Last Year, I Was a Bryn Mawr Girl. Now I m at Hillsdale.
While many of my classmates retreated to their big houses on the East Coast or their family s second homes, I moved home to our apartment in Tempe. There were two bedrooms between the five of us; myself, my mom, and my three younger sisters. At the time, I didn t even have a desk where I could do my schoolwork and, regardless, I couldn t escape the distraction of my younger siblings. Their schools were closed, too.
There was no library or coffee shop open to decamp to, and the internet in our building was shaky. But the poor connection was not my biggest problem. It was finding the motivation to attend online class as I watched everything I d worked for evaporate.
Bryn Mawr s Covid safety precautions for Fall 2020 were announced in July. They included, but were not limited to, isolating for 10 days prior to returning to campus and quarantining for two weeks upon arrival, living alone in a single dorm room, canceling all sporting events, weekly PCR testing, eating cafeteria take-out in our dorms, and wearing masks at all times, indoors and out. The masks could only be taken off with the door closed in our dorm room, or outside in an area where you will not encounter others.
Lots of stories like this. Remember, this was in all probability, a human created virus. We did this (or rather they, the gain-of-function researchers, American and Chinese, and all their little helpers) to ourselves. There are millions, if not billions, of stories like this, in the sense of lost opportunities, lost life.