I remember when they first announced that campus was shutting down for a week and thinking everyone was overreacting. I shook my head at the mass panic and rolled my eyes at the hysteria that the media seemed to foster. I told myself it would all be over in a couple of weeks and everything would be back to normal. In just a few weeks we would forget about the Coronavirus scare and my life and everything I had planned would resume.
I’ve never been so wrong in my life.
In less than a month, the pandemic will reach its first birthday. For a year that seemed so characterized by staying at home and staying away, it’s been one of the most formative years of my life. It’s made me realize what is important. I had spent the year prior building up my confidence and strengthening my mental health. This past year has shown me the holes in that armor, where my mental health was contingent on me keeping busy. I’ve done my best to work through that too, but I admit, it still is hard. I’ve been working on becoming more attuned to what my needs are whether they be physical, emotional, or mental. I’ve been trying to make sure I’m getting enough time to relax and do the things I enjoy. I’ve made it a point to work out regularly because I know I feel happier and healthier when I do. I take the time to cook and eat healthy meals that I enjoy. I still miss being able to be out and about, but I’m learning to enjoy myself from my own apartment too.
I dedicated myself to work. As an essential employee at a retail store, I’ve worked through the pandemic (and a coin shortage) and it’s revealed to me people’s true colors. I’ve seen people refuse to wear masks, social distance, and the general lack of care some people have for others. I’ve also seen some people take extra care to show their appreciation for my work. I’ve bonded with co-workers (as work for a while was my only social circle). But I also found that working six days a week with the mindset of “Well I’m not doing anything else, so I might as well make money” was also not good for my mental health. I learned to demand breaks, put up boundaries, and take into consideration what is good and healthy for me.
Overall, I’d say I’m a better, happier, and healthier person that I was a year ago, and that’s all we can ask for, right?
And yet, graduation from college looms in the near future and I find I’m not sure how to move on.
It feels like a lie. I was supposed to have a full junior year. I was supposed to study abroad in the summer between my junior and senior year. I was supposed to have a fun senior year with my friends, my classmates, my teachers. I wasn’t supposed to question what form commencement might take in order to best comply with the current health precautions. I feel like I didn’t receive the experience I signed up for and now I’m meant to move into the next phase of life? It feels like there’s loose ends. I didn’t think the end to my college career would be so… anticlimactic.
What’s worse is the expectation to move into a world that is so uncertain. Vaccines are rolling out, and they seem to bring a light to the end of the tunnel. A sense of hope and new beginnings are spreading. Will the pandemic be over in another month or another year? Will normalcy resume all at once or in slow phases spread out over the next five years? How will this post-pandemic, post-virtual world look once being in social settings isn’t a public health risk anymore?
I try to make a general plan for my future, but how can I when I don’t know what society will even be like? I don’t know if my first day at a job in my field post-graduation will be at home on Zoom or in an office. Will I get to show off my favorite blazer or will I be conducting work in pajama pants and fuzzy socks? Will I even find a job in the next year or will I continue to work my retail job?
I know it’s time to move into a different phase of my life. It’s time to say goodbye to college and begin my career, something I’m extremely excited for. And while I’m eager for new beginnings, I find myself stuck and confused as to how they got here so fast. I’m not sure if that’s a side effect of graduating in a pandemic or graduating in general.
I guess this is just another lesson the pandemic will leave me with (once it actually leaves). I may love to plan, but I need to learn to adapt and take life day by day. I can’t let myself fret over what I do not know. All I can do is make the best of the situation I was given and continuously work to make it better. I feel like I’ve been standing still, preparing and waiting, but maybe it’s time to take a step forward.
