On Sunday, when this week started, the world was different. My housemates and I took a spontaneous trip to the Trader Joe’s in the town over. Our minds torn between dreaming about spring break processing the email that had been sent mere hours before, saying classes would be online for at least the upcoming week. We wondered the store and waited anxiously for emails from professors telling us how to proceed forward.
Monday morning, I rolled out of bed and proceeded to set up my little virtual classroom on the floor. I navigated Google Hangouts for the first time ever, once class was over I went back to sleep. I got up, went and ate. Came back to my room and recorded my singing quiz for aural skills. I did as much of management class as I could, sitting on the floor with a terrible lag. I set goals for the week, that would never pan out.
I only had one class on Tuesday. Normally I have my stats class everyday except Wednesday, but that professor had chosen not to do online learning for the time being. I dealt with the lag, as I sat on the floor.
By Wednesday the novelty had worn off and reality was setting in. Normally, my Wednesdays start at about 6:45am when I get up for my 8am class, and then end at about 8:00pm when I get home from my chamber ensemble rehearsal. The longest break I have in that time is three hours from 9am-12pm. But not this week. This week Wednesday stood out because it was the first time any remnants of my normal routine got to continue. I got to go to my guitar lesson, in person. Like a normal person, but nothing else around me was normal anymore.
Than Thursday came. On Thursday, at about 4:30pm, we got the email. This email said that for the foreseeable future. Spring break was extended two days. All campus events were cancelled for the foreseeable future. This was due in part to our governor saying all schools were not to meet in person util April 24, and in part due to campus concerns.
This is when reality really started setting in.
I never signed up to take online classes. I never wanted to take online classes. My school doesn’t even offer online classes. Professors have never been trained on how to hold online classes. I had known from the time I was a freshman in high school that I wanted to go to a smaller, liberal arts college. I knew I wanted to go to school where I wouldn’t be in lecture halls with 250 people. I knew I wanted my professors to ask me to write my name on my paper,not my student ID number. If all classes were going to be online what did that mean for the sense of community we all help foster?
If all campus events were cancelled and or postponed so is my income. I thought of all the things I was working towards, saving for, how close I was to reaching those goals, and now it all was going to have to be put on hold. But honestly that was the least of my worries.
And if all campus events are being put on hold, that means my noon recital appearance is off the table. That was going to be the first time, ever, I got to play solo classical guitar to a public audience. The chamber ensemble concert, the fours us had been working so hard towards, gone with a press of button. Those solos, and riffs gone. And the choir concert, the setting of the Irish blessing that always tried to bring me tears? Well, it was now bringing me to tears for an entirely new reason.
Friday morning, I didn’t even bother getting out of my pajamas. Here, we don’t go to class in our pajamas, a side effect of everyone knowing and caring about everyone. Admittedly, it really just looked like i was wearing sweatpants, and socks with Birkentstocks. But we don’t really wear sweatpants around campus here. I drug myself to a practice room, so I wouldn’t wake my remaining housemates with the piano. Friday’s my aural skills generally met in the keyboard lab. It just didn’t feel right not to be sat at a piano on Friday morning. It rained all day.
All day, rumors floated like cottonwood through the air. Of another email. Of reslife leaders being called into an emergency meeting. I thought we were off the hook, when by 5pm we had heard nothing. But I was wrong.
At about 6:30pm, it came. We were told by reslife, that as of the 24th we needed to be off of campus because they were effectively closing all student housing, until we were approved to come back and or the end of the semester. We were welcome to move ourselves out now, or we could leave anything we wouldn’t need for class or daily life and come get it during the already scheduled move-out weekend, mid- May. We could appeal to stay and at the latest we would be told of our status by the following Friday. All of the worry I had been forcing down, all of the panic I had swallowed down, now had a purpose, it had a place it could go.
In a little less then three hours, my mother and I had effectively created a game plan. I had submitted my appeal to the university citing every reason I could possibly think of that I should stay on campus. My mother and I had devised an outline of plan to get me and all my necessities home. I had found a guitar sitter and had a lead on one that I could borrow if I found myself at home. Hopes began to be that either my appeal would be accepted, or if I do get sent home, I will stay there until May.
And now we wait. And the world is quiet. Campus is quiet. One by one my housemates are leaving, and I am waiting. There is so much that is up in the air, there is so much that is uncertain and that I just don’t know.
But here is what I do know.
We are going to get through this.
And we will be stronger because of it.
In the past 48 hours, I have seen our community jump into action. I have seen Facebook groups form and people helping each other navigate the uncertainty and ambiguity of it all.
In my two years here, I have met so many of the people in charge of making these decisions. I have had conversations with the president of the university. I have had meetings with the head of security. I know how is in charge of reslife. I know that when these decisions are being made, they are tough but that everyone involved is keeping students at the number one priority.
I believe I have strong case to stay, but part of me wants to go home. But I also know that I have a home to go to. As much as I want to stay, I keep feeling to put into the universe that if it is between me and international student or me and student who has no home or me and student who will not be safe if they go home… I want the board to refuse me.
Our School of Music posted a photo on Instagram today, and in their campus the referred to us not only as a community, but also as a family. I truly believe that is what we are. And nothing can change that.
And we will be back together again complaining about SUB food, and professors again before we know it.
I leave with a few phrases that keep running through my mind lately;
A Puget Sound education isn’t something you GET, its something you DO
A functioning stage crew is made up of dysfunctional people
This is R city
We got this Seattle
You go, we all go
This is ensemble of soloists
I couldn’t seem to die/I wrote my way out/
Wrote everything down far as I could see/
I wrote my way out/
I looked up and the town had its eyes on me/They passed a plate around/
Total strangers/
Moved to kindness by my story/
Good people will wreck havoc on your sleep schedule
This isn’t goodbye, it’s see ya later
Very well written, my very talented granddaughter