Do you ever get the feeling that you are living in an alternate reality? Maybe a strange new episode of Black Mirror that never seems to end? Welcome to life as a returning senior.
I never would have imagined that I would go into the pandemic as a 20-year-old student having no idea what I’m doing with my life, and come out of it as a 22-year-old undergraduate senior who just took the GRE (graduate exams) over the weekend.
I keep asking myself: “When did we grow up, and why did it happen so fast?”. Walking down the same areas of campus I used to know so well has me questioning if I ever attended this school at all. It feels like yesterday I was in the freshmen dorms wondering and dreaming of what my college experience would look like. Spoiler alert: I did not envision that it would be like this.
A lot of us are experiencing a level of imposter syndrome like never before. I won’t lie, I love that I have the opportunity to finish my final year in-person with people and a university I fell in love with four years ago. But, something feels unfinished and incomplete. To be honest, I don’t think that feeling is going to vanish anytime soon. Everywhere I look I see 18-year-olds at the beginning of their college journey and keep thinking that they are 14-year-olds.
Families and friends want to know how I am handling the transition and I don’t really know what to say. Of course none of us anticipated this as a potential option that may occur, and yet here we are. For some of us, this may be one of the hardest things that we have dealt with up until this point.
We were different people then versus now, and everything is constantly changing. I honestly don’t think there is any “right” way to handle a situation of this magnitude. All we can really do is keep going and rely on each other.
As messed up as it may sound, the pandemic gifted us with something incredibly important: we were reminded of the importance of communication, vulnerability, and interpersonal connection. I don’t think as humans we are able to value and cherish something until it is ripped from our very core, our reality. All we have ever known is in-person connection and having to adapt to a virtual existence provided so many challenges. But maybe that’s the point.
I am in no way saying that I am glad that this occurred. There is so much trauma and tragedy that has happened in these last two years. To be completely honest, I don’t think we will ever be able to acknowledge to what extent this has impacted our society for years to come. But I do think that because we all went through this traumatic experience together that we lean on each other to heal.
At the end of the day, healing isn’t a linear journey. You as an individual aren’t going to be healed by reading my article – I would be deluded to think otherwise. What I do hope is that this will allow for a larger conversation – one that is of depth, vulnerability, empathy, and honesty. In my opinion, to be able to be uncomfortable and talk about things that have impacted our human experience and connection is the point of it all. We aren’t going to have all the answers or even know all the questions to ask, but what I do know is that whoever you are, and whatever you feel, you are not alone.