When the bus dropped me off at campus for the first time, I saw my best friend standing, waiting for me. She had already been on campus for about a week and had run from the dining hall to the Welcome Center to greet me. Seeing her felt like meeting an old friend; our past months had been filled with Zoom calls and rants about classes, friends and family. We laughed at the fact that my luggage was on the wrong bus and waited together for it to arrive. Standing together felt normal and natural, except for one thing: it was our first time meeting in person.

Arriving to campus after an entirely virtual semester felt like two worlds colliding, a crossover episode of my online life and real life. Here were the people I had only seen in Zoom classes, — little boxes of people, muting and unmuting. Names I had only read in group chats or Instagram handles for the past nine months. Until January, New York University Abu Dhabi was just another fairytale, one that I was observing online, but was not actually experiencing. It wasn’t until I arrived on campus that it actually became a tangible reality.

In all honesty, the past months of isolation were extremely tough. Not being on campus made it difficult to feel connected to the school. Studying felt futile, since I hadn’t even seen the school since my Candidate Weekend. The one thing that helped me feel even a remote sense of belonging was talking to other students.

I joined Student Interest Groups and tried to engage as much as possible virtually. I spent hours on Zoom with girls from Veggie Might, a SIG I was the treasurer for. Some of my classmates set up informal book clubs. Sometimes, I called people to help me with languages, or just to talk.

After spending so much time alone, arriving on campus was overwhelming for many first years. Not only did we need to adjust to living in a new place, our arrival on campus took place after classes began. However, even in the midst of trying to figure out where the dining hall was located, how to do laundry and where the best study spots are, we still managed to find ways to socialize.

There are a lot of weird things about meeting new people, but there are even more when you’ve seen them online for so long previously— I joked around with my friends that they were finally 3D, not just screens.

One of the surprising things about online versus in-person first impressions was seeing people’s heights. For some reason, I had assumed that some of my peers were much shorter or taller than they actually were. Yerkebulan Imanbayev, Class of 2024, shared similar sentiments as he experienced people frequently coming over to tell him they were not expecting him to be as tall as he is.

Imanbayev also shared his reflections on how conversations and language change during in person interactions. “You’re so used to using emojis with people,” he explained. In person, we’re left with conversations of spoken words and body language. After months online, normal speech could feel unnatural.

Starting university life during a pandemic is also difficult for a multitude of other reasons, and making new friends can feel uncomfortable. Every interaction puts you at risk of exposure, and branching out to meet new people not only creates the potential for an awkward lunch conversation, but also a very real possibility for one to contract the virus. Communicating boundaries and consent can always be difficult, but it has become the forefront in our daily lives. How do you ask someone you just met to put their mask back on when lunch ends and you start studying together? Is it rude to ask someone not to hug you? Being surrounded by brand new people makes navigating this process even more difficult.

Another challenge of adjusting to campus life is the restriction on the number of people that can meet at once. While necessary to keep us safe, the policy forces first years to narrow their circle much earlier. In previous years, we might have met in large groups for informal gatherings or SIG events, but that’s not possible anymore. Now group meetings have to be planned, tallied and invited. You can’t casually bring along a friend or tag along to an existing group.

NYUAD switched from existing only in my head to a concrete place I was suddenly thrown into. Making friends online and then turning my “internet friends” into real ones was one of the strangest things of the past year. Despite the challenges and adjustments involved, starting university in the middle of a pandemic will surely leave the Class of 2024 with some interesting stories to tell.