FARMINGTON — Hayley Valdivia and her boyfriend, Jon Cruz, packed her belongings into her car Wednesday as she moved out of Scott Hall at the University of Maine at Farmington.

“This is my goodbye,” Valdivia, a senior, said.

As she struggled to get a stand-up vacuum cleaner into the car, he carried a storage unit to add to the load of goods.

She was moving in with Cruz, an emergency medical technician who lives in Farmington and works for North East Mobile Health in Rockport.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put a damper on Valdivia’s and other college students activities.

A student teacher at Madison Elementary School in Madison, she has been assembling education packets for her students and does Zoom calls once a week with them. She said she is hoping to still get her teaching certificate.

With six weeks left in her senior year, she said the University of Maine System told students they would finish their education remotely after spring break.

“It’s kind of hard,” she said, to continue studying and student-teaching remotely.

As for Cruz, he said he’s doing his best to stay healthy and safe. He just received a new JOP-100 face mask, an upgrade from an N95 mask, to use on the job, he said.

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