Abstract:

Consciously or not, we always project, when we are faced with a new situation, expectation in regards with outcome. It is majorly built upon intrinsic well-grounded beliefs, but extrinsic passing contextual ones are also involved. Although education represents by its definition one of the most respectful and ethical environments and the academic one more so, by moving it into a virtual space contributed to its trivialization and managed, in some countries, to put it on the same level with other social media platforms utilized by students, who reacted in accordance.

In the context of the current pandemic situation, college freshmen have been confronted with a double adaptation scenario, an evolutionary ordinary one, transition from one education form to another and a contextual uncommon one, generated by the outburst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This meant double coping effort from their behalf, which in turn generated for some of them high levels of distrust and reluctance.

College represents a major event in the life of a human being and for many students implies relocation, which from a socio-psychological perspective could be associated with family nest leaving and a period of transition to emotional assumption and independence. The pandemic situation can be accounted for many firsts in a lot of people’s lives, especially for the young adults. Lockdowns implied in many countries’ heavy restrictions on the right to travel, to meet, to interact, etc., actions crucial in the period of passing from late adolescence to young adulthood.

The present research tries to identify how collateral aspects like lifestyle, physical appearance, self-esteem and eating habits of our respondent’s lives have evolved over a period of three months within the context of the pandemic situation. The research group consists of 73 college freshmen, studying at the Faculty of Business from the Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania and was isolated from a wider research group generated with the occasion of a research related to innovative methods for teaching physical education online. Data collection has been made with the aid of two questionnaires, an initial one administered on the 9th of November 2020 and a final one on the 9th of February 2021. Text mining techniques as well as statistical ones will be used for data processing as the quantitative and qualitative mix of collected data will allow it.

Keywords:

Lifestyle, self-esteem, eating habits, pandemic.