Page 36 - FDCC Pandemic Book

Living in a Pandemic: A Collection of Stories on Coping, Resilience & Hope
At the beginning of 2020, we celebrated that not only did our four older kids go off to college, but after their first semester – all four were allowed to return! The colleges they attend are as different and unique as each one of them have always been. Lexi attends the Univ. of Portland in Portland, OR; Abby - the Univ. of St. Louis; Grace is at Wellesley in Boston; and Kit (our only boy) chose the Univ. of North Alabama.
The first lesson the Pandemic has
taught was just how quickly life can change. This is a truism that has been repeated for eons, but everyone over age three was reminded why the expression is always repeated by those that are older and wiser. However, the concept of abrupt change has never been more clearly in focus than by those in college. Within a matter of days, what we used to consider normal college life became one of rushing to pack up and move back home. There was the mad scramble of deciding what needed to be brought home, and finding storage locations for items too big to travel (such as the quintessential dorm room fridge), coupled with the sadness of saying goodbye to friends and leaving behind unfinished business.
While the younger generation always gets accused of being less responsible than the one before, I suspect that for these young people who experienced such sudden, and unexpected change, will produce adults that appreciate the moment and take less for granted than me and my peers did at the same age. I will never forget waking up on a Friday morning with an email from the administration at St. Louis University that Abby, who was home for spring break, had to pick a slot the next day to get her completely moved out of her dorm room for the remainder of the semester. Instead of going to the office that morning as I had planned, I went to St. Louis. That impromptu road trip remains one of the few bright spots during the pandemic because it gave us the chance to bond over such a momentous event. Ironically, I vividly recall thinking back in March of 2020 that we would really understand what is going on in the next two weeks, and wondered if it was going to be so bad that she would not be returning to school before the semester was over. Needless to say, our expectations were way off! But those early days of the pandemic forced college students to adapt and change expectations in ways that they could not have conceived of the previous week.
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