WITHDRAWN: I Don't Know What World I Live in Anymore": Student Narratives of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Purpose and Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of social work students in significant ways, including through the disruption of practicum placements, transition to online learning, and development or exacerbation of social, emotional, and academic stressors. Impacts have been extensive, but also individually variable (Paceley, et al., in press). Among emotional responses, students have described feeling anxious, depressed, guilty, isolated, and triggered as they navigated intensive isolation, geographic relocations, and economic strain (Cole, et al., 2021). While the pandemic represents a collective or shared historical trauma event (Hirschberger, 2018), individual experiences, responses, and meaning-making around the crisis might vary widely, affecting our ability to cope and heal effectively. Methods: This study presents findings from a narrative analysis of in-depth interviews with six Bachelor’s and Master’s in Social Work (BSW and MSW) students. Participants were recruited through email invitations sent to all BSW and MSW students from a large, midwestern university and out of 67 participants, were identified as providing particularly poignant and descriptive narratives of their pandemic experience. We applied a holistic content analysis (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zibler, 1998) to identify a core pattern within each narrative, represented by a single in-vivo quote as well as identifying subthemes, often taking the form of tensions, within in narrative. Results: Among the six participants, three core patterns represent an image or phrase which captured the emotional essence of the experience (“I don’t know what world I live in anymore” and “I’m better suited to a war than this” and "my Walden Pond") and three represent a significant metaphor or narrative tool used to explain or describe the experience (“all my anchors are gone” and “story time” and "identity upside down"). Conclusions and Implications: Findings indicate adaptive and maladaptive forms of meaning-making among BSW and MSW students experiencing collective trauma and implications suggest ways in which storytelling and other narrative therapy tools might be used to intervene into the meaning-making and healing process.