Jenna Goldsmith

In fall 2020, then-Oregon State University-Cascades writing instructor Jenna Goldsmith asked her students keep journals about life after the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. As of this week, the over 100-page book including essays and more by her former students has become available for any and all to read in the new book “There is no College in COVID: Selections from the Oregon State University-Cascades COVID-19 Journaling Project.”

It may sound like old hat now that we’re all two-year veterans of the “new” normal, but there was a time when life felt like it had been turned upside down. The fear, confusion and disinformation afoot were disorienting. And when remarkable, challenging times hit, they can prove fruitful to creative minds.

The writings were produced in the course U-Engage, designed to acclimate first-year students to college life.

“The class sort of revolves around students learning about the university culture through different projects that get students talking to other people on campus, get students connected to essential services on campus. It’s a one-credit course that’s a space for students who are new on campus to create community,” Goldsmith said last week from Illinois, where she moved last summer to take a new teaching position.

Student-conducted interviews were key in the course, but because of COVID-19 restrictions, meeting in person stopped being an option. As fall quarter loomed that year, Goldsmith prepared to try something else.

“Students (couldn’t) meet with each other in person, and I didn’t want them to be spending more time on Zoom than they were already spending. So, I had to reconceptualize the major project in that class,” she said. “The assignment was that they’d write two journal entries per week, and if the students wanted them to be potentially public, they had to let me know at the beginning of the project.”

While some shied away from the idea of being published, according to Goldsmith, “most of the students were actually really excited about this going somewhere. I was really upfront with them about the potential to get their stories out there in a meaningful way.”

Goldsmith was determined to see the student body of work reach a wider audience and wrote the grant request that eventually funded the book, released Tuesday from Parafine Press, the self-publishing arm of Cleveland-based independent publisher Belt Publishing. Parafine is known for quality work, Goldsmith said.

“I knew that I wanted to self-publish it because there was a built-in audience there. I knew that we would recuperate any resources we put into self-publishing,” she said, ticking off a list of the book’s potential readers including OSU-Cascades staff, parents and community members.

The necessary $3,000, which covered all services of the press, including copy editing, design, layout and printing.

“I was just really excited about it and just crossing my fingers that it would get funded,” she said. The $3,000 grant comes from the OSU Foundation & Alumni Association’s Women’s Giving Circle, an alumni and friends group that during the 2020-21 school year awarded over $72,000 to 11 OSU projects.

Goldsmith had worked with the Women’s Giving Circle on a previous project at the OSU-Cascades campus.

“I just really enjoyed working with them,” she said. “They just had a really ethical process by which they thought about who they were going to fund. So when I was working on the project, I immediately thought about them.”

Goldsmith wrote the book’s introduction, which has a preface by Andrew Ketsdever, OSU-Cascades’ interim vice president. It’s available directly from beltpublishing.com, and Goldsmith hopes to get it in local bookstores.

“It’s a way for the university to also get some support,” Goldsmith said, noting that while 20% of sales money goes to Parafine, 80% goes toward funding scholarships at OSU-Cascades.

The student writers, Goldsmith said, “appreciated the opportunity to be able to talk about some things that were on their minds, in a space that felt in some ways, a little bit private, but in other ways, in solidarity with others.”

Along with essays, “There is no College in COVID” includes poetry, personal narratives and even some pieces that riff off popular song.

Themes of the pieces include yearning for the former simplicity of safe gatherings, missing friends and family, and coping with the difficulties of virtual learning.

“I think it’s going to be something that people are interested in,” she said. “Because it’s truly an authentic voice of the student experience, and a window into the Cascades campus that I think is important.”