Day #40: Saturday, April 25, 2020

If you asked me how I imagined my senior year of college to be, it would not be anything near what I’m currently doing today. In August of 2019, I was excited! I was going into my senior year at the University of Iowa studying Social Studies Education and History. In the Spring I would finally get to start my student teaching experience, something I’ve been looking forward to for the past four years. For the past two years, I’ve been living in a house with nine other roommates and couldn’t wait to be able to spend our last year together 24/7. We had a spring break planned for Cancun in March. My senior year looked like so much fun! Everything looked like things were finally falling into place, and that just maybe, I finally had my life together. I couldn’t wait to walk across the stage for graduation with my best friends after four long years of studying and hard work.

But then… March of 2020 happened. I remember sitting in my living room in Iowa City back in January talking to my roommates about “that virus that seems to be getting bad fast”, not really think much else about it. I couldn’t even imagine that my senior year could be cut short due to it. You don’t really plan for a pandemic to come and ruin your senior year. Now it’s getting towards the end of April and I’m sitting back at home with my two parents, attempting to apply for jobs in the midst of economic distress, making face masks, and missing my friends and my favorite city, Iowa City, and continuously washing the weeks worth of clothes I brought home for Spring Break only.

If I could, I’d fast forward through 2020, maybe even 2021 at this point. I’m a person who needs to be busy or at least be doing something, and COVID-19 has given me all but too much free time. Student teaching has been suspended since all Iowa schools are now closed, I have a single college class left and, of course, have completed all the homework assignments that were ever due, and lastly, my job is also closed back at school. So… you can say I have some free time. I was thrilled when Mr. Helgeson reached out asking if I’d want to write an article for The Socially Distanced Diaries since CLEARLY I have too much free time. At least all of this free time has given me the opportunity to get into shape and apply to ten- thousand jobs nationwide.

I feel selfish for even being the slightest bit upset that my senior year has been cut short. Thousands upon thousands are dying. People aren’t able to say their final goodbyes to loved ones, yet I’m over here throwing a pity party for myself because I didn’t get my final goodbyes at college. I keep telling myself that I’m allowed to feel those emotions, but again, there are bigger things happening around me. Bigger things that I’ll eventually be teaching to my own students one day.

Through times like this, it’s quite easy to be negative, but we’re in this together. We’ll get through this together, and who knows, maybe in some weird, kind of messed up way, this will make the world we live in a better place. But for now, I’ll continue to sit at home and hope for the light at the end of the tunnel.