Its a really weird time for us because I feel like we've worked so hard to get here, and we were really excited to celebrate this accomplishment, and it just kind of has fizzled out, said Ariane Lemieux, 27, who will be completing her internal medicine residency in Dallas. The worst part, I would say, is not being able to say goodbye and thank you to all my mentors and friends that I've made through med school that I would consider my family now. It's not being able to close the book.

Edwards said graduating during a pandemic feels anticlimactic.

The saddest part is that all of this happens so fast that I haven't been able to see my classmates in person in two months, and we're not all going to be in the same place at the same time again, maybe ever, Edwards said. It's not the way that I pictured med school ending, especially being the first class. When we came in, we were the only students in the building, and so we really felt like it was ours, and we really bonded like a family.

This year, Match Day when graduating medical students across the country simultaneously open their match letters to discover where they will be completing their residencies for the next three to seven years fell at 11:00amMarch 20. But instead of ripping apart envelopes at their planned brunch with classmates and family, Dell Medical students had to settle for clicking open emails together over Zoom.

People could raise their hand when they wanted to announce, said Lemieux, who organized the virtual celebration with a classmate. They would tell everybody on Zoom ... I'm going to Portland, and we all cheer. Except you actually can't hear everybody because everyone's on mute.

Clinical rotations for Dell Medical students were also canceled in March. Instead of caring for patients face to face, Lemieux finished the requirement from home, compiling and sharing resources on how to talk to patients with COVID-19 and their families. Similarly, she completed her intensive care unit requirement via online modules and virtual simulations.

But Lemieux and other students were still able to contribute from home through Dell Medicals newly created global pandemic elective. They performed screenings and contract tracing, worked on models and helped shape Austins policy response, among other tasks, Johnston said.

I think it was, oddly, a really good way to redirect them, Johnston said, because now they've got all of that knowledge and experience, which they're going to absolutely need in their new jobs after graduation.

For now, Lemieuxs hospital in Dallas isnt allowing residents to treat COVID-19 patients in an attempt to limit the number of people exposed to the virus. But graduates like Edwards, who is heading to Detroit to complete his residency in emergency medicine at Henry Ford Hospital, will be thrust onto the front lines almost immediately.

He and his wife, Kate Spitz, who also graduated from Dell Medical this week and matched at the same hospital, recently returned from a house-hunting trip to Michigan. Last month, they canceled their wedding and got married over Zoom. Later, they nixed their honeymoon.

But as much as they had to give up, Edwards said hes more eager than ever to get to work. His biggest fear is giving coronavirus to somebody else. Edwards and Spitz are already plotting out logistics toprevent that from happening, like keeping the COVID laundry from the regular laundry and driving a COVID car and a non-COVID car.

We just want to take every precaution because we believe this is real, Edwards said. We know this is real.

For Edwards, the COVID-19 crisis has only reinforced why he left engineering to go into health care. But he said the pandemic has also spurred in him another feeling of responsibility.

I think the medical field as a whole is kind of disappointed in the public to see how much misinformation has been really touted and trotted out as the truth, Edwards said. And I think it's incumbent on my generation and my classmates to really gain the trust of the public back.

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin and Austin Mayor Steve Adler, a former Texas Tribune board chairman, have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of themhere.

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After an 'Anticlimactic' Virtual Goodbye, Dell Medical School's Inaugural Class Heads to the Front Lines of the Pandemic - Pulitzer Center on Crisis...