I went to Pier C to try and start this column, looking to escape my tiny sweatbox of a bedroom and make some small part of this absurd semester actually feel real. My ailing laptop had different plans.
It crashed twice while I was simply trying to open up a Word document, and afterwards starting booting into the bios, which is a really bad sign. I think I’ve honestly just asked too much of the poor thing over the years, I bought it for Stevens four years ago and it’s been working non-stop since the day I got here. Getting hauled to and from every class, downloading and running all kinds of new engineering and teamwork software, trying to do like 2-8 things at once, loading or re-loading the front page of the news a few million times to my panic, creating this paper, overheating in my bed on Sunday mornings as I watched Netflix and tried to relax, storing the monolithic amount of documents I’ve needed or created over my time at Stevens, most recently connecting me in to the hundreds of zoom calls that now comprise my life at Stevens, its just too much for one little brain…I mean processor, to well, process.
Of course, I can’t really blame it, everything seems to be ailing these days. All this extremely weighty, impactful chaos is going on around us, but most people are still in a serene, quarantine like state of living, resulting in an extreme amount of disparity between what our phone screens are telling us and how our day to day lives feel. I could name every brick in the wall of stress that has been building up in front of me, blocking my view of the future, but I don’t really think I need to (not to mention it would make this column about 10,000 words long). Everyone has their own extraordinary circumstances piled on top of the extraordinary state the country is in, their own wall of stressors mounting higher and higher by the day. Except almost all of those stressors are now virtual, regardless of how important they are they are still just messages on a screen, texts, phone calls, Zoom links, Slack messages, emails, Canvas deadlines, headlines, social media posts, etc etc. Part of them feels fake, like they aren’t actually happening, like the country isn’t actually in the most chaotic and volatile state it has possibly ever been in, like it would be ok to just ignore the phone and let it all be. Regardless of how disastrous it would actually be, the urge to just shut down and shut out the world gets stronger by the day. (Note: I do also want to point out that there are a considerable number of students whose home life, or lack thereof, haven’t allowed them to be in the same kind of peaceful quarantine state that most of us now find ourselves in, and to those students I wish strength and perseverance in this exceedingly difficult time.)
There’s no magic answer. No one piece of advice that will help us all figure this out, no one prophet or Biden that will swoop in and fix the country all at once, no singular Stevens policy that will suddenly make remote classes more bearable and equitable, but I do know two things: we can’t give in to that urge to simply shut down, and we all need to find our own ways to cope with the chaos.
Shutting down would just be giving in, accepting that this is simply how our lives and the world are now and that’s ok. Throwing out my computer and buying another one instead of trying to fix it. Believe me, I understand the urge, I’ve been struggling just to pay any attention at all to my classwork, or apply for jobs, or stay involved in clubs, or do basic chores, or really keep up with anything Stevens related at all. It just sounds like so much effort when I could simply go back to sleep, and being home only made it worse. I came back to Hoboken (I’m locked into my lease, so I have to keep my apartment whether I like it or not) about two weeks ago in hopes it would quell the urge to simply throw my hands in air and break down. It’s been helpful, but it wasn’t a full solution, it didn’t magically give me all the motivation I’ve been missing. I now see that motivation must come from within, that I, and everyone else, need to find our own ways to glue our eyes to our Zoom classes and actually put as much effort into our assignments as they demand. For me, the main thought driving me forward at this point is that the only way out is through, if I fail everything I’ll just need to take it all again in the spring, possibly also online, only extending the time before I escape this Zoom purgatory. For you, maybe this isn’t even a problem, maybe you’ve taken to remote learning far better than I have, or maybe you’ll also find your own reasons to get focused.
As for the larger problem, the chaos engulfing the entire country, there’s even less of a clear solution. Stevens has always been a chaotic place, and for the first three years I honestly enjoyed it; it was fun and it kept me motivated, but now its all just become far too much. I’ve seen exactly four friends since I got back to Hoboken, usually outdoors while wearing masks, and after awhile each of those visits all eventually devolved into us simply ranting about the world. “Did you hear about this?” “What?! No that’s awful! Did you hear about this!?!?!” “What!?!?” On and on, back and forth for hours until we get so overwhelmed we start trying to find any kind of humor to cut through all the panic (thanks TikTok). At the end of the debate Tuesday night one of the two friends I watched it with observed, “I’m glad you guys were here to watch with me, cause otherwise I think I would have been questioning whether or not that was even real.”
As I was leaving, I said, “we’re going to figure it out, somehow we’re going to find a way through this,” and the other friend immediately shot back, “Are we?! Are we really Andrew!!?” Trying desperately to get myself to actually believe the words, I replied “Well I think we at least have to hope, right?”
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