With all the changes on campus this year, it’s easy to look toward the future. Buildings are renovated, the food at Mabee Dining Hall has improved, student mental wellness is being prioritized and upper campus is no longer plagued by construction eye -sores. It feels like campus has been reborn and we have entered a new era. It feels great.
Not too long ago, however, campus was a ghost town. Students, friends and faculty all were wearing masks and six feet apart. People were isolated in their dorms, socializing through Zoom and computer screens. The Trinity bubble shrunk impossibly smaller as we stayed home, waiting for the pandemic to end.
Eventually, we learned that the pandemic would not end, and COVID would become endemic. To cope with our depressing reality, we called it the new normal. Classes started to move from Zoom-only to hybrid. Then, all of our classes were in-person, but we were still distanced and wearing masks. Slowly, but surely, our everyday lives started to go back to how they were.
Today, we are back to normal, or whatever normal looks like now. Sometimes weeks go by without hearing word about COVID. No longer are our daily routines plagued by updates on hospitalization and mortality rates or whether a new, threatening and even deadlier variant has emerged.
However, we are all undoubtedly traumatized, and that . Our trauma manifests in a multitude of ways. For many, the effects of COVID have made it harder to meet academic and social demands, making it easy to fall back into isolation and depressive tendencies. For healthcare workers and those who lost someone close to them, their lives are forever changed.
Despite our collective trauma, the world keeps moving forward and so do we. COVID continues to be part of our new normal. Unfortunately, our desire to move on has caused a blasé attitude toward COVID to emerge. The diseaseCOVID still exists and people are still getting sick. As subvariants continue to emerge, we are once again seeing surges and rising hospitalization rates across the world.
While we expect COVID to one day be like the flu, that is not our current reality. COVID is not a distant past, and not even our immediate past. The virus still affects the everyday lives of many, especially as we experience a new wave of cases as everyone returns from vacations and gets back to school and work.
As of Aug. 27, there are 28 positive cases of COVID on campus, only nine of whom are in isolation.Currently on campus, there are small outbreaks of COVID among friend groups. Outbreaks like this are hard to deal with at Trinity because it is such a small campus. Everyone seems to be in contact with everyone. Although our inhibitions toward COVID have been lowered, the disease is still very much alive and present on our campus. A small group of people getting sick can quickly spread across campus.
So, when we start to see our friend groups getting sick, make sure to be safe. Stay home if you are experiencing symptoms. Wear a mask if you know you could have been exposed. Take an at-home test from CVS or Walgreens, or visit the health center and get tested there. Protect yourself from getting sick by sticking to healthy habits, getting enough sleep, taking vitamin C supplements and staying hydrated.
As our university enters its exciting new era, we are reminded of the beautiful community that is fostered by our liberal arts education. So, let’s take care of our community and look out for each other. Practice healthy habits and please, please stay home if you are sick.
