The student experience "does not come to a standstill" despite the pandemic. Reflections from the point of view of young UNAM students

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdown led to the suspension of all face-to-face academic activity at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and its transition to computerized distance learning. In addition to the modifications to the ways in which classes were taken and taught, this extraordinary event revealed the differentiated conditions in which the students’ community attend their studies. In an attempt to understand the student experience during this period, we established as our objective to explore how their practices and subjectivities were affected in the different spaces of belonging such as family, work and the school itself. To this end, between September and October 2021, while teaching was still at distance, we carried out in-depth interviews with young students of higher education at UNAM. The results show the diverse, tense and contrasting experiences in the different moments of the pandemic and the strategies the students implemented to give continuity to their university life.