Dear all,
I remember it like it was yesterday, 13 March 2020, that’s the day we were told our university was closing down. No one really gave us a date on when it would open back up, most of us figured that it would be a week – two at max. I thought I was getting a much-needed break, I didn’t even say goodbye to my friends. After-all, I was going to see them soon anyways, right? It didn’t really hit me until the first month in, the isolation. I started playing video games with my friends as a way to stay in contact with them. We kept making plans to meet but the lockdown made that socially irresponsible. Online classes during the day and assignments had me sitting in my room in-front of a screen from the moment I woke up till the moment I fell asleep. A routine like that, everything starts to become a blur. By June I wasn’t able to tell what day it was. The first wave passed and the lockdown eased, our friends group met up, it was a lot of fun seeing them in front of me rather than behind screens. We had cake; it was nice. It was also a reminder of how lonely life had gotten. I never thought my happiness was so reliant on my social circle.
The second wave after that was worse, people I had known and met were now in hospitals and I couldn’t visit them. I read about people dying all alone, their families not being able to be at their side, that’s really when the reality hit me. The last year and half have been something of note for the history books. Our country has lost almost as many people to this virus as we have in the war against terrorism over the last 20 years. That is two decades worth of deaths in less than two years. Twenty thousand sounds a lot like just a statistic, it’s hard for most of us to grasp how many that is. An average person meets around ten thousand people in their lifetime. Think of everyone you’ve ever met, now double that number and imagine them all dead.
If anything, this pandemic has made me realize the importance of the people around me. I’ve learned to respect death, maybe even fear it. There’s a lot more good in this world than bad and I never appreciated that before. My family, my friends and really most people – they’re all just trying their best in this life. The world’s changed, I can’t decide if it’s for the better or worse, but change needs to be embraced. I imagine a lot of jobs are now going to be from home now that the pandemic has proven the concept feasible. A year and half of lockdown has probably changed most people’s opinions, I know I dislike my university a lot less than I did. I just am sure that we won’t be going to the old ways, there’ll be a new normal.
Sincerely,
Sana Ghaffar
035
MSE-12-B