Illustration by Karly Andersen
My mom raised me to prepare for anything and to plan ahead. Over the years, she’s given me a portable fire escape ladder, a headlamp, countless batteries and the knowledge that I had to fill up the bathtub before a hurricane was about to hit. She made sure I knew how to keep myself safe when walking alone at night. Since I was little, I’ve known that if someone locks you in their trunk, you need to kick out the rear headlight to signal for help.
But nothing could have prepared me for the emotional blows that hit almost universally during a global pandemic, as people around the world die from coronavirus and our social systems struggle to manage the fallout.
I’m a college senior, and it was a given that my life was about to change. I knew already that I was about to move to a city I’d never visited on the other side of the country for a summer internship, and that, along with graduating college, was the only certainty I could count on for the next year of my life.
But the way the COVID-19 pandemic has chipped away at everyone’s lives is a sobering reminder that absolutely nothing is guaranteed, that our existence can turn inside out in a matter of weeks, days or in an instant.
To limit transmission of the virus, Virginia Commonwealth University canceled its May commencement and opened up the December ceremony to all 2020 graduates. The decision shattered the expectations most of us have carried throughout our college careers, and for many a long-held dream of walking across the stage in a cap and gown to signify the magnitude of our achievement. We’re not alone; institutions across the country have canceled their graduation ceremonies, and students are having to swallow our hurt as the world changes before our eyes.
I hold the memories of my time in college more dearly now that it’s been cut short. More likely than not, I’ll never get the chance again to be in the same room with all of my skilled and hardworking colleagues at The Commonwealth Times, where I am the executive editor. The late nights that my life has revolved around for years as we produced each issue are no more, at least for me and other graduating seniors. Even though The CT is still active online, perhaps more so than ever, the knowledge that I might have worked on a print newspaper for the last time without realizing it leaves me fighting back tears.
Nothing could have prepared me for the emotional toll of losing the in-person companionship, the laughs and routines of my last weeks of college. There were so many more memories to be made — now, the single biggest comfort is the knowledge that I’m not alone in having to conclude my college career without proper goodbyes.
When will the dust clear? And what will be left for us when it does? For what might be the first time in our lives, for those of us who are privileged enough not to have lived through a life-altering catastrophe, nothing is certain.
Even at The Commonwealth Times, where we cover the VCU campus — which, compared to the nation or the world, is a microcosm — we have to take things day by day, or even hour by hour, in a way I’ve never experienced.
Questions race through my mind all day as I see worst-case scenarios playing out in other people’s lives: What if a loved one dies while waiting on test results? What will the rest of my life look like if there aren’t enough news jobs to go around because of how the pandemic decimated the industry, local media especially? How much will it cost if a family member has to be hospitalized?
Perhaps my training as a journalist makes this personal crisis worse for me. The questions never stop; they branch out and loop back and duplicate, and I can’t get answers for any of them.
It’s hard to say that we must hold our loved ones close and value the present when it’s not safe to see one another, and it feels like life is slowing to a painful, grinding halt. Nothing is immune to the danger of an indiscriminate virus, and I can only hope that the global trauma of this pandemic will not only lead us to savor what we are privileged to have, but also to better understand and react to each other’s catastrophes.
Most Americans are being asked for the first time to change our lives radically to protect others; my hope is that my generation holds on to this principle, wherever this new world takes us.
Georgia Geen is a senior majoring in print/online journalism and Spanish at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she is also pursuing a certificate in Spanish-English translation and interpretation. This summer, she will work as a digital news and audience engagement intern for The Los Angeles Times.
