The Last Day of My College Experience
When I graduated high school in the hellish summer of 2016, I decided I needed some time. I had applied to colleges and been accepted but I wasn’t ready — I didn’t want to leave my dog, I didn’t have my license, and most importantly, I was exhausted. Unlike my parents and older relatives, or even my peers, high school was not the best years of my life. I spent most of it battling depression and anxiety, along with bullying and a chaotic home life that left me to raise myself most of the time. I barely understood what I wanted out of college. I loved learning but my high school experience felt like a black hole for intellectualism of any kind. I didn’t feel as though college would be too much different unless it was an Ivy League. Though I knew I’d have to go eventually, I needed my gap year for refreshment and reflection.
After taking the year off, I applied to Monroe Community College to take online classes starting in the Fall of 2017. I spent most of the time between 2017 and when I transferred in the Fall of 2019 to SUNY Oswego at home, studying. I spent time with walking my dog, redecorating my room, or working on writing poetry and fiction. I had few friends from high school I saw, and online friends too, but looking back it was quite lonely. Relatives of mine asked about my college experience and I didn’t have much to say. I figured once I transferred after two years to a four year Bachelors granting institution, I could have that full college experience of the friends, parties, in-person classes, and dorm life if I wanted it. I was young, even if I’d started college a year late, and so I had time.
I underestimated how much I was really missing out on. The one in-person Fall semester and half of a Spring one I got to experience was more than I could have imagined. I also didn’t realize how much more outgoing I’d developed to be since high school, where I was known for being a shy introvert. Although I had been gripped by anxiety during my first week, it soon subsided as I got into my rhythm. I made friends quickly between my classes, in which I got to know the faces from my program, and the two publications I came to write and edit at. I became known in my Intermediate Fiction Writing course for suggesting bloodthirsty edits that made the room gasp and my friends laugh, and I started a study group in my Sophmore Seminar English course where we gushed over Whitman. I began sitting in the English wing of our campus during my free time instead of going home, having lunch and slowly developing a crush on the girl sitting with me. I went to frat parties and sorority mixers just for the fun of it, and since I’d already turned 21, I got to experience Halloween and Christmas at the bars with all my college friends for the first time. I’d stay late in my friends dorms watching movies together and then going outside to play in the snow or take long walks. I stopped dreading the reading for my classes and began devouring it. My phone that had once seemed like a $1,000 rock now exploded everyday with texts, memes, instagram likes, snapchats, and Facetime calls. I began cultivating academic relationships with my Professors and understood their motivations and lectures more deeply, to the point that one of them even asked me if I’d be interested in being a Teaching Assistant for him. I felt as if a veil had been lifted from over my eyes and I was able to see for the first time.
It is hard to detail every little difference in my life that came from going to college in-person. The expansiveness of the world seemed so vast and limitless, and I felt as if destiny was finally blossoming in my hands.
The week of March 9th, 2020, there were already rumblings about the school closing. I thought that seemed so drastic — they couldn’t possibly move all classes online and ask people to go home. It can’t be that serious, at least not yet. By the middle of the week, Wednesday, March 11th, I had just left a class and gotten into my car when I got a text in from a group chat I was in. It was a link to a news site showing Governor Andrew Cuomo announcing all SUNY schools would move online for the rest of the semester. I stared at the words, my ears ringing as the video went on and on. My heart had dropped through my body, through the floor of my car, and crashed into the pavement of the parking lot. My vision felt blurry and a fog came over my head. No. This is not happening. This can’t be real.
On Friday, March 13th, it started exactly like any other day because really, it was. It was shockingly mundane as I went into my only class of the day and took a midterm. However, I could feel in the air the tenseness. Even as the timer ticked down, I stared out the window at the grayness of the winter sky and the light blue horizon of Lake Ontario nearly blending in with it. I felt as though I was somewhere floating out there, not in that room. How could I possibly write anything when life no longer seemed real?
After my midterm, I had an appointment with my academic advisor to plan out the next classes I would taking. While I waited for him to come to his office, I sat in the English wing and talked to a Professor whose office I sat outside frequently. We discussed the pandemic, Sylvia Plath, and I petted her dog, Sophie, that she’d brought in. She talked about how she was switching over to once weekly essay responses to written lectures and how she loathed the idea of a Zoom class. I thought it sounded similar to some classes I’d taken at MCC. She told me hopefully one day she’d be able to have dinner with her students again, and if she did, she’d invite me.
When my advisor showed up, the wing had already cleared out considerably. It was just me and him left. I remember the brown-ness of his office, how everything felt muted. Brown can be comforting, like chocolate or a plush blanket. This felt like your eyes being covered in old film. I’m not even sure if his office is brown. We ate Thin Mints as we went over my schedule and he showed me a video from a colleague of his who was living in Wuhan. The video was blurry, but the streets were empty and sirens blasted a message for people to stay indoors. There was a plan we would come back after a month, but he was not hopeful. Another Professor I didn’t know stopped by and asked me what I thought of all of this. I ran my fingers through my hair, eyes wide and awkwardly laughing, “My philosophy professor says he will streaming our class on Twitch.”
When I left his office, I walked slowly. Everyone who knows me knows I walk fast; I think its a residual affect of anxiety. March 13th, though, I did not walk fast. I walked slower than I ever have inside that building. Before I reached the stairs that would lead me down to the parking lot, I turned and I looked at the empty floor. I saw myself before the pandemic, sitting at the tables, eating food, highlighting my reading, laughing with my friends, taking notes in classes. Though I am staying through to the Fall to hopefully have some semblence of the learning experience I did before, that was the day I saw my college experience slip through my fingers. To this day, I still mourn.
