But What About Tomorrow?

You’re sitting in English class when you get the email. Phones buzz and simultaneously pandemonium strikes the classroom. What once was a peaceful end to your day of classes takes a drastic turn.

School is canceled. The coronavirus has struck and all you have is a nondescript email telling you not to return tomorrow. Not even your professor has an idea of what to do. Cheering starts in the front of the classroom, while the science majors around you sit in silence. Only they can hear their heartbeats beating in their chest. 

Questions start to line up in your brain. What did this mean for you? How can you learn organic chemistry online? The midterm? Online Labs? 

No one is telling you anything. You refresh your emails with fast fingers hoping and praying for some kind of communication, but nothing. You have today to soak up your last few minutes at school before it all vanishes away for some unknown period of time. Your life is crumbling and the pieces are scattering around you, moving too far apart to be put back together. 

As a pre-med student, your focus has to be all things school and grades related. Will the medical schools understand there was a pandemic forcing me away from the place I want to be at oh so badly? Other people cheer with joy that school is canceled, while you are left gritting your teeth in the anxiety of what is to come. You email professors and if you are lucky to get a reply it reads “I’m not too sure yet.” All you can do is keep your head deep in the books as if it were all back to normal tomorrow, except it isn’t. It’s 11 pm and you are emailing back and forth with your professor about how class will go tomorrow. You don’t know. They don’t know. You try to sleep. Your head is on the pillow and your eyes are shut, yet your legs are restless and your mind is wandering. Not even the warming feeling of your cat rubbing against you can help these thoughts settle. 

Not to mention, the world around you is quickly shutting down. Toilet paper is gone. Soap is gone. The aisles are empty as if you are embedded in a post-apocalyptic horror film. Your hospital has run out of masks and you work in the emergency room. You keep telling yourself it’s fine. It’s all fine. But is it really fine?