My Short Senior Spring

I know you’d probably love to read about something other than the COVID-19. Most likely it’s all that’s on your newsfeed. I’d love to write about something else too. But these days I can’t really think about anything else. Sorry about that.

After a few weeks of rumors, Grinnell sent out an email confirming the worst: after spring break campus will close, classes will be online, anyone who can go home will have to go home. The administration left most other details blank, leaving most students in panic for what to do next. I don’t want to moan unnecessarily, especially when I’m privileged enough to have a home to go back to, in a state with only a few confirmed cases, and a body with good odds of fighting it off. But I can’t help but feel overwhelmed. As a senior, I was putting a lot of stake in this last half of the semester: saying goodbye to friends I’ve made over these four years, running my last 10k and hoping for a personal best, finishing up my time at Grinnell with a sense of accomplishment and closure. Now, suddenly, it’s over. There might not even be a graduation ceremony. My girlfriend and I have been spending most hours of the day together for the past few months, but once we say goodbye, we won’t see each other for more than a month. Mourning sounds like an extreme word, but I can’t think of much of another way to put it.

But it needs to be done. Not everyone at the school agrees with that. There are plenty of reasons to be angry, of course: the news was abrupt, the email was vague, the decision-making process was a little opaque. Worst of all, there are more and more reports of people who absolutely need to stay on campus having their petitions denied, which is unquestionably awful. It doesn’t help that this decision is all wrapped up in corporate bureaucracy, which is an institution that specializes in dismissing something personal and valuable in favor of the broad and incoherent. 

But this decision is based on something personal and valuable, though. It’s easy to forget that, when most news stories about COVID-19 show up with photos of CGI virus cells or maps covered in numbers and deaths are discussed in incomprehensibly high statistics. But there are entire lives at stake here. Not the lives of most people displaced by this decision, COVID-19 doesn’t hit people our age that hard, but people older and younger than us will die if it hits. Grinnell isn’t ready for it to hit: they only have three respirator masks in the entire town, and only three isolation units. Sending everyone home changes a slice of our lives, a significant slice, but only a slice. Letting COVID-19 into our community could end someone’s life entirely. It’s a sacrifice, and one we need to mourn. But, overall, it’s worth it.