When the world shut down back in March due to COVID-19, no one knew how long this quarantine would last. Many people certainly didn’t believe it could last all the way into the summer. Despite the changes, our Her Campus at Geneseo members did what they could to make the most of our summer of Quarantine.
Read several of our tales below to see what we did this summer!
Margaux Carmel
One day, after weeks of being cooped up inside in my room doing remote work for my summer internship, I walked outside and started ripping up weeds from my mom’s abandoned garden. What possessed me to do this, you ask? I have no freaking clue. All I know is that the weed is some sort of vine-y type plant that wraps around plants and basically smothers them out of existence, and it felt like a fun puzzle to unwrap the weeds from around branches of flowering trees and leaves of ground-bound flowers. I managed to rip up an entire rooted system and then I realized I had been outside for an hour ripping out weeds, dressed in my pajamas and in plain view of my neighborhood.
Rebecca Williamson
I actually did a lot this summer, more than I thought I could. This summer, I received an amazing opportunity to be a Reader for The Masters Review. I read about three to five hours a week. I was also incredibly grateful to return to the summer camp I worked at the previous two summers. While there were a lot of new rules because of COVID-19, the staff did everything we could for the campers, and I hope that they all had a lot of fun. Other than that, I fixed my resume and worked on other career development opportunities. The rest of my days were utterly normal and consisted of a few socially distant meet-ups with my friends, binge-watching shows and reading books. No crazy tales for me this summer.
Megan Kelly
I spent most of my summer working on chemistry, so I managed to keep pretty busy. I also decided to try and actually work on my drawing skills for once (something I’ve struggled with for a long time) so I’d say the summer was productive. In more exciting news, I replanted my garden and found out a chipmunk lives there. I named him Bart, and I spent a couple nights writing next to him and passing him peanuts. I really hope my parents are still feeding him; he was such good company.
Emily Tsoi
This summer was quite different from summers of the past as I did very little traveling. While I was home, though, I tried to work on different skills that I otherwise wouldn’t have had time for such as sewing (I tried sewing masks, but completely forgot how to operate my sewing machine), knitting (still trying to figure this one out) and exercising. I’ve recently been going on daily walks which have been beneficial for both my physical and mental health. Other than that, nothing really exciting happened.
Jess Kaplan
Besides becoming addicted to TikTok and listening to Folklore on repeat this summer, I honestly enjoyed this summer. I took summer classes to get ahead on graduating, started doing yoga everyday and finally started doing the things I always told myself I didn’t have time to do. I started reading for fun again (Little Women and Call Me By Your Name were my personal favorites), executed the quarantine hair chop (and after seven months without a haircut, there were definitely dead ends that severely needed it), actually taking care of my skin and drinking enough water. My friends and I would keep each other motivated by doing socially distanced themed “presentation nights” which were probably some of the times I’ve laughed the hardest in my life. I spent time watching as many sunsets as I could, hiking and writing more. I made the best of it. All of it definitely was far from the summer I expected to have, but it was also a summer where I just felt happy, which I’ll take for 2020.
From trying new skills to working, our members really did a lot!
What did you do last summer?