Our own RC first-year student Rellian deGraaf has documented the U of M first-year student experience during the pandemic in a short film called "COVID-19 Year in the RC".   

Rellian focuses on the experience of students that are part of the RC, and includes interviews with two students and an instructor that detail some of the struggles that they encountered during this time, as well as a few of the remarkable solutions that students and faculty came up with to make this year successful despite the challenges.  

“I realized that I was living through a unique experience that people were genuinely interested in. My goal with this video was to make a record of the thoughts and feelings of RC students (mostly first-year students) during this unique time in history. It is my hope that this video will be valuable to anyone (right now or in the future) that wants to understand what it was like to experience college during this global pandemic.” 


Rellian created this video as an Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program assistant with the RC Podcast, which documents experiences of students, alumni, staff, and faculty in the Residential College.