As senior year approaches, anxiety surrounding job security, where I’m going to live, and student loans creeps in as well. I recently applied for a remote internship that also happened to be paid. I made it to the interview process but I didn’t get the job. It feels as if time is passing both quickly and slowly all at once. The time I spend attending classes and club meetings via Zoom seems to last forever, but I blink and the sun is going down, I have an ungodly amount of reading to do, and I still can’t go anywhere. The fact that Texas, the state I am currently in, has lifted our mask mandate also makes me very nervous. The number of maskless people in the grocery store over the weekend was frightening. And did I mention having to figure out what I’m doing for my senior seminar?
It’s interesting being told that your late teens to early twenties is supposed to be the best time of your life. As a notorious introvert, I did not care much for parties or large social gatherings, but I do miss sitting in the hammocks outside of Walters with a good book. I also really miss the library. My Friday night on campus was consistently checking out a few DVDs from the library, getting a veggie burger and curly fries from Mollie’s, and chilling in my room. I mean, I have Netflix and veggie burgers at home but I also have dishes to clean, nagging parents, and a huge lack of social interaction. At least when I was in my room by myself at school, I still had the option to go outside. I think young people have had a chunk of our lives taken from us by this pandemic. And no one knows exactly how this pandemic is going to impact the job market, education, and what we consider to be normal is all up in the air.
I’m not really sure how the world is going to be once we come out of this pandemic, but I will do my best, as all of us only can, to take care of myself. As for work this summer, I plan on focusing on my freelancing and hopefully getting some more clients. And of course preparing for my senior seminar like the outstanding student that I am. By the end of the summer I will be running my little freelance business and walking into my senior seminar course confident and with an idea of what I’m doing.