Zoom University was everyone’s university now. It didn’t matter where you were academically. It didn’t matter what school you went to, or what you were studying, everybody knew about Zoom. The teleconference telecommunicating service skyrocketed in availability and seemed like the default for education. My first course taking it was luckily my Writing and Power course. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I had a jolt of energy whenever the time came for me to log-in for the first time, because I knew that we wouldn’t talk about class, but instead, we were going to talk about how we were feeling. I know that I wouldn’t have opened my thoughts and my emotions to any other group of people than them.
I smiled, laughed, and joked with the weirdness of the world. At the same time, I was in shock that I was still residing on the campus, while everyone seemed to be home, with their families. Writing and Power was only one of the five courses I was taking in this semester. Every other course I had being fully online felt like a burden now. No in person edits or office hours to attend. Writing papers for multiple classes and taking exams and studying for them as if everything was normal felt overwhelming. I felt stranded in a wasteland every time I left the dorm room for the food from the main cafeteria on the campus. Couch restaurants deserves the greatest rating you could give to a food service for the adjustments they made in making sure that food on a major campus still available while staying safe. The variety of different foods and the availability they were open with throughout the uncertainty of the remainder of the school year was nothing less than impressive.
During this time, when classes were through the laptop webcam, I focused on staying sane. I checked up with the world news now more than ever, specifically for the numbers of cases and safety instructions I had to follow. I found a simple place to work outside of my dorm room so I wouldn’t fall asleep so much throughout the day. I wanted to have a normal schedule again, almost begging for structure. I tried to have organization of things to do in-between classes and assignments and whatnot. I ultimately couldn’t find that comfortable rhythm.
Luckily, something came along that brought emotion back to me. Sports had obviously been cancelled (making the OKC game I went to last month, the last basketball game in Chesapeake arena thus far). No basketball anymore, and football was uncertain, and already naturally in its offseason.
Then, I saw a trailer for “The Last Dance,” a ten-part documentary series airing on ESPN about the last championship year of the Chicago Bulls, and an in-depth look into who many calls (including myself) the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan.
It was the closest thing to sports that I had to watch at the time. Normally, around this time of year, the first round of the NBA playoffs would be on air. Every Sunday that a set of episodes released, carried with it, the same anticipation of watching an actual game. People who didn't even watch basketball, watched the documentary, going through Michael’s journey with him. At times, the documentary seemed to have a trans on society. Every scene, message and lesson each episode brought also made its way to social media in the form of tons of gifs, memes and quotable moments.
The fifth episode, which took time to open more on Michael’s impact and relationship with Kobe Bryant, was the reminder that the year was far from over. We weren’t even halfway through it yet. Up until that point in the month, I had just been reacting to everything. I limited what I digested from the media. I was in the process of molding what I wanted to watch as I knew I was going to be inside for a long time. Every episode of the documentary in a strange way brought me back to reality, of chasing your dreams, achieving your goals and whatnot.
Internally, I felt I was losing that look on reality. I was inside, eating the same things and doing the same things so often, that watching Michael Jordan’s career being told like this, was enough motivation to remind myself why I was staring at that laptop screen all day. It made me go back and question where my own motivation and determination had gone. I couldn’t bring out the same optimistic nature as I normally could before. No one was around for anything. There were no events to interact with both familiar and new people at. There were no celebrations to look forward to. There were no meetings to plan things for anymore. It was just waiting, staying safe, and hoping for the best.
Days became nonexistent as time became continuous. Every piece of news made things increasingly more confusing as to how to move forward. Everything was getting cancelled, postponed, and halted. With nothing to do, it seemed that everyday had a new challenge to it. Two words began percolating around that carried the upmost importance to them... stimulus checks. I understood the government would provide aid in a situation such as this one. It was unheard of for them not to.
This was my first-time filing taxes, and just like most people, I wanted that stimulus check immediately. It aggravated me that the process for providing people with money took this long and wasn’t given to everyone. Most college students didn’t get the money because they were dependents underneath their parents. Some didn’t file taxes, and so on and so on. Jokes ensued across social media platforms, making light of those who didn’t get it. It wasn’t funny though. Nothing I opened my phone to see, that made light of this crazy situation everyone was in was humorous. I didn’t find myself laughing or joking around about anything on social media. This foreshadowed my relationship with social media. I just watched numbers increase on the news screen, and countries lockdown around the world.
I always focused on staying safe and keeping my head sane. However, the more I stayed to myself, the more I became confused. I’d watch people angrily protesting in the streets to not shut down the country. It was my first-time seeing people without masks protesting for their own way of how they want to move forward. It threw me off, knowing how dangerous the virus was.
It was unnerving to even see people gathered close together without masks. The threats they would incite on the governors of states that wanted to shut down to protect its citizens made my brain hurt most nights. I could sense the anger in wanting to keep businesses alive and whatnot, but in my head, I kept saying “survival of the fittest.” It would foreshadow a lot of what would be seen later in the year.
When instruction was given by health professionals, it would soon be followed by retaliation from groups of people who thought differently and were influenced differently about the severity of the virus. What boggled my mind deeply about this, was seeing people making the virus spread more, but then seeing events such as the NFL draft, become virtual and still have an impact and seeing an organization such as the NFL take precaution. It gave some hope for more sports in the future, but seeing people working hard to give its viewers something to watch and giving young players a sliver of the remarkable moment of being drafted to NFL teams in the midst of a pandemic, while simultaneously seeing people causing the problem of spreading the virus much worse truly was a conundrum I didn't and still don't understand.
My walls of escape from the craziness of the world were thinning. It was time for a change, something drastic. My trepidation about the ending of my college career collapsed on me every time I closed the laptop after a zoom session.
How could the U.S have the most cases so quickly? How could we have the most deaths so fast? Why isn’t everybody wearing a mask? I’m supposed to graduate in a month…right?
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