Arts Students Lament Quiz | Reading, Intermediate English

Art Students Lament

A typical school day for Elon University junior Skyler Sajewski began at 7 a.m., starting with ballet, history, economics, and tap classes, then rehearsal for the upcoming musical. She would get back to her apartment around 11 p.m.  
 
Then, the COVID pandemic hit.  
 
It was normal for the musical theater major to be “constantly running from place to place” returned home to Florida to shelter in place. She’s worried about missing out on “literally all of it” in terms of preparing for her future career.

“To be a well-rounded musical theater performer, you have to have a certain set of skills and be really good at them,” Sajewski said. “And you know, I go to a school to constantly get better.”
Sajewski is not alone in her anxieties for the future. She has friends who are considering taking a semester — or even a year — off, realizing that an online arts education may not be worth it.  
 
When she returned home, Sajewski and her peers were faced with “Zoom University” — what many students are calling online classes — as musical theater majors. In last semester’s acting class, she and her fellow “MTs,” were “literally screaming in each other’s faces” when they were working on Greek theater.  
 
Into the screens of their laptops. 

For a “pretty demanding” class “where you really have to get into your body and your voice,” moving to remote learning required adjustments.  

“In acting, there’s a lot of, with permission, there’s a lot of touching,” Sajewski said.

Sajewski said she considered taking a gap year.  
 
“When I found out that classmates of mine were doing that, and that idea became real to me, it honestly freaked me out because I’ve always known that I was graduating in 2022 when I was going to move to New York and start my life. And for that to be affected by this unprecedented pandemic is, is really scary to me.”