It was the Thursday of Spring Break – March 19th to be exact. I’d spent the week at my friend’s mountain house in Boone, NC and was heading back to Furman. As I pulled in through the main gate, I immediately felt a heaviness in the air. It wasn’t because it was quieter than usual or because fewer students were on campus. It was this hint of a feared finality that enveloped the entirety of my short drive to my North Village apartment. The only way I could figure out how to describe it was how things felt post-“Snap” in Avengers Endgame. For non-Marvel fans, the chief villain, Thanos, acquired a series of stones that gave him the power to eliminate half of Earth’s population with the snap of his fingers. At the beginning of the final film, what was left from the snap was an eerie sense of silence and emptiness as a result of the lack of people on Earth.
In the least dramatic way possible, that’s how being back at Furman felt. At the time, students were only told that a second week would be added to the break and classes would be moved temporarily online. Deep down though, I sensed the omen of something I’d already been dreading – the end. The end of spontaneous conversations on the way to class. The end of meetings with professors in their office. And truly just the end of normalcy. I tried to remain hopeful that classes would eventually resume, but it was hard to imagine the Coronavirus dissipating by the end of the academic semester. So, of course, I tried to push off thinking about the implications of my senior year being cut short and the number of people I would not be able to see in person for an indefinite amount of time.
It’s weird to have something end so abruptly. Not just for seniors, but for students of all years. Even faculty who created their curriculum around in-person meetings on a regular schedule–we needed adjustment and flexibility to move forward. With online classes now underway, a new normal is being established within the quarantine. Zoom-ing in for class, having e-lunches with friends, and taking walks throughout the day have made the physical isolation a bit more bearable.
Before students were told to leave campus, a few of my close friends and I had made time to fit in a viewing of Avengers Endgame to handle the uncertainty of what was occurring in the world. Without spoiling too much of the film, there’s a scene where Iron Man says, “Part of the journey is the end.” Meant as a source of comfort, he says these words to remind others that nothing lasts forever. But at the close, there can be peace and acceptance as well. Handling the spread of this virus looks and feels different for everyone. For students, it’s reconciling the end of a semester. For seniors, it’s processing an ending that came sooner than expected. For others, it’s cultivating peace and a sense of grounded-ness as the future continues to remain unknown. While this plot may not have Avengers, each of us is given the responsibility of staying at home, washing hands, and practicing social distancing to do what we can to reverse this metaphorical “snap.” It’s not ideal, but the work of a superhero never is, and the pay-off is 100 percent worth it. Be careful, maintain those Vitamin D levels, and most of all, spread love in whatever ways you can.