By Emily Shepardson, for the CVPost
At first, it felt like a fever dream.
By the end of February, spring semester was off to an exciting and exhausting start. As a senior journalism major and president of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Forensics team, my schedule was compact and often uncomfortable.
Several days of my week were spent racing from coaching sessions to classes and meetings, then hosting team work sessions in the evening. With graduation, Nationals season, and the natural serendipity of spring approaching quickly, I felt so much hope for the future.
I am very lucky to have been afforded the opportunity to compete for and learn at UW-Eau Claire and am grateful for the joy that I feel staying busy brings me. Truthfully, resting wasn’t even close to a priority. The expectations I set for myself as a student and competitor were high, so I decided to put a cork on my desire to slow down, at least until after Nationals and graduation.
From fantasy to mandate
And yet, with barely a moment’s notice, slowing down and resting went from a post-graduation fantasy to, for all intents and purposes, mandated.
Since COVID-19 began its spread across the U.S, more than 1,000 colleges and universities have closed their campuses, affecting over 14 million students in some really emotionally impactful ways.
My younger sister is a junior track and field athlete for UW-La Crosse and had her national meet cancelled as the team was on the track in North Carolina, warming up.
Several of my classmates are in their final years as education majors and had to say goodbye to the kids in their classrooms at local elementary schools. My LGBTQIA+ friends have been adjusting to moving back in with their parents, some only feeling safe hiding their identities once more.
From these students’ stories that have been echoing in my mind all week, I’ve found some helpful takeaways for students more generally:
- Be gentle with yourself and others right now. If you are angry, breathe. If you are anxious, breathe. If you are so sick of your siblings you want to explode, scream into a pillow for a few minutes and then breathe. With that being said however,
- Take your responsibility to stop the spread seriously. Practice proper social distancing. Wear masks in public. Remember, even though we have the privilege of being young and resistant, we don’t take these steps because we are personally in danger. We take them so we don’t spread illness to vulnerable populations with much less resistance. It’s about helping take care of each other.
- Invest in introspection. Processing all of this change and finding peace sounds nearly impossible, but taking time to think and journal about those feelings is a start at crafting a sense of normalcy through creative coping.
- Finally, for my fellow Class of COVID-19 seniors: take what you have learned throughout this pandemic and bring a sense of reform to every job you get after graduation.
Additionally, COVID-19 has highlighted the cracks in many of our oldest and most trusted institutions, from privatized medicine to the White House. As students of COVID-19, it would be best not to forget how those cracks manifest themselves and who those cracks hurt the most.
As the world finds healing, I hope the students of COVID-19 can find healing too.
Emily Shepardson, a senior from Dakota, MN, will graduate from UW-EC with a degree in journalism and a certificate in social diversity. After graduation, she will start her Masters program in Communication and Forensics at Minnesota State University, Mankato.