Dear Future, I’m Ready

POV: You’re me. Sitting on your bed, scrolling through the Course Atlas, wondering how on Earth you are going to fulfill your GERs, pre-med requirements, and English major requirements. You look at Eng205 (Poetry) and then Chem203 (the dreaded Organic Chemistry). These sound slightly unpleasant, and you can’t help but wonder what the Fall 2020 semester is going to be like. But an even bigger question looms: will there even be a Fall 2020 semester? 

Needless to say, quarantine is trying its absolute hardest to take away my hope for the future. It’s hard to think of when we will be able to just snap back to normal the second this is over, or if we even will. That’s not to say that the future is incredibly bleak. It’s just daunting to begin to imagine the future where I get to leave my house without putting on a face mask; where I get to see my friends and hug them instead of standing six feet away; and where I can stand amongst other people, someone can cough, and the room won’t go silent.

At the moment, my days consist of waking up at 9:45am for my 10:00am Zoom class. On days when I don’t have that class, I let myself sleep until the early afternoon. While some may say I’m being lazy, I think I’m actually just giving myself a chance to rest. Before quarantine, I was constantly running from one thing to the next and did not really get a second to stop and breathe. Now, I have all the time in the world. I spend hours on Pinterest, saving pins of outfit ideas, new meals to cook, and places to visit. I plan and plan for the time when I finally get to leave my house. In that sense, I feel like Rapunzel, wondering when my life will get to resume. 

I talk to my friends nearly every day, remembering the days P.Q. (pre-quarantine) when I saw them every day and could walk outside my dorm, met with so many friendly faces walking through campus. Going from constant social interaction to essentially none (no offense Mom and Dad) is a real shock. As I near day number “I have completely lost count,” I’ve fallen into a routine. Wake up, drink coffee, read the news, do some homework, watch some TV, go for a run, waste hours on TikTok, eat many many snacks, Facetime my friends, and then do it all over again the next day. 

I thought my resolve to have everything figured out while I had all the time in the world would make it easier once the world began to start moving again. As I’ve grown to discover in this past semester, you can plan all you want, but when it comes down to it, preparedness for change will leave you better off in the end. Quarantine made me anxious to get moving again, to resume my normal life.

However, as I look back on the months I dawdled away, it seems like a blur. Now that I’m back at Emory, and the world has started to spin once more, I’m determined to hold onto every day. The things I missed? Studying on the quad in the beautiful Atlanta weather, visiting the farmer’s market once a week, and staying up until 2am with my friends (pretending to study, but really just having fun). While not all of these have returned exactly as I left them, the change was expected, and I plan to make the most of the time I have left.

Divya Kishore 23C
English Literature
Westchester, NY

This article was originally published on the HerCampus website. It has been republished here in-full with the author’s permission. Read the original article by visiting: https://www.hercampus.com/school/emory/dear-future-i-m-ready-you

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