Grant Dillard
Contributing Writer
Several branches of the Murray State community have been affected severely by the COVID-19 pandemic including study abroad student, Camryn Clift.
Clift was studying abroad in Spain this semester, but was forced to leave two months early because of the coronavirus. Clift returned to the United States on March 12, just 24 hours before a 15-day quarantine was issued in the city she was staying in.
“In the weeks leading up to my departure, the news coverage in Spain had slowly shifted to basically only talking about the coronavirus,” Clift said. “My host parents began to talk about it more and more at our meals together, and were increasingly worried about the progression of the disease. My host mom had already begun to stock up on grocery supplies. It’s important to note that these supplies included water, because water is a limited resource in Spain, and so she had to make sure they had plenty in case they weren’t allowed to leave the apartment for a while.”
The night before leaving Spain, Clift went to a grocery store to purchase snacks for her family. The store was a madhouse, she said, and packed with people and empty shelves everywhere.
For Clift, there was a sense of urgency once the number of cases in Spain reached a certain point. She checked in on the news as the situation in Europe became more serious, and had been in constant contact with Murray State’s Education Abroad staff. Clift said the Education Abroad Office would have supported her decision to return home if she had wanted to, even before exchange students in Europe were required to return to the United States.
“I had gone through a tough roller coaster of trying to decide for myself if I wanted to come home over the course of several weeks, based upon news coverage and the response of other American universities to the situation in Europe,” Clift said. “The turning point for me was when cases in Spain doubled overnight between Sunday and Monday of the week that I came home. It was at that point that I confirmed with the Education Abroad staff that I wanted to come home. With that confirmation, they booked a flight for me that Thursday and I knew I was officially headed home.”
Clift said the rapidity of change from one day to the next was so great that it was hard for her to comprehend that she was actually leaving Spain. Clift was already packing her things on Wednesday night for her flight, which was around the time President Trump announced the European travel ban. Upon hearing the news, Clift’s friends and family were immediately texting her, worried about her ability to come home.
“The ban didn’t go into effect until Friday at midnight, and American citizens were still allowed to return to the U.S.,” Clift said. “But that announcement, made literally while I was packing to leave, added a certain gravity to the situation that wasn’t there before. With the travel ban, and hearing that a quarantine order was put into place in Alicante the day after I left, it really did feel like I got out just in time.”
Clift expresses her utmost gratitude to the Education Abroad staff for all they have done to help her academically. With their help, Clift withdrew from the University of Alicante in Spain and enrolled in 12 credit hours with Murray State. Currently, Clift is taking the classes she needs and is still on track to graduate on time.
“The fact that Murray moved to completely online coursework actually worked really well for me since I had to self-isolate the first two weeks that I was back in the United States, and I’m living at home with my parents during this time,” Clift said. “I would have had to commute if classes were still being held in person.”
Clift said the financial side of things have been exactly the same for her in quarantine as it was when she was in Spain. Murray State’s administration has been able to help her in this trying situation, even booking her flight back from Spain.
Despite being unable to earn credit for the work Clift did at the University of Alicante, the Education Abroad staff were able to collaborate with faculty in Clift’s major to build a suitable schedule for the rest of the spring semester. Clift was also able to join two full-semester classes with special help from the professors teaching those classes.
“I’ve been doing make-up work at the discretion of the professors for the material I missed in those classes,” Clift said. “However, since I’m taking a Spanish independent study course now, I guess you could say that the first half of that course consisted of my time in Spain. My fourth class is a second half-semester course, so I actually came back just in time to only have one week’s worth of makeup work.”
As for the self-quarantine process, Clift said it’s fairly pleasant. For her, it was nice to be with her support system once again after such a stressful period of her life.
During the two weeks after returning to the United States, Clift followed all of the guidelines given by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Clift never exhibited any symptoms and her temperature remained normal. Murray State even had a nurse practitioner with Primary Care call her every other day to check in on her during her self-quarantine period.
As for the future, Clift does not plan to study abroad again.
“My program in Spain was my third study abroad experience, so it wouldn’t make much sense, financially or academically, to study abroad again,” Clift said. “I planned for two years to ensure my courses would line up so that I could study abroad for an entire semester in Spain. Now that I’ve returned and I’m taking classes with Murray State to take the place of the credits I would have earned at the University of Alicante, there would be no feasible place in my remaining course schedule to study abroad again.”