During the college search, I often ran across students proclaiming how they knew their college was “the one.” Most of these comments had a common baseline; “It was so easy,” they’d declare, “I just went on campus, and I knew.” But for a genius gal such as myself, I figured why visit a college if I didn’t get in? And so, with lockdown in April, the only tour I got of campus was by zooming around with Google Maps’ street view feature. Which, if you haven’t tried it yet, is a surefire way to get acute motion sickness. But the brick was good enough for me, and I decided to move three thousand miles away from home to experience the East Coast.
I was beyond excited to be going somewhere so far away from northern California. Oh, sweet, sweet independence! In mid August, I arrived on campus for the very first time, two weeks early for quarantine. The location of Stevens took me by surprise, to say the least. One second I was driving past townhouse after townhouse, and the next I was surrounded by green lawns and the ubiquitous brick that Google Maps had once offered me a window to.
From my lovely Castle Point Hall dorm room, I experienced my Twelve Days of Stevens. As someone who’s never been without some form of human contact a day in their lives, it was drastically different. I planned ahead, so I had two weeks’ worth of fruits and instant food available, which, unfortunately, meant I didn’t even have a reason to order food, let alone go down the hall and pick it up.
Now if you haven’t experienced it yet, quarantine is a very unique window of time. It offers you nothing yet everything simultaneously. The world—within your four walls—is yours to conquer.
Some things got better during my time in quarantine. Both my guitar and ukulele playing drastically improved because I had little else to do. I was also able to finish two books, neither of which were the summer reading.
But some things got worse, too. My mental health went down the drain, and I realized halfway through quarantine how little I now wanted to be on campus. It just didn’t have the same appeal. I felt like a kid who’d excitedly ordered a Happy Meal, only to receive a Kidz Bop CD instead of a My Little Pony figurine. Sad times.
So after twelve days, two books, two instruments, and one lovely COVID test, I went home. I spent the three previous days packing, which was way harder than I thought it would be. To date, the hardest wrestling match I have ever been a part of was trying to wrangle my foam mattress topper into a box smaller than the one it came in. Every time I had it folded. It. Kept. Expanding. Terrible experience. 2 out of 5 stars, two because it was probably the best workout I had in those twelve days and winning made me feel like Ronda Rousey.
On my final day, I was able to experience a bit of the upbeat city of Hoboken. On one block, a resident was practicing drums and the lively beat almost made up for the canceled BENEE concert I was dying to go to. Even with the great soundtrack, I went to the airport that afternoon, checked in my bags, and boarded a flight to SFO to make it home on time for my first day of classes.
There are a few obvious differences between my hometown and Hoboken. There’s very little humidity where I’m from. It never snows, and the only “icy” we really get is, well, an Icee from 7-Eleven. But the biggest contrast I found was the quiet. There are no drums here. The soundtrack is the song of sparrows, the occasional Great Horned Owl, and the frequent firetruck. And even though at the beginning of August I was beyond excited to be on campus, I’m now beyond thankful to be back in the Golden State.
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