Cheers to our 20s, maybe
Cheers to our 20s, maybe
Alena Botros / Opinion Editor / The USD Vista
On March 19, Gavin Newsom, governor of California, announced that all California residents were to shelter in place; a mandatory stay-at-home order was issued. It was then that our schools were closed, we moved to remote learning, and “Zoom University” was born. In March, there was a divide amongst us. Some struggled to cope with the stay-at-home order, and some followed it religiously.
When you’re 20, the last thing you want to hear is that your social life will now be canceled until further notice. But we made it through. We finished classes, as hard as it was, and we pushed through to our summer; only summer was not much different. Beaches were closed, and although they began to open, the risks did not decrease. Bars were closed, and there is no possible reason to justify going to any bar that chose to go against the shut down. Yet, we did it anyway because we’re in our 20s. There’s this intense fear of not living your life to the fullest — a fear, I would argue, that is greater than the possibility of exposure to COVID-19 in our minds. Is this a plausible excuse? Not at all. I know that we all want things to go back to normal, but despite the loss we have faced we can’t continue to be irresponsible in this pandemic; we will just miss out on more.
Many of us can agree that we have not taken all possible precautions in this fight to slow the spread. I choose which rules I want to follow. I choose whether the risk of exposure outweighs the risk of missing out. And, as the pandemic moved into summer, our fear of exposure, our caution, slowly dwindled away. I stopped worrying. I knew it was wrong, but I wanted my life to go back to normal. Some of us had already missed out on so much.
Seniors lost their final moments on campuses they’d come to know as home. They lost their graduations, a culmination of four years of complete and utter dedication. And now those same seniors have been left to fend for themselves in a world where the job market is hardly welcoming, a world where the unemployment rate screams tragedy.
I was a second semester junior when classes moved online, and I was sure we would be back to campus in no time. As days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months I began to miss the little things I have come to love on our campus. I missed walking by the Immaculata on my way to Camino. I missed stopping at Aromas for my morning coffee, and I missed the days where my pit stop at Aromas led to conversations with old friends. I missed my professors who have become like family.
San Diego County has officially been removed from the state’s COVID-19 watchlist. I want to believe that we will return to our beloved campus in the spring. But we all know better. After constantly hearing the world around us describe the times as uncertain or unprecedented, it is time for us to realize the reality in those words. We have no idea what can happen between now and spring. But we can still hold on to hope.
I know that there’s nothing more that I want than to spend my last semester on campus again. However, I want our experience to mimic the experience we’ve all shared in the past.
There’s a greater fear that has begun to overwhelm me as we move farther and farther from normalcy, this fear of the future after college. Graduation ceremony or not, we still have to move forward. For some it means graduate school, and for others it means starting a career. How are we supposed to do that in the midst of a pandemic? What is going to be different, and what is going to remain constant?
For now, we can cheers to being in our 20s in the middle of a global pandemic, laugh about turning 21 during quarantine, and laugh about all the dysfunctions of Zoom. But more importantly, we can get through this together.
“The views expressed in the editorial and op-ed sections are not necessarily those of The USD Vista staff, the University of San Diego, or its student body.”