It’s a Friday afternoon, I walk out of my Airbnb to get some fresh air and go for my morning walk when the soft touch of snowflakes gently land on my face making my cheeks rosy red. I shiver but smirk because it’s finally snowing, the first real sticking snow I’ve seen all season. I’m trying to savor Vermont’s beauty and my mental break before I return to campus to get back into the groove of classes, sorority events, Resident Assistant duties, and work.
A couple hours pass and I’m getting spammed with messages on Slack and GroupMe about the possibility of going virtual. I think to myself, “If I have to do that again, I’m going to lose it.” I check my Stevens email — and yes, I have to do that again.
With the spike in COVID-19 cases due to holiday gatherings and travel, I shouldn’t be that surprised that we’re virtual for a couple of weeks. At least that’s what the administration is saying for now. Who knows, a couple weeks could turn into indefinite virtual learning like it did two years ago. I have to laugh, this is exactly where we were in March 2020.
I feel somewhat unphased. I’m constantly playing a game of tug of war with myself. Sometimes I’m itching for a real, face-to-face interaction where I can actually see a smile and not just a masked face. Collaborating in a group is much easier when they’re sitting right next to you and there is no possibility of a network lag between conversations. However, there are days where I secretly enjoy my uninterrupted “me” time. The days where I can read a book uninterrupted for hours with a home-brewed cup of joe are some of my favorites. Is that so bad? The state of the world is in flux, and I’m not talking about magnetic flux. I might as well get comfortable being isolated from the outside world on occasion.
In today’s age, I find that being adaptable is a critical skill. Take the computer for example. The first desktop computer was developed in 1971, the Altair 8800. At the time that technology was revolutionary, yet it didn’t even have a graphical user interface (GUI) like all computers have today. In 1976, Steve Jobs created the Apple I, the first computer with a GUI. Fast-forward to 2008 and we had the first Macbook Pro, iPod Nano, and iPod shuffle. Within about 40 years, the personal computer industry was created and changed life as we know it.
While a pandemic is vastly different from a technological revolution, both have changed society and how we perceive the world. We must adapt to change because life won’t wait for us to catch up.
It’s kind of sad to think that half of my college career has been online. It is not what I expected, nor hoped for. However, I have done things that I probably would not have done otherwise. Taking classes online allowed me to be anywhere, anytime. In the past year, I’ve visited Charleston, South Carolina, Washington D.C., Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, Mount Bond, New Hampshire, and Burlington, Vermont. If school wasn’t virtual, I wouldn’t have been able to have those experiences. You can choose to look at the glass half full or half empty; or you can be grateful that there’s water at all.
Senioritis is an Opinion column written by one or two Stevens student(s) in their last year of study to discuss life experiences during their final year at Stevens, and other related subject matter.
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