During Pandemic Link to heading

I wrote the following during the pandemic, in the summer of 2020.

_College graduation is supposed to be a landmark time. Pandemic’s are too. Having both at the same time was a bitch.

Being in college is always different. I felt the need of finding that 25th hour of the day and worked day and night with so little sleep that I would snooze at least once a class. EVERY CLASS. Between physics research, physics projects, and Taiko, I was stretched out thin and felt like I was always running to my next thing. Even when I was “relaxing” by going to a cafe, I was there to work and catch up on other work. It was hell and it was good. I had more freedom than I had any other time of my life and I did what I wanted, when I wanted. Then, March 2020 happened._

Post Pandemic Link to heading

It’s May 2022 now. I’m back in New York City to celebrate my makeup graduation ceremony for undergraduate at Columbia University. As I walk the same cobblestones and halls of a life that felt forever ago, I found myself swept in a sea of nostalgia. I recall every story from my undergraduate life in every little spot on campus: the coffee shop replaced by a chain, the classrooms repainted and renewed, another year of graduates talking about heir summer travel plans. So much has changed.

Some hasn’t. I see the same faces of the workers in the bodegas I used to frequent, the professors and friends who stuck around, and the rush and bustle of a train station. I walk the streets with a sense of nostalgia for all the days that have past with a simultaneous urge of alienation from the new change in time.

When the last quarter of our senior year to the pandemic, I didn’t think much of it. Or rather, I couldn’t. There was a sense of shock and a glazed over sense of ‘ah well, bummer’ that kept me distanced from the feelings of loss. After all, everyone I knew were feeling the same. What is the point of complaining when we all understood the same pain.

But walking around today made me feel that sense of loss in a deeper way than before. I didn’t just lose the time to say goodbye to my friends but also the careless freedom that dominated my undergraduate life.

…Of leaving work for spontaneous meetups at …Of ditching campus for random excursions into the New York night. …Of discovering cafes and shops filled to the brim of unique and interesting art

I would love to say, ‘I wish I knew it was the good times back then’. In a sense, that would be easier. But I knew. I knew I was in the good times. And it’s still sad all the same. Knowing you have it good doesn’t make it any easier to leave.

Today was a fun day. I met up with friends from undergrad and felt the friendships I left without closure reopen and ignite. But I also feel saddened, exposed, nostalgic, alienated.

It’s the first time I have truly felt I have missed this place: New York, Columbia University, and the me of that time. It’s a frightening how strong these feelings are. And I know I will miss this feeling too when it goes away.