In November of 2019, I started dating a fellow News-Letter writer. Things were terrific until that fateful day when he decided to run for an editor position. At first I was ecstatic that my boyfriend had so much power, but it didn’t take long before I realized that I was bearing witness to the creation of a monster.
I had no idea the situation would get this bad. This is a chronicling of my experience with the athlete apocalypse. I’m writing these journal entries to warn people about the dangers that the Hopkins athletes may pose to our campus, and I will also offer ways to help students adequately prepare for isolation.
For as long as I can remember, I have always loved to sing — when nobody’s around, that is. I frequently host late-night karaoke parties for one, wail in the shower like nobody hears me and hum in the kitchen when I’m alone. Music has always been my coping mechanism for dealing with stressful events.
The pandemic forced communities across the globe to shelter in place and it closed many of the businesses and venues we’re used to hanging out in. Even in spaces where we are allowed to be around our fellow quaranteens, we were (and still are) required to maintain a distance of six feet.
The first ode to joy was a poem; then it was the chorus of a symphony. My own little ode to joy comes as a video that captures brief moments of joy and its various forms — contentment, wonder, glee, amusement, bliss — all of which I experienced on an ordinary autumn day.
Music is powerful. It is the language of the soul, a collection of stories — stories of love, joy, heartbreak, failure, success — that anyone can tap into and relate to. Sometimes, if we let it, music has the greater ability of allowing us to feel things we never imagined, to feel emotions beyond our own scope of understanding.
Soon after quarantine began, I realized that I tended to run away from my negative emotions. I’d channel my anxiety into The News-Letter’s all-consuming, weekly production cycle. I’d hide my sadness by flitting about M-Level. Bury my emptiness at Power Plant Live!. Manifest my stress through low-grade hypochondria.
In big things and small. In our day-to-day routines and more special moments. In old memories and new experiences. In songs and books. In the things we do for ourselves, the things we do for others and the things others do for us. These are just a few of the ways in which we can find joy in our lives.
A student achieves a major academic success, a young couple buys their dream home, a retiree escapes to a tropical haven. Each person feels elated, incandescently happy. Then a phenomenon called hedonic adaptation takes hold, and the wonderful feeling subsides over time.
I watched as the USPS truck sped out of our sleepy cul-de-sac. I scurried up to the mailbox, flung open the lid and ripped open the letter. It was finally here, and I was in. I had been accepted to Duke University’s Talent Identification Program (TIP).
I’m going to be honest, when I heard the fall magazine was going to center on the theme of joy, I didn’t think I’d have an article to write. Being a Hopkins student is stressful enough at the best of times, let alone during the chaos that has been 2020.
Three Jane Austen novels deep into quarantine, I found the pattern. I glanced out of my bedroom window, situated at the front of my house facing the street, then back to my copy of (the extremely underrated) Mansfield Park and back again. In quarantine, one of the first things I noticed upon returning home to my locked down state were the walkers.
I’ve always loved nonsense. Nonsense words. Nonsense phrases and rhymes. Nonsensical conversations. So fittingly, my favorite poem as a child was Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. I always loved how the words meant nothing but I still knew what they were saying. In Jabberwocky, sound plays the starring role.
My instinctual idea of joy mimics the physicality of the word itself: a short burst, a dynamic syllable emerging from the mundane sentence around it, full of energy and brief color like a small dancer lifting her head and jumping in the air for pure love of movement.
The hardest part of doing school at home for me is not being able to differentiate when I should be doing schoolwork and when I should be using time for myself. What ends up happening most days is that I spend hours in my bedroom, alternating between lying on the floor or sitting hunched over my desk.
While I was home this past summer, the rest of my family started watching Schitt’s Creek. Having already seen the series and loved it myself, I started rewatching it with them as they watched it for the first time. It was during this rewatch that I fell even more in love with the show.
You know that feeling when you look around Hop and feel incredibly detached from what life was like at home? Then your mind shifts back, and you remember your home friends, your family, your spot on the couch and that one food you love that just doesn’t taste the same in Baltimore (currently missing good pizza).
“We decorated our Club Penguin house for Halloween. Y’all should see it.” The above quote would not be out of place in 2006. Those were the good old days — back when Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody dominated the airwaves of Disney Channel, when headbands, North Face jackets and Crocs studded with Jibbitz were the height of fashion and when snack time was only complete with a pack of Fruit Gushers or Dunkaroos.
In the midst of a global pandemic, it’s important to find and appreciate the little sources of joy in our lives. And not only that, but the cozy fall season usually calls for one thing: Pumpkin-inspired coffee.
Coming back home on March 12 was a very surreal, and ultimately very boring, experience. The final three days of school that were supposed to launch us into spring break were instead filled with long hours where I spent more time on YouTube and Hulu than should be legal. As my eyes glazed over during my 200th consecutive episode of Chopped, I knew there had to be something more to this life of captivity than met the eye.
