To say that my college experience is not going the way I was expecting it to, is a huge understatement. Everyone tells you stories about what going to university was like for them, but you come to realize that it is completely different than what we are living through. You hear people talk about how they met their best friends or their life partners in college, or you see several movies and shows depicting lecture halls filled with students—I remember envisioning all these crazy scenarios my future friends and I would engage in. Although I may have gotten a taste of that, I will never truly know what a normal four years of college life looks like.
Now, I wasn’t exactly expecting to be going to parties regularly (forget about the fact that I am going to UCSB a school famous for its exuberant social life) but I was hoping I’d be able to get together with some friends and not feel terrible about it for days afterwards. But it’s mostly about the little things in life that we took for granted before that we are all missing now. I always keep my distance from people, even my closest friends, never taking my mask off around them and always hesitating before someone goes in for a hug. I cannot sit comfortably in a lecture hall without thinking about all the people that could be infecting me at the moment, even unknowingly. I find myself subconsciously holding my breath whenever I pass by someone without a mask, whether it be indoors or outdoors. For all I know, any one of these situations could risk my life or someone else’s. We live in fear of endangering ourselves and others everyday.
In a way though, I suppose I can say that I got lucky. I had a few months of normalcy before everything changed, as opposed to underclassmen who may not know what college is like outside of a pandemic. But I can’t help but envy those people who only had to endure online learning for a few months and not three years into this new college experience. However, it almost feels wrong to hold feelings of jealousy over a situation no one had any control over, especially since they must have struggled with the transition not only with academics but in the workforce when just walking out of our homes was dangerous. There is no one at fault here, and there is no one at an advantage.
One can only hope that things get better from here. It helps that I am someone who has seen what college can be like without the looming presence of a pandemic, because now I have something to look forward to. It’s just important to remember that even after everything, we are not as alone or as different as we think we are, and that one days things will change for the better.