An Unprecedented Chaos

Kids, this is the story of how our lives turned into a panicked world-wide pandemic where old people died. 

Life feels surreal right now.

Hand sanitizer is $55. The stock market is the worst it’s been in 12 years. I’m thinking twice about kissing someone.

Last week, I was on spring break, elated to be away from classes and having the chance to sleep in past 10 a.m. Today, I’m praying I’ll sit in a classroom again before the end of the semester. How dramatic of me.

The coronavirus panic has halted our entire lives. I remember reading that Japan was closing its schools, back when the virus felt distant and foreign. It was shocking, yet just a few weeks later, we faced the same threat. It’s a newsflash of how delicate our stately society really is, and how threatened we feel when its structure shows vulnerability.

My plans for the next few months have crumbled. Nothing dramatic, but I was going to go to networking events, some speeches, throw a huge party for my 20th birthday and sail off on a cruise to the Bahamas. Now, every carefully programmed event in my calendar has a threatening question mark next to it.

This feeling of cluelessness brings me uncertainty, but also a feeling of excitement because we’re all forced to live in the moment. Since I don’t have a plan to obsess over tomorrow, I can, for the first time in a long time, just sit down and ask myself what I want to do tonight. I suddenly found the liberty to blog again, to sign out a library book and stop stressing about the boy that’s not texting me back. As crises usually do, the coronavirus has forced a re-alignment of my priorities, which turns out — shockingly– wasn’t assignments due Sunday.

I still have a lot of questions that nobody can answer. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to go home or stay in my soon-to-be college ghost town. Should I go out this weekend? Should I avoid any contact with frat boys who are 46% likely to not wash their hands? (Not an official statistic).

For once, my professors don’t have the answers, which I think is truly testing their god-complexes.  My 73-year-old reporting professor is still passionately resisting transitioning to an online course.

Maybe we’ll all be fine in two weeks when they find an antidote. Maybe we’ll all be quarantined and die. Maybe I’ll be on a beach in Aruba when I “accidentally” buy a $200 round trip ticket.

Whatever happens, I’ll never forget the week where our precise, organized lives turned into unprecedented chaos.

P.S. The upside? We won’t have to see the rich people’s Coachella pics until October (it was postponed).