The Corona Files: Episode Three

I've been calling my far-flung team this week, checking in on folks to let them know we've got their backs and such. Man of the people, and all that. One of my colleagues has kids the same age as mine, and we talked about what they're going through. He said he told his 18 year-old son that life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond. With that in mind, I asked my own 18 year-old if she felt like making her G:TB debut. To which:

The author, my kidlet, of
whom I'm mad proud.

Senior year. I bet you remember yours fondly. Back at the tail end of summer, the prospect of My Senior Year stretched out ahead of me like a beacon of hope. My very own yellow-brick road out of the hellscape of high school.

Ideally, the first half of the year is spent grinding as hard as possible in order to squeeze into the college of your choice, and the second half is spent relaxing, slacking because we earned it. The first half of my senior year went pretty much as expected: I worked fairly hard, I got good grades, I kept my GPA up, I applied to college. Not to mention the time I spent at the dance studio, which served essentially as a second education as far as I’m concerned.

Between all of that stressing was my incessant worry about the state of the world, and how, it appeared, to be falling apart before my very eyes. None of the old guys in government seem to care too much about climate change, and why would they, since they’re leaving it in twenty-odd years? And that worried me, as I’m the one who they’re leaving the world to, and I would like it to be not on fire, and not polluted as all hell. This was my first vote in a presidential primary, so that too weighed on me heavily (I’m a Sanders stan. I’ll leave it at that.). Among all of that, I then had to worry about actually getting into college. I did, and I’ll be attending VCU in the fall, but that victory was pushed to the wayside when COVID entered the picture.

At the start, I was very aware of how Coronavirus was being portrayed; it gave people a pass on being xenophobes, which pissed me off greatly. But when people gossiped and giggled about the possibility of school cancellation, I waved it away, certain that the year would continue, perhaps limited slightly by a few days off. And then Governor Northam had The Press Conference announcing the closing of all Virginia schools.

Let's not forget that Wooderson was robbed, too.

I spent the rest of the day sad, somber, teary eyed. The class of 2020, MY class, had been robbed of our year. Our graduation, our prom. The school-sanctioned bullshit that we all proclaimed dumb, but looked forward to anyways. Gone. On top of that, I like school. There, I said it. I love learning and bettering myself, furthering my knowledge. Doing it from home is different. It feels wrong. But what choice do we have?

I’m not going to lie and pretend that I’m not pissed off, because I very much am. My senior class went through some shit, and the thing that brings us down is a virus? Talk about a bad dystopian novel. There are some times where I do feel that my year was ruined, and in those times I recognize that there will be things that I’ll never be able to relive. We didn’t even get to appreciate our last day of school, or tell our teachers goodbye. Other times, though, I notice that this has never happened before and that all of us are scared and uncertain together. That thought brings me comfort; everyone is working out the kinks of this “new normal”.

We’ve all, as a whole, been squashed inside our homes and forced to carry on. Nobody has dealt with this before, and although that is chaotic and overwhelming, it is also surprisingly helpful to know. My advice to you, as a senior whose year was pretty much ruined, is to take time to embrace stillness. Find moments where you can slow down and breathe. Who knows if you’ll ever have this much free time; you might as well take advantage of it. Personally, I’m finding stillness through yoga, which is such a wonderful practice (I highly recommend Yoga With Adrien on Youtube). Overall, I’m trying my best to take the bad with the good. This, too, shall pass, and when it does, the whole world will breathe a collective sigh of relief. Until then, appreciate your family, check in on your friends, and give yourself some extra love.

Right now, we all could use it.