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By senior year, I had participated in six years of regions, three years of All-State, and three years of NJYS. On the side, I was in a clarinet quartet and a wind quintet. At school, I was part of the music honor society and taught clarinet to middle schoolers. Privately, I had begun to formulate senior recital plans with my friend Annie. And publicly, I had embarked on the 100 days of practice challenge with my friend Ben, posting snippets of our progress on Instagram. On our accounts, we celebrated our last regions weekend and our last All-State concert. We also looked forward to more “last” concerts in June, and of course to touring Italy with NJYS that summer, which was a dream we’d been waiting to realize for three years.

Little did I know our Instagram accounts would document the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gone was any hope for a joyous, in-person celebration for all that my music friends and I had accomplished. Senior recital plans became indefinitely postponed; touring Italy became out of the question; and the weekly rehearsals that I always looked forward to became Zoom calls that I dreaded logging onto. 

Inside, I felt guilty. Shouldn’t I have been grateful I was able to connect with the music community using technology? But I couldn’t help feeling that our sterile little Zoom boxes sapped away the organic, spontaneous moments we could have created if we had all been in a room together.

The end of June came. So did my high school graduation and the last of my senior concerts, which we “performed” by recording our individual parts and mixing them together to play in a YouTube livestream. And then that was it. The age of regions, All-State, NJYS, and all other high school ensembles was over.

Throughout the summer, I continued to devote an hour every day to work on my technique and to try out solo pieces I hadn’t gotten to play before. Perhaps deep inside I believed that the pandemic would suddenly go away, and the next day I’d find myself on a flight to Italy with all my NJYS friends. Or that I’d turn my backyard into a COVID-safe stage overnight for my dreadfully overdue senior recital.

Of course, these never happened (but I did end up performing at a joint senior recital hosted by Mr. Rudderow on his patio). June and July whisked by, and before I knew it, I was driving down to Durham for my first year at Duke University. Amongst the mountain of clothes, surgical masks, and Clorox wipes, I managed to fit my foldable music stand and clarinet case in the car trunk.

My plan, however, wasn’t to audition for Duke’s band or orchestra. Those still met virtually, and I’d had enough of that. This year was about adjusting to college life and exploring new opportunities, and I’d practice clarinet to maintain my skills and a sense of normalcy. Next year, I promised myself, I’d join a music group when pandemic restrictions eased up.

And oh, how enchanting Duke’s campus was! Everywhere I was allowed to roam, I was surrounded by gothic architecture and colossal oak trees with a towering Chapel in the heart of it all. At the same time, it seemed that anywhere I looked, a new email had popped into my inbox, a new flier had been slipped under my door, and another person was shoving a brochure into my hands. “Join this club (we’re meeting on Zoom)! Apply for this job (we have flexible hours during these tough times)! Choose this major (it’ll change your life)!”

All the noise was deafening. In the first few weeks, I blindly clicked on the emails and read the fliers. I dabbled in a volunteering club, which met online once a week only to talk wistfully about what they would’ve done if they’d been in person; and a running club, which hosted woefully underattended online workouts.

From time to time, I took out my clarinet and smoothed out some sheet music. I practiced Brahms’ Sonata No. 2, Debussy’s Premiere Rhapsodie. But why did I feel like I was dragging my feet to do so? What was I practicing for? There were no upcoming auditions, no end-of-season recitals, and no weekly rehearsals. I had no idea when the next time I’d see my music friends would be. And thinking about joining a college ensemble next August while I was still only a month into college was too much.

I took to my blog and wrote about how I missed the way things were. I also tried to make sense of being abruptly uprooted from my childhood bedroom to a dorm room 500 miles away. There had to be a more profound reason my family and I risked so much for me to attend college in-person than for me to just sit in my room on Zoom all day. And because I was stuck inside all day, I felt like I still didn’t know anything about Duke, besides the fact that the dining hall was a thirty-second stroll from my dorm.

Instead of writing about my feelings, perhaps I could at least put that energy elsewhere like writing for Duke’s newspaper, The Chronicle. After all, I had mentioned joining The Chronicle in my college application. If I was going to be on my computer for hours on end, I might as well take that opportunity to research interesting University happenings and interview some notable University folk.

My first article had been edited to the point where I could not recognize my own writing. No matter; I strove to improve. The older, more experienced editors advised me in the form of Google Docs icons and Slack messages. They taught me how to make my ledes more concise and how to structure my nutgrafs better. I didn’t get to see them in person, but the simplest “Keep up the good work!” Slack message was enough to motivate me to keep picking up stories. Each one felt like a new puzzle: I’d figure out the overall gist of the story, interview sources, and piece all the parts together. I called a classmate living in the Philippines about how studying in a different time zone was affecting her first-year experience; I emailed the chief communications officer about how COVID-19 tests were affecting Duke’s overall budget; I sat down with dining staff to hear about their experiences being essential workers during the pandemic.

I’d always get a thrill down my spine when I saw the final article on The Chronicle’s website the next morning. Finally, I felt like was doing something valuable! As the months passed, I juggled more and more story deadlines, interviewed more and more sources, and thought more and more about becoming a Chronicle editor.

At the same time, it became harder and harder for me to muster the will to unfurl sheet music on my music stand, to haul my clarinet out of the closet.

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