The Muhlenberg College Green on Mar. 13, the day before students were forced to leave campus. Photo courtesy of Sophie MacKay ’20.

“I am not a courageous person by nature. I have simply discovered that, at certain key moments in this life, you must find courage in yourself, in order to move forward and live. It is like a muscle and it must be exercised, first little, and then more and more. All the really exciting things possible during the course of a lifetime require a little more courage than we currently have. A deep breath and a leap.”

– John Patrick Shanley, American playwright and screenwriter

I had only landed back on the East Coast at Newark Airport five hours before the dreaded email came out that would change the rest of our year and potentially the rest of our lives. Spring break had just barely ended, and I desperately didn’t want to leave my family, who were struggling through incredibly terrifying medical challenges, but I had to get back to school because I had business to finish. I needed to perform my senior recital, and, most importantly, I had to graduate. If I had known that Muhlenberg was going to bar its doors only hours later, I probably would have just stayed home. 

Luckily, I lived in an off-campus house this year, so technically the college couldn’t force me to leave. So I stayed in Allentown for the next couple of weeks. I stayed until there was absolutely no point in staying anymore. I was planning to move back home to Portland, OR, after graduation anyway. The move just happened a few months early. Once Summer Music Theater and graduation were officially canceled, there was no hope of school resuming in person on Apr. 13, and, therefore, there were no other reasons for me to stay on the East Coast. In a matter of 48 hours, my boyfriend and I packed up all our stuff into his tiny, two-door Volkswagen convertible and started the drive across the country. 

Photo courtesy of Sophie MacKay ’20.

We made the drive in a total of five days, driving for about nine hours each day. Our road trip didn’t quite live up to our expectations of all the touristy adventures we would have had over the summer, but I am nevertheless grateful for the experience, because have you ever had a National Park all to yourself? It’s a pretty magical place to be. 

For the first week we were back in Portland, we had to stay in an adorable Airbnb just a few blocks from my house. My 19-year-old brother has testicular cancer, and because he was only a few weeks out of chemotherapy, his immune system was nowhere near where it should be. His compromised immune system was part of the reason I was going to try and stay in Allentown, especially since I had just been exposed to hundreds of people in both the Portland and Newark airports. While I was so glad to be back in my city, it was incredibly bizarre to be “living” a few blocks away from my childhood home, knowing my family was there, but unable to see them, hug them, spend time with them. Once we were deemed healthy and fully disinfected, we finally made it to our final destination on Mar. 28. 

There is truly no point in trying to sugar coat it: as students, especially college seniors, our situation sucks. A lot. And no amount of throwback graduation pictures people post on Facebook is going to change that. In fact, that only reminds us, the class of 2020, that we will not get everything they did. I have to keep telling myself, almost like a mantra, that the class of 2020 will go down in history. And that always makes me feel temporarily better. But then, every few days, I will get a notification from my calendar app reminding me of some event that was supposed to happen back at school. And each time, my heart breaks a little bit more. A few days ago, it was A Cappella Fest, one of the absolute highlights of every spring semester. Soon, it will be MTA formal, signifying the last day of classes, and then graduation.

I am finding it harder and harder each day to push back the blanket of depression that is trying so hard to envelop me. You know the feeling of pressure building up behind your eyes, when you feel as if they could just burst at any moment? I find myself feeling that way at least once per day. I don’t think I have fully let myself go there yet. I am afraid that if I start crying, I may never stop. I’d rather feel numb to the whole situation. I don’t want to read or watch the news, but it’s next to impossible when the news is seemingly the only thing everyone is discussing. It simultaneously feels like we have been in quarantine forever and for no time at all. It hasn’t been quite long enough for it to really sink in that this is what life might look like for the foreseeable future, which is an absolutely terrifying thought. And it makes me pause when I try to start planning what I want to do with my life. As a music and theater double major, I feel lost in this new world. I thought I had it all figured out: I would move home for a year to save money and work as an actor here in Portland to build my resume before moving to NYC, but now that seems like a distant dream. How can I save up money when it’s impossible to get a job right now? And it doesn’t seem like I will be able to any time soon either. 

My mind is constantly at war with itself. I really don’t want to be taking online classes anymore. It feels like a waste of my time to be in performance-based classes over Zoom, but then again, what else is there for me to do with my time right now? I want Muhlenberg to just give me my diploma already so that I don’t have to feel like I am in this weird limbo anymore, a purgatory where I am still technically a student, so I can’t focus all my time on getting a job or planning my life. Even if I wasn’t a student right now, I still wouldn’t be able to get a job or plan my life. It is an awful place to be. As someone who is obsessed with organization and planning, I feel like I am living in my own personal hell where you cannot plan ahead further than the day you are currently living. 

At dinner last night, my family was talking about what this experience would be like if we didn’t have the technology that we do. For one, online classes wouldn’t be possible. I keep telling myself and other people that ask me how classes are going that I hate Zoom. But I don’t think it is actually Zoom that I hate. I hate the fact that I feel like I was drop-kicked off campus and into the world without ever getting a chance to say goodbye to the people who have become my family over the last four years. I hate the fact that I will never have closure for such a huge part of my life. I hate the fact that I feel as though what I live for was ripped away from me and I don’t know when I will be able to get it back. And because there really isn’t anyone to blame for the situation we are in (besides our country’s president), it is easiest to blame Zoom for everything. 

I feel like I have gotten to the point where I almost forget what it feels like to go to class in person. They say it takes about 14 days to either break a habit or make one, and I think that’s true. Life has become this slow wave that I am riding day to day, just trying to make it through without completely breaking down. I have to admit, I have not been the best student since being home. Now that my school is in a different time zone, my 9 a.m. class that was already hard to wake up for is now at 6 a.m., and I am NOT a morning person. My friends have gotten into the habit of private messaging me on Zoom during class, telling me I look like I am about to fall asleep. No matter how big my cup of coffee is, they aren’t wrong. 

Instead of focusing on my school work, which I know I should be doing, but cannot for the life of me find the motivation to do, I have been singing my heart out, opening up my own Etsy shop, creating new art everyday, filming countless self-tapes, finishing my website, creating a blog, watching numerous TV shows and movies, baking too many batches of cookies to count and starting an Instagram account called @socialdistancingbeauty for reminders that the world, while in peril, is still full of beauty. I am trying to keep my creative, artistic brain active. I recommend everyone to do the same. I also recommend cuddling with puppies, if you have the opportunity. They are the best quarantine buddies.

Photo courtesy of Sophie MacKay ’20.
Photo courtesy of Sophie MacKay ’20.

When/if this is all over, I am going to be different; I don’t know how yet, but I will be different. We all will be. And I guess the only thing to do is accept that and try to move on with our lives, to discover new interests and passions within ourselves. I am forever hopeful that this pandemic will have some sort of good outcome. It seems as though the bad times always bring some good with them … right?

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