Jenna Goldsmith led her class
at the Oregon State University-
Cascades campus in creating a
book made up of journal entries
they wrote during the pandemic.
Students document pandemic life in new book
By DAVID JASPER
THE BULLETIN
In fall 2020, then-Oregon State Uni-
versity-Cascades writing instructor
Jenna Goldsmith asked her students to
keep journals about life after the arrival
of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, the over 100-page book
including essays and more by her for-
mer students is available for all to read
in the new book “There is no College
in COVID: Selections from the Oregon
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State University-Cascades COVID-19
Journaling Project.”
It may sound like old hat now that
we’re all nearly two-year veterans of
the “new” normal, but there was a time
when life felt like it had been turned
upside down. The fear, confusion and
disinformation afoot were disorient-
ing. And when remarkable, challenging
times hit, they can prove fruitful to cre-
ative minds.
The writings were produced in the
course U-Engage, designed to accli-
mate first-year students to college life.
Student-conducted interviews
were key in the course, but because of
COVID-19 restrictions, meeting in per-
son stopped being an option. As fall
quarter loomed that year, Goldsmith
prepared to try something else.
“Students (couldn’t) meet with each
other in person, and I didn’t want them
to be spending more time on Zoom
than they were already spending. So, I
had to reconceptualize the major proj-
ect in that class,” Goldsmith said from
Illinois, where she moved last summer
to take a new teaching position. “The
assignment was that they’d write two
journal entries per week, and if the stu-
dents wanted them to be potentially
public, they had to let me know at the
beginning of the project.”
While some shied away from the
idea of being published, according to
Goldsmith, “most of the students were
actually really excited about this going
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