After four years of High School shaped by COVID-19, I was prepared for College to be a new, wonderful experience. No more zoom school, no more quarantine, no more masks. Yet, during my very first week at Wesleyan, I contracted COVID, and was instructed to isolate myself for a week.
A saving grace came in the form of my RA, Tyler. He would come talk to me through my door, and play iMessage games with me, making me feel that I was still a part of the world outside my door. Tyler’s kindness showed me that college was all about connection. He was looking for a friend just as much as I was.
However, when I was released from quarantine, I found that most people had already made friends. I had missed out on orientation, where you are all forced to be in the same group and spend hours each day together. This was a perfect location for friendships to form, and I would now have to make friends with random people who I’d never met, and who had no reason to be around me. I attended films by myself, went on midnight swims in nearby ponds, and joined a variety of clubs in hopes I would make connections. All of these activities were outside of my comfort zone, but some of them became regular occurrences in my life. I made friends and memories at each activity, something that would’ve never occurred had I not contracted COVID for the fourth time. Despite it being such a burden to me throughout my life, for the first time COVID added something to my life: resilience and confidence.
