Friday, November 13, 2020
These Carnegie Mellon students condensed the campus experience into an app
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: For college students, a big university campus far from home can present challenges initially to making new friends, asking strangers for academic help and keeping up with everything available around them.
Now imagine what it’s like — especially for freshmen — if the school in which they enrolled went all or partly remote for the fall before they ever set foot on campus.
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I honestly had not heard of this app before reading this article but I think that it is a great idea! I wish I would have known about it sooner and had downloaded it towards the beginning of the semester. The fact that this app was developed as a class project is also pretty amazing, and also makes it more true to the CMU experience. It seems like a really good way to connect students virtually in as close to the same ways that they might have been connecting in person as possible. This app seems like a good idea for universities other than Carnegie Mellon as well. I think that it would be a fun opportunity for other universities to collaborate with the team who made this app to work on similar apps for their campuses. I will definitely be looking into downloading this app for the second semester so that I can check it out and meet new people on and off campus.
Yeah exactly, reiterating what the previous comment said, I have never heard of this application and wish I had known about it sooner! There are so many super talented students at CMU, especially in the STEM/CS field, that work extremely hard on these projects, like making applications and I feel like I get zero recognition! Well, maybe more recognition than the arts but still like how come I've never heard of this. I feel like there's a lacking support system at CMU at least major wise, I feel like i never know what other students are up to and a lot of my friends are architecture majors or civil engineering and they make some pretty cool stuff but no one ever knows! Anyways, this app sounds really cool and I think it was a smart idea and I will definitely go download it, and I wish I had known about it sooner.
I am honestly surprised that something like this didn't come around sooner. If not only just a site that condensed all CMU's resources that might be relevant for a freshman or anyone joining the CMU community this year. Going above and beyond like these developers did is honestly just an added bonus. Like Mia said above, there are many talented and driven individuals who could do something like this and really make it work, so I'm glad it did happen. As a sophomore with already established relationships and a close group of friends, I can't truly empathize with the incoming freshman experience, but I can really take a look back at what I took for granted last year. The ability to have orientation counselors with you for the week leading up to classes, showing you around and, well, getting you oriented is something that I feel like a lot of us really regarded with contempt, for lack of a better term. I really hope that this app is helpful for any CMU student who is joining the community and maybe it can be used as a supplemental resource for years to come as well.
I read this article before seeing it on newsquiz, and though it seems interesting and innovative, I did not get the motivation to download and try this out. Though I think it is useful to have a new platform to connect with students to make up for what we lack during covid such as passing people in hallways, meeting people in classes, and even missing out on orientation, I find it hard to have people be consistently active on media. It is so easy for students to flake, ghost, and completely cut out media, and in this sense, friends and commitments. I feel as though students at every school are already taking advantage of the technology and platforms available such as Instagram, facebook, and snapchat to accomplish the same thing. If this app does take off despite these circumstances, it will be able to continue on after covid as a way to meet people. It is similar to a dating app, but more of a find friends app.
I’ve spent a lot of this year so far frustrated about the lack of ‘campus experience’ -for myself, my friends and for the new students this year, both freshmen and first year grads. There’s been so many times, talking to a new student, where we’ve gone ‘and we were supposed to do *this* and *this* and *bonding activity* and it’s normally like *this*’ and we all end the conversation mourning the lack of that, especially for fully remote students who feel less a part of their class than they should. While an app clearly can’t replicate the full ‘experience’, I’m glad that people have put something together to promote friendship and collaboration, which are probably the hardest things to foster right now with virtual classes and highly limited campus time for even the students in Pittsburgh. I haven’t used the app myself, and feel established enough on campus, pre-pandemic, that I probably won’t get it, but I can absolutely see its use being helpful for first-year students who, like most others, are frustrated with their education right now.
Wow, this is such a cool product to come from a couple of our fellow students. It has been a very sad and frustrating semester because I haven’t felt like a Carnegie Mellon student at all. I’m so removed from my favorite campus spots, seeing my class friends of different majors on the sidewalks, staying up late at night at the UG, it all feels so far from me now. Even if it’s on another screen, this app provides students, especially new students, with feeling like we are still a tight community. I’m also very disappointed that this is the first time I’m hearing about this app. I know it’s a campus joke that drama kids are their own cult and never know anything outside of our own community, but something like this should have been heavily bumped to the students. In separated times like this, any sort of unity is so amazing for student morale and work ethic.
Even being in Pittsburgh this semester, I have certainly felt the effects of an empty campus before, so I can only imagine what it's like for those learning entirely remotely. That sense of connection that I expected to make with my peers is much more difficult to find, so I'm not surprised that some of the amazing students here have tried to create a way to supplement that experience digitally. I have not personally tried the app, but seeing as how it has 400+ users, I might actually want to check it out. The sense of community in a school is an incredible driver for my personal work experience, and that has been quite lacking this semester, so I hope trying out this app will be able to compensate for the lost connection I'm sure is being felt across the board.
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