“I’m pretty close with my bosses and they had no idea what was going to happen,” Muehring said. “They tried to give us the most information on the dilemma as they could.”

Since the shutdown on campus, finding a replacement had to come quickly. During spring break, he said he decided to make a little extra cash as a newspaper route boy.

Once class transferred to online for the rest of the semester, he chose to stay in Dubuque, Iowa, and continue delivering papers to neighborhoods. He wakes up at the crack of dawn and does three paper routes a week to be able to pay for his rent in Ames where he is currently not living. 

“Luckily I had a job in line or else I’d be screwed with finding a way to pay for rent,” Muehring said.

Being inside for the rest of the academic year was not what he was expecting. He said the possibility of it continuing into the summer made him nervous. This summer he will be interning under client management in the benefits division for Cottingham and Butler in Dubuque. He planned to take what he learned from the classroom and apply it to his internship, but there’s a possibility of it being virtual rather than face to face.

“The next month is unsure what could happen,” Muehring said. “It’s supposed to peak but it could be very different. Depending on what happens, the internship could be online.”

On the bright side, the weather is what he looks forward to during this chaos.