‘I'll be getting my degree in the mail, but that has me feeling hollow’

This is the eighth episode in The Post’s coronavirus podcast series, which each week brings listeners inside a different person’s experience of the pandemic. Previous episodes have chronicled a week in the life of an emergency-room worker, an NBA player, a blues guitarist, a rancher, a minister, a librarian and a city council member.

In this episode, we peer inside the life of Rachel Leach, a 21-year-old student. The week that she recorded voice memos for The Post was supposed to be the week she graduated from the College of Saint Rose, in Albany, New York. But instead of parties and ceremonies, solitude marked the end of her college chapter.

All over the country this year, as graduations have been cancelled, students have been left to process major life transitions on their own. For those like Leach, whose path to attending and finishing college included many obstacles, the lack of communal celebration carries a unique emotional weight.

Listen to a week in her life, in her own words.

Share your story

Tell us how your life has changed due to the coronavirus outbreak, and help us share first-person accounts of life during the pandemic.

• Submit a voice recording (desktop only)
• Email us a voice memo (from your mobile device)

Previous episodes:

• 'Good luck, everybody'
• 'You never signed up for this’
• ‘I cannot hold it all’
• 'For me, it’s all the blues'
• 'First thing's first, I gotta beat this game'
• ‘It is a pretty significant hole in the system’
• ‘We grew up in agriculture—we’ve had a lot of experience of going without’

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• Sign up for the newsletter: washingtonpost.com/virusnewsletter
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• Subscribe to our daily news podcasts: washingtonpost.com/podcasts

Explore more first-person accounts of the pandemic:

A multimedia oral history of the virus's impact