete it. She also has no idea how she’ll move forward with a written exam for which she had been preparing, and she’s nervous about succeeding in a coding class, where face-to-face, hands-on demonstration has been helpful.

What’s more, Huggins and other students won’t have access to campus resources, such as the library. She won’t get to see her friends to hang out or study together. She understands and supports the university’s decision to close, but she’s disappointed she’ll be missing out on part of her college experience.

“I’m definitely going to look back on this one day and tell my grandkids that I didn’t get to do half of my freshman year,” Huggins said.

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