COVID changed all my stories…

I am currently a junior at George Fox University. As it goes without saying, this year is different than any other we have experienced here at Fox, much like all of our fellow college attendees across the nation. Maybe it was just me; however, since I started school my first day of college freshman year, it felt as though I had this connection, or shared community at least, with every person going to undergrad in the U.S. We are all college students now!

I was one of those people that definitely felt the freedom right away. A lot of my freshman year was spent adjusting, finding my people that would help me feel that I had my home away from childhood home.

Sophomore year was so very different, it meant having less questions about how I was going to live and survive and more inquiries on how I wanted to live my life. I had fun. My friends and I went out every weekend, either to the city or each other’s apartments to hang out.

(George Fox Appropriate style ~of course~)

During my sophomore year I went to 11 concerts during just the fall semester and 4 during spring semester. I had 3 more to go to before summer started that all got cancelled due to COVID. Hikes, beach trips, life experiences that one is supposed to have in their late teens and early 20s, happening! We were living life.

I want so badly to be able to end my story there. I love recalling the last year of my life and the things that I did; but now, whenever I tell someone the story or I am with a friend and I ask,

“Omg, do you remember when we…”

The end of those stories is now,

“Yeah, we could never do that now”, “If only COVID wasn’t a thing then maybe we could do that again”, “Honestly now that COVID has happened that will probably never be a thing again!”, etc.

I also want to acknowledge that this a very privileged complaint to have about COVID. People are dying, people are sick and the only reason that we get to be upset about COVID in this manner is because we are becoming desensitized to the horror of all and can be concerned with frivolous things.

However, it is also fair of us as a community to feel as though COVID not only is robbing us of our present and the experiences we ought to be having, but also the sadness is how our past is truly so far behind us.

I suppose a worldwide pandemic will do that to ya.