Day 150: Through the Eyes of a Freshman

Day 150: August 23, 2020
Global Cases:  23, 578, 523; Deaths: 812, 190
Egypt Cases: 97, 340; Deaths: 5, 262

Youssef Ahmed Husseiny, Freshman Student 

I joined AUC last year and I was very excited to start this new journey especially after living in Qatar for 15 years. 

I decided to live in the dorms, and the first semester was a lot of fun and I enjoyed being part of an amazing community. At the time, I was very excited for the coming spring semester and wanted to do more things and enjoy more time with my friends whom I made in the dorms.

But in the spring 2020 semester, unfortunately and as we all know, we faced the novel COVID-19 virus; out of nowhere and after almost a month-and-a-half of classes on campus, we had to quarantine because of this virus. 

I didn’t have my family with me in Cairo, and I couldn’t travel back to Qatar because airports were closed. I was confused and didn’t know what to do, but the university gave us a one-week break where it shifted to online learning.

I was lucky, because I had two of my best friends staying with me in the dorms. We were basically having fun most of the time at the beginning without facing any problems because we were essentially still at the university campus and still engaging in the same activities.

Suddenly, food became a problem because  all the restaurants closed early due to the curfew, and we used to wake up late, so unfortunately it was hard to order and we had no food to cook. Later on we had to manage our time to be able to order food early and find something to eat. 

We continued the semester online and then moved to off campus dorms where we managed to have fun together and study at the same time. 

During the online lectures some professors were great, but others found it hard on themselves and the students. I am sad that I’m not going to spend more time on campus and enjoy my time there during the fall semester (which starts in less than two weeks), but I am still excited and I know we’ll be back soon and will get the chance to enjoy university life again.

I was studying computer engineering at first, but I didn’t like it at all and decided to shift my major to business administration because I found That I excelled in business and working with numbers.

I even realized that I studied similar subjects in high school such as accounting and economics and I used to get really high grades, a fact which helped me a lot last year because I didn’t find face any difficulties while studying. 

As a freshman, I certainly wanted to spend more time at university, however given the circumstances, I couldn’t because of the coronavirus.

My hopes are that we would be able to go back to campus soon and resume our normal activities.

For The Caravan‘s previous diary entries in Arabic and English go to our COVID-19 Special Coverage page.