Your Spring was blown out. Most likely either you found yourself scrambling back to campus to grab your stuff and race to the safety of a quarantine at home – or you watched as Senior skip day, Prom and Graduation passed you by. You may have thought it was cool at first to take the back half of second semester classes in your pajamas as you coasted to the end of the school year online. But you paid a price: no parties, no friends, no fun.
Now you’re back in the saddle. All settled in. Risk-informed. Tested. Quarantined. And, then, finally free on campus. The night is young. What is a college co-ed to do? Sitting around the dorm by yourself or with your roommate can be so lonely. Quarantine may have been downright depressing. Perhaps there were moments when you wondered if you had made a mistake coming back to school. Truth be told, it may have even gotten a little bit dark in your head while you waited to be cleared on that move-in COVID test. You may have been a little freaked out.
It’s so unfair. This isn’t why you busted your chops all through high school. College is supposed to be all about partying and meeting new people and making friends for life. You earned something better. This virus has already ruined your summer. It’s made your parents creepy. And school is just not the same this year. The food’s weird. You can’t get a slot at the gym. There’s no tailgating, no football.
It may seem like everyone’s making a huge deal out of this virus thing. So what, you say. I think I already had it. Or, if I get it still, it can’t be that bad. It’s just like the flu. You don’t know anyone who has really become that sick with COVID, even if you know people who have tested positive. You’re young. You’re healthy. No one’s doing the masks inside. Everyone’s having their boyfriend over to room, right? Plus, grandma’s miles away now. Those summer worries about infecting older people don’t apply here at school. And really, who’s watching little old you? Who’s gonna know if you stay in or go out? Who’s going to know if your boyfriend spends the night? I mean, what are the odds.
Without question, the experiences that you are living through will be something that you will always remember. As prior generations recall the draft and going off to war at the age of 18, you and your classmates will remember this COVID Fall of masks, hand sanitizers and sticks up the nose.
Before you do something on the edge of the rules, you may want to stop and ask yourself: Is this how you want to show up? Do you want to even take the chance of being sent home like those unlucky eleven students at Northeastern University who got caught having a social gathering contrary to the COVID no-guests-in-rooms policy? Without a doubt, even in the short term, you’ll have a different kind of campus infamy among your classmates if it’s your party that shuts the campus down. But perhaps not the right kind of reputation. You may be talking some serious loss of friends then.
You might catch some short-term heat if you say no to that party invite, wear your mask, or decline to entertain that possible booty call in the campus dorm. But in this fall of empty football stadiums and fieldhouses, school pride is going to be marked by something different. Something every student on campus – not just the top athletes – will make happen: keeping the residence halls and classrooms open until Thanksgiving. So when you’re tempted to take a risk and break the rules, think about that turkey.