Guest post by Mollie Tessler, 4th year undergraduate at UC Berkeley majoring in Integrative Biology
The west and east coast have many differences. There are good and bad to both, and outsiders are easily identifiable on either. One main difference is natural disasters. On the west coast, earthquakes and wildfires strike without warning. This suddenness may account for west coasters stereotypical “go with the flow” and laid back attitude. On the east coast, the more “high strung” coast as some would argue, natural disasters come with warning. They allow you to plan ahead and continue the fast walking way of life.
The newness of California and its natural disasters presented itself during my sophomore year when California was devastated by wildfires. This forced Universities to shut their doors early for Thanksgiving break, the big game was cancelled, and students retreated en masse to their homes throughout the state. As I frantically searched for flights to my blizzard stricken state, I felt far. But little did I, or the university know, that these pesky three day shutdowns for fires would only be the tip of the iceberg in this concept of online education.
As a junior, I began learning of COVID-19 within my infectious diseases course in January 2020. I would bring fun snippets and facts back to my house, share with my friends the latest case numbers, and told them nonchalantly on Feb 24th that the disease was on the verge of pandemic potential. As the week progressed and the first case of COVID-19 was identified in Berkeley, the severity of this unseeable enemy became more and more evident. The novelty of the disease that I was introduced to on slide three during the first day of class was quickly outweighed by the danger becoming more real. Infectious diseases are interesting to learn about, but not when the answers aren’t known.
And as if a switch had been flipped, the spring semester plans that had been perfectly laid out were gone. Seniors left in waves, hugging their friend’s goodbye, but assuring each other they’d return together in April. Similarly to the wildfires, students worldwide returned home in a mass exodus. But not me. I stayed. Which is ironic given that since I first came to California, I knew that it was temporary. As I was planning to stay for four years, and then return back east for graduate school or employment. When able to, I’ll go home for large breaks. But for safety reasons, a pandemic forced me to stay in my temporary home.
I went from living with 65 women to living with 3 men. My meals used to consist of a table of 12, with chairs being ever added and squeezed. My meals were now at a table of four. I spent my free time knitting what would be known as my “quarantine blanket” where this time would have otherwise been spent with friends. The blanket’s progress, as shared weekly with my lab, quickly became a way to tell the passage of time. My 25 minute walk to CNR five times a week was replaced with what could barely qualify as a hop, skip and a jump to my makeshift desk I built in a closet; a closet that I was voluntarily spending my days studying in, might I add. Like many others, my backpack remained untouched for months. This reminder of a time that seems foreign looking back.
As the semester progressed, more and more classes abandoned zoom live lectures and its faults and replaced them with pre-recorded lectures. Clubs that previously met weekly, now met every so often, not having much to discuss. Assignments were being shifted around, and some professors dropped off the map completely. Students’ structure was slowly being stripped from them. The only consistency that I held onto was my weekly lab meetings and book seminar. These 2 hours of meeting a week were some of the only times I would be in an intellectual setting that didn’t consist of being lectured at. It was refreshing to have conversations with live humans as opposed to learning a new material topic alone. This time was not only intellectually rich, but socially as well.
Because of my knowledge that my time in California was temporary I was reluctant to make deep connections, because I knew I would have to leave them in four years. Well, I guess all it took was a pandemic to make me realize, inadvertently or not, I had made deep connections out west. Relationships I knew existed but was too stubborn to see the power of prior became ever more clear in their importance. I finally had people who asked how my day was, people I could laugh over a documentary’s bad editing with, and people to watch as my blanket progressed. I learned of the term lab family and embraced it. As new graduates post-college plans were crumpling before their eyes, the class of 2021 and beyond started to think of their own employment troubles in a COVID world. Juniors began noticing the limited time they had left in college, and the limited time they had left with those they’ve met along the way. These juniors, similarly to the seniors of 2020, didn’t know if they’d be able to hug their friends goodbye.
As I progress onto my senior year, I’ll remember last semester as the one where my finals were not taken in a hot classroom with slanted desks but in a closet, with my back up against the dresser talking to myself throughout the test. As I progress into my senior year with the plans for fall becoming clearer, I like many others are coming to terms with having waved goodbye to our normal college days without even knowing. Grand plans, ideas, trips and memories that will never be formed but will remain as an ideal. There will be sports games that will be cancelled due to a pandemic instead of wildfires, and a lot of online schooling. As I look towards this new school year, I don’t know what it will bring. But a few things are certain, I have found my place and my family out west and for that I am grateful.