This year has upended life and required everyone to adjust expectations and plans. For our recent grads just starting out in college or careers, it posed an additional layer of uncertainty and we wanted to see how they were navigating COVID-19 at college and beyond. We hope Poly prepared them for life’s challenges. If you’re an alumnus and would like to share your story with our community, please contact the Alumni Office. We’d love to hear from you.

Meet our first of three profiles, Chloe Sun ’19, who is attending Pomona College this year remotely.

Chloe Sun ‘19

“Although I prefer in-person classes,” she said, “I’m glad my school has taken necessary precautions in light of COVID-19. Remote learning definitely has its downsides. One is its exacerbation of socioeconomic and health disparities. Some of these issues were addressed in spring 2020, when students took action to demand equitable grading policies and proper financial support. Now that we are preparing to begin another online semester, the main issue I am personally facing is the difference between online and in-person college experiences. My professors have been working hard to make learning accessible and effective for all their students, but I do struggle with learning and focusing online. I also miss being on campus with my peers and with faculty. I can’t wait to see them again, hopefully in the near future!”

How well did Poly prepare you for your college experience?

“I adjusted to college life pretty quickly,” Sun said,  “thanks in part to Poly’s educational philosophy being so similar to that of liberal arts colleges. Both prioritize small, discussion-based classes, which help foster student-teacher connections. In college, your teachers become research partners, advisors, and lifelong mentors. My Poly experience definitely helped me be more comfortable in these collaborative learning environments. To this day, I still stay in touch with one or two teachers at Poly, and I’d love to reach out to more this year to catch up.”

What does the future look like for you in 2021?

“This semester,” Sun said, “I’m continuing research with my school’s lab, using image regression to detect scrolling in video game screenshots. I’m also excited and a little nervous to serve as a teaching assistant for a computer science class I just took in the fall. But aside from that, I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do this year. It’s hard to even know what summer or even spring will look like for us all. My hope is that by fall 2021, we will have returned to some sense of normalcy, and I’ll finally step foot onto campus as a junior, having left as a first-year.”