March 14, 2020 [The Day After We Learned]
[Page 1] The snow fell down on the city on a Saturday morning. All was quiet and contemplative as the fresh powder washed away the worries of yesterday. The snow was so light and cleansing in fact, that drivers didn’t even clear their cars. They drove from place to place, home to destination to home, with all of that fluffy snow piled up on their hood and windshield. The snow acting as a veil, a clever block, a hazy retreat from the seen world.
What was it that the snow was concealing? What secrets would the swirling flurries reveal once they touched the ground and melted back into the earth. It was the beginning of Spring, an auspicious time for snow. The groundhog was wrong once again, only a faux spring had sprung, and the effects of being plunged back into the cold and despair of winter were pervasive. As it was Spring Break, the town had begun to empty of people.
[Page 2] Students in a rush to return to their parents or to the latest vacation hot spots, for reckless youth, [have] mostly departed as early as possible the night before. This departure left a stillness in the buildings and residencies around town, an almost easy silence. Would they be back? Would the campus fill once again with the sounds of youthful glee and laughter, or was this the new normal?
The silence and stillness of a collegiate ghost town, emptied of its sole proprietors, the consumers of all that the college and the city had to offer, both town and gown. But would there be any gowns this year? As of this week graduation and all commencement activities were on pause, hanging, waiting for approval. You could feel the disappointment in the air. As students went home or abroad that weekend there was no laughter, no see you next week, or even next semester or next year.
[Page 3] The snow exposed the uncertainty. The uncertainty of a world and a place we all thought was a foundation. A pillar, an ivory tower, a paragon. If you can’t go to school or the university where can you go? What will you do to move from the liminal space of wayward teenagers to the hope and opportunity of early adulthood. The college, a symbol of higher learning, has become more than a space of classrooms and labs. The college is now a place that parents send their kids to become adults. To find themselves, to learn the world through their many experiences. What fresh hell is in store when that experience changes? When it morphs into a watered down, dystopian version of a time honored original, legacy, and tradition. Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun, the dreams of students, staff, and professors everywhere? What hope is there in this calm chaos, this global madness? What is the fight after the snow?