In the distant past when the coronavirus did not exist, I would always be busy. I’d be a summer camp counselor chasing after sweaty kids in a park, wood chips stabbing the soles of my feet. I’d be on a plane, juggling my stack of books with the small cup of complementary water on the tiny tray table while the recycled cabin air dried my eyes out. I was also always working toward something, that something always being the next school year. Painstakingly writing those five LEQs for APUSH and scribbling out flashcards from Barron’s prep books are experiences I never want to live through ever again, but at least they gave me something to do. 

Everything was so concrete. The trajectory of my life was practically laid out before me. I would be foolish to say that now my life is in shambles, because it is anything but. Now, the future is just foggier. In normal circumstances, first year college students would at least have other college students to guide them through the move-in process and through the first semester. All standard, rudimentary protocol. But for the first time in this coronavirus-riddled society, now no one knows what to do. As a first year college student, I feel like I am a sheep blindly following older, more experienced sheep, who are being told by the shepherds that they’re working to determine what may be possible, they’ll follow up as soon as they can. It’s a bit of comfort, but not much, considering the state of the virus in the US.

The future is cloudy (with a chance of COVID), but so is the present. This summer in quarantine has me feeling like a lone floating orb at home stuck in a time loop. The days are passing and I feel the same; I am still becoming older but I don’t feel much wiser. My inner compass that always pointed in one direction towards a goal is now spinning in circles. So I’ve been doing a myriad of things. Mainly I’ve been consuming. Of course I’ve been taking in my daily dose of memes on Facebook and Instagram–they’ve definitely gotten much more partisan and the humor is drier and darker. I’m also already seeing Class Of 2021 Project Graduation Posts, palpable indications that my time in high school has passed.

Aside from scrolling through social media and indulging in the not-so-occasional streaming service, this time has also got me thinking about random stuff, like “Why does the US use the customary system?” or “Why do some countries drive on the left side of the road and some on the right?” One random question leads to another, until I’ve realized that I have been on a Googling rampage and that I have minimal knowledge about topics much more important than which side of the road different countries drive on. So I’m doing Internet dives on the history of minorities in America, how the US Presidential election system works, stuff like that. It’s a little scary how much I don’t know about anything. But at least now I have the power to control what I learn. I hope to emerge from quarantine just a little more educated.

All the things I’ve mentioned so far involve me staring at my computer, but fear not for my sore eyes and my lack of physical movement! I’ve also been cleaning, organizing my high school life into folders and boxes and burying them deep in the basement (hoping to repress the bad memories and to hold on only to the good ones). But who knew cleaning could also unlock treasure troves from the past? Yesterday, I unearthed stacks of boxes containing papers from my elementary school days.  For a first grader, my handwriting was impeccable. My spelling, not so much. Shuffling through these papers (now relics) opened a floodgate of memories that came tumbling out. I had endearing and embarrassing flashbacks with close friends, and with people who I haven’t talked with in years. Ah, good old childhood naïveté! Back when we believed adults existed chiefly to do our every bidding, and when we did not know the world had problems. Last week’s live graduation was probably the last time I will see some of these people…

More often than not though, I find myself lying atop my bed in the middle of the day, staring up at the ceiling and feeling unmotivated to do anything. I daydream about a utopia with no arguments and no diseases, a world where my friends and I can fly first-class to a remote paradise island to sip piña coladas by the beach and canoe on crystal blue waters and eat fancy dinners by candlelight.