Barnard, Thirteen Months Later

When I left Barnard in December 2019, I already knew it would be a while before I saw my home away from home on Broadway. What I didn’t realize was how long it would be or how different Barnard would feel when I did come back for my final semester of college. If there’s anything the last thirteen months have taught me--not only as a result of the pandemic but also because of a loss in my family--it’s that ready or not, change happens, and it happens quickly..

I saw Barnard for the first time in thirteen months on a cold winter morning--coincidentally, the morning of Inauguration Day. As a result of my anxiety and excitement (and maybe, I admit, the two cups of coffee I’d had that morning), my heart was beating wildly. Even though I’d taken an at-home COVID test a week earlier as a part of Barnard’s pre-arrival testing, even though I’d driven into the city with my father, and even though I’d spent the last few days wearing masks around everyone, including members of my family, I was still so afraid. I realized, sitting in the car as I waited for my check-in time to come around, I was more afraid than the day I’d moved into college as a first-year student. What would eighteen year-old me think if I had told her what was to come during this college experience? I don’t know if she would have believed me. 

So much of campus looked different: all the gates on campus were pulled closed except for half of the main gate; nobody was milling around on the lawn or on the walkways, and it wasn’t because of the chill; the buildings looked dark and empty. Still, even though this day did not look like most move-in days, with cart choreography, teary-eyed hugs goodbye, tables of snacks for students and their families, and a Woo Crew (a group of upperclassmen who cheer every time a new student crosses the campus gates), it felt familiar. For the first time in thirteen months, I was making small talk with other members of my community. The warm calm of desk attendants, public safety, check-in greeters, and those administering my entry COVID test reminded me of that sense of community I found when I first showed up on campus three and a half years later.

Once I was in my dorm, I felt a bit like the rug had been pulled out from under me. Had I made the right decision? Should I have stayed home where at least I would have my family and every stuffed animal friend from my childhood? I unpacked my things, deliberately trying to silence those thoughts as I listened to quarantine-era Taylor Swift music and washed dishes that had been wrapped up and packed since I left campus thirteen months ago. I put on a livestream of the Inauguration in the background as I tacked postcards to my wall, thinking about the beauty and hope that sometimes come from change.

As the first of my roommates to move in, I got to look around our new home, mask-on, before my friends arrived. Every fiber of my being went into restraining myself from hugging one of my roommates--one of my best friends, Joanna, who was in my orientation group and lived down the hall from me during my first year at Barnard, the first friend I made on campus--the second she walked into our new dorm. I couldn’t go down the hall to my other best friend Sarah’s room to recount the details of the day like I’d been doing for the last two years. For the first five days, we mostly resorted to talking to each other through closed doors or on the phone, despite being never more than thirty or forty feet away from each other. Once our day four tests came back negative, we were officially a pod--we call ourselves a family, since friends are the family you choose for yourself.

Even now that we’ve had a series of negative COVID tests and we hardly go out except to get tested and buy groceries (and, okay, coffee), there’s always a quiet trepidation when Sarah and I sit in our common room to recount the day or when I give Joanna a surprise hug in between Zoom classes. Still, there’s that underlying sense of community and closeness that has come out of this experience with my friends, and at a distance, the Barnard community as a whole.

Sure, in many ways, this campus is not the one I left thirteen months ago: I can’t easily have a collaborative study session with friends at the library until midnight; I can’t go to my favorite reading spot in the Brooks Hall study lounge; I can’t meet up with friends outside my pod for breakfast at my favorite Columbia dining hall. But I’m learning to love family dinners with my roommates in the suite, whether we order food (I’ve probably ordered food more in the last month of living in the dorms than my previous three years of college all put together) or cook our own meals; I’ve appreciated getting to keep in touch with members of the Barnard and Columbia communities, asking “How are you?” and starting a deeper conversation that would probably be glossed over with “Fine. How about you?” at any other time; I won’t forget hearing professors, TAs, and supervisors remind us all not to stress too much about deadlines and work and genuinely mean it.

This was not the senior year I had envisioned for myself, but then again, the journey of college did not unfold the way I had expected walking through the gates my first year, either. Of course, there were disappointments--and you, high school seniors who are reading this, you’re allowed to be disappointed!--but the goal of these four years was to have learning experiences that would allow me to grow as a person. However unconventional this last year has been and however many unexpected changes, twists, and turns there have been on this journey, it’s nice to know that my community is still here, stronger than ever.