"Wednesday night, they cancelled classes, and flocks of people left town. By Thursday, the dining hall was making changes to how it served food, and the mass exodus continued. By Friday, finals and all graduation ceremonies were cancelled – coming amongst reports of cases on campus and people continuing to go to parties and bars and raves; the emails asked everyone to get out if possible. By Saturday, the last large wave left. By Sunday, the dwindlers made their escape. By Monday, online classes officially began and meals transitioned from 3 feet apart to To Go options only. In the [dorm] hall, the only sound to be heard was the muffled but incessant ripping of unrolled packing tape – not even a footstep. By Tuesday… well, by Tuesday, who knew what further developments life might bring?"
- Alexis Aulepp (a journal entry, the night of 3/16/20)
DISAPPOINTMENT AND FEAR
by Alexis Aulepp
The [Painted] Rock, a University of Michigan campus landmark. Alexis never got to paint it, but she made her mark the night before leaving campus, March 2020.
Everything happened in slow motion.
The collapse of life as we knew it was more like watching dominos fall rather than one big, earth-shattering explosion. It was a series of predictable and unpredictable turns of events – a situation that seemed to update itself daily, if not hourly, week after week.
As the fallout piled up, so did the questions. So did the fears. So did the tension. It quickly became obvious that this was not going to be an easy fix; nothing was going to be the same.
​
It began with the news reports. Then the movement of other schools to online classes. Then my own school, the University of Michigan, announced classes would be online through April 21st, the last day of classes for the Winter 2020 semester.
At the time, there were only two presumptive cases of COVID-19 in the state of Michigan.
​
In the days and weeks that followed, programs would be cancelled – both during the remainder of the semester and into the Spring and Summer
by Alexis Aulepp
terms. Critical services would be changed to operate in ways that were nearly unrecognizable. Employees would be asked to work from home, if possible, and students would be encouraged (in increasingly persistent language) to move home as soon as they were able. Information would be doled out sparingly – even to university employees like myself – and changed at rates that were almost unreasonable to keep up with.
Within 48 hours of the first notice for online classes, the cancellation was extended through final exams and graduation. And there, buried in the folds of other cancellations and recommendations, was what felt like the most relevant sentence in that email to a senior like me: "All U-M commencement ceremonies are canceled."
​
It felt like getting broken up with via text.
Just an hour before the announcement, I had made a forty-minute trip to buy my cap and gown. Now, it was looking like I wouldn’t be needing it.
​
Disappointed wasn’t the right word for what I was feeling. Disappointed was too easy a word; I needed something more complex. Yes, I was disappointed, but I was also frustrated. Saddened. Confused. Indignant. Unsurprised. Understanding. Hurt. Afraid. I knew that this was probably the safe decision – and, in the grand scheme of things, not the worst thing that could have
President Mark S. Schlissel. "Important updates on finals, commencements, flexible work arrangements and additional COVID-19 announcements." Received by Alexis Aulepp, 13 Mar. 2020.
possibly happened – but I felt like I had been robbed of something that should have been mine.
I decided that it felt like a snub. A well-intentioned and probably (deep, deep down) apologetic snub, but a snub nonetheless. The sparse language of the email made it feel even worse, somehow – almost as if the gravitas of this news was not being properly acknowledged.
In a handful of sentences, something monumental was communicated – something that couldn’t be taken back, something that would force the alteration of dreams and expectations for thousands of students at our university.
And it was playing out in a similar fashion all over the country.
In large part, it would mean that the college/university Class of 2020 did not have the last few months with friends that we expected. We did not get to finish our university bucket lists, end our college experience on a high note, or say a proper goodbye to our college towns and campuses. We didn’t get to fully utilize the college resources we were hoping to squeeze in before graduation, and we didn’t get to know that many of our lasts would be our lasts until they had already come and gone.
We lost a lot more than a ceremony.
We lost almost the entirety of our multifaceted goodbye.
​
​
It was almost too much to comprehend.
Less than a week before the first cancellation, I was on Spring Break. I was in the mountains, reflecting on the peace and quiet, and thinking to myself about how this felt like the calm before the storm. I was expecting the storm of the last-two-months-of-college-life activities. Instead, I got a hurricane of COVID-19 hysteria.
From what I could tell, everyone else seemed similarly blindsided.
​
by Alexis Aulepp
It was as if we all blinked and someone pushed over the first domino before we opened our eyes again. It was like those moments in history where, with that one shove, we all got pushed in a certain direction – knocked off the path of our normal timeline and somehow thrust into an alternate reality that no one can escape or rewind.
Even seven weeks in, I’m finding it hard to adjust.
And I’m not alone. So many of the usual
by Alexis Aulepp
markers by which we tell the time of our lives have been altered in ways that are leaving a lot of people confused and disoriented – including myself – which worries me.
Especially as would-have-been commencement nears, I find myself wondering if I and other would-have-been Class of 2020 graduates will find ourselves experiencing a lack of closure, even as we attempt to move on with our lives.
Will we miss the grad pictures we might not have had the time or foresight to take?
Will we be able to return to the town we were forced to flee so unceremoniously? Will the replacement commencement activities and celebrations help us to feel graduated and sent out into the world like they were originally supposed to?
And if they don't, how about the celebration/postponed commencement tentatively planned for Spring 2021?
Just as it is becoming difficult to distinguish the days of the week during quarantine, so, too, is it becoming difficult to discern where my life as a college
by Alexis Aulepp
student will end and where my time as a “real adult” will begin. The lack of a proper graduation contributes to this, but I think my life circumstances in this new normal are contributing even more so to an already muddled situation.
Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, I know people (including myself) whose summer plans, internships, or jobs are either cancelled, postponed, or generally uncertain. In my case, it has meant I’ve had to move-in with my parents, and I sometimes worry that I’ve become the trope of the college student who moves home indefinitely until they can find a job – spending months or years living with their parents instead of starting life on their own two feet.
And the current economic situation doesn’t make me feel any better. The unemployment numbers are growing every day, and it remains relatively unclear when people in general – but especially those new to the job market, like me – will get to go back to work/start jobs. Even when the economy starts to get going again, I worry that finding steady employment will be difficult – especially because one place I was looking to work is on a hiring freeze until further notice.
​
Which means, for now, I’m stuck at home.
But so is everyone.
Because, to some extent, the dominos are falling as predicted.
​
​
As the cancelations started rolling in (back in March), I knew I probably wouldn’t be alone in what I was feeling. I understood that many seniors – whether in college or high school – would lose their last hurrahs as the weeks went by. Baby showers would be thrown online. Weddings would be postponed or held via Zoom. Jobs and livelihoods would be lost. Heck, entire lives would be lost because of this pandemic.
And, just like everyone else, I would have to find a way to deal with it.
I decided that I would move home, as was encouraged of me by my employers (after kindly resigning/being let-go from my job as a Resident Advisor in the nearly empty dorms). I would adjust to classes and meetings online as best I could. I would distract myself with books and movies and way too much media. I would pretend (for now) that I could get used to this new normal, and I would hope that someday it would be true.
And, above all, I told myself, I would be grateful that I was alive. I would be pleased that my family was safe and healthy, and I would be thankful that no one I knew personally (at least to the best of my knowledge up to the point of this writing) had died from COVID-19 – especially as the death toll climbed.
I would try not to dwell on the might-have-beens, and I would try to prepare myself to make the best of the replacement commencement festivities that were later announced.
And, even now – amongst so many other unknown dominos about the future – I predict that those festivities might be underwhelming. They might be bittersweet. They might not be anything like I expected.
But at least they’ll be something.
And at least I can attend them knowing that I’ll be safe.
​
by Alexis Aulepp
by Alexis Aulepp
