Photo Source: John Phelan, Wikimedia Commons
The following is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone.
It was not supposed to end this way. Just a short time ago, I was looking forward to finishing midterms, relaxing on spring break, and enjoying my last few months on campus. As a student in my final semester, I also had a lot on my mind: finding a job, finishing my thesis research, and preparing for the graduation traditions that would provide closure to the late nights and long hours I put into my degree.
But fate had a different idea. As deaths began mounting in Italy and in Washington state, the school sent out a notice: classes would be cancelled until April 6. That is not so long, I thought. I will just wait it out, and things will soon be back to normal. Three days later, a bombshell arrived in our inbox: all students, other than a select few approved by the University, would need to leave campus immediately. Alumni reunions were cancelled, convocation was cancelled, and commiserating in the company of friends, too, was cancelled. Life was simply put on hold, and all that we had looked forward to evaporated in the blink of an eye.
We were in shock, because nothing like this ever happened at Princeton. The school has been around for over 250 years, and not once – not on 9/11, not during World War II, not even during the American Revolution, when a battle was fought just down the road – was school ever cancelled. It should not be surprising that Princeton students have a habit of referring to our rural campus community as “the orange bubble.” But the university is also isolated in a different sense: political fads and world wars alike have had remarkably little effect on the academic and social environment on campus, giving Princeton students and faculty the unique ability to question accepted dogma free from the distractions of the outside world. Or so we thought. We must now accept that the bubble was just a mirage, a convenient fiction that existed only as long as the outside world would allow it. Its existence in the age of hyperglobalization was, in hindsight, a temporary, fleeting one. The bubble was eventually bound to burst.
In retrospect, it seems so predictable, so obvious that a disease of this sort would eventually hit us. How could we have been so naïve? In mid-January, my friend from Hong Kong and I spent much of our free time making memes about the incompetence of the Chinese state. No one here would eat bat soup. Seemingly “world-ending” epidemics broke out in Africa all the time, but they never made it to America. The problem was distant, abstract, and certainly not relevant to us. Why worry?
Of course, our ignorance eventually caught up with us. Bat soup may have been funny at the time, but the disease that brought it to fame would soon have very real effects on our personal lives. In my frantic attempt to stuff a car’s worth of belongings into one suitcase, I could not help but think about all that which was supposed to happen, but was not to be. Everything I wanted to do before my departure – visiting that obscure room in the library which was rumored not to exist, dropping in to the office hours of that VIP professor who I always wanted to talk to, watching the spring flowers in the garden reveal their colors just one last time – all that will never happen. My final midterm exam week was not spent studying, but partying. “It’s the end of the world as we know it,” said a handwritten sign outside a dormitory. “Might as well take shots.”
We all must emerge from the bubble eventually, but never expected it to shatter in front of our eyes. The transition between the cradle of the university and the harsh reality of the real world was supposed to be a gentle one – not abruptly terminated with rapid goodbyes and teary-eyed all-night packing sessions, but a departure heralded by Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance to the cheers of friends and family. Instead, we got dreary online classes, social distancing, and the worst job market in a generation. We are relegated to our homes, continuing with the routines of university life, but only half-heartedly; seeing our friends and professors, but only through the glass wall of a screen; seemingly close to the people we love, but a world apart from where we want to be.
This will not go on forever. Someday, people will return to campus. And when we do, the bubble will reinflate, perhaps a little worse for wear, but still intact. Life will go on, as it always has, and students, recent graduates included, will eventually resume a normal existence. But until then, we wait – until the storm passes, the sun comes out, and we can make up for time lost and memories yet unformed.
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