Welcome to the new semester lovely humans! I hope you all are doing well despite the fact that you are living your college glory days amidst a global pandemic. Did you all have a good summer? Were you able to “find yourself” while in quarantine? Did you catch yourself a COVID husband? Personally I experienced none of the above which is why I am now writing what I am writing!
This past summer probably sucked (for a lack of a better term) for most of us. Perhaps you were stuck inside your house with your family who you dearly love but cannot stand being with for more than a week at a time for the entire spring and summer. Or maybe your summer plans for interning at your dream place of employment or road-tripping across the Southern United States was cancelled. Honestly, maybe anything and everything that could have gone wrong this year occurred and now you’re faced with trying to squeeze weekly therapy sessions into your calendar. However lackluster the past six months of your life may have been, I would like to highly encourage you all to play the last few months of 2020 safe and smart.
I do not mean to be “that person” that is whining, “it’s my seniorrrrrrr yeeeear” despite how many times I ironically say it, but it’s many people’s last few months of college and we want to be able to enjoy it safely. Not to mention, we all have limited time at college and I would like to imagine that most people want to have the best experiences possible during these short few years. That being said, let us not make it even shorter than it already is!
Conglomerating in groups of more than 15 people is not cool, lying about symptoms is not chill and not wearing a mask when out and about is simply disrespectful at this point. To be candid for a moment, overall, not using that big juicy brain of yours is not hot! There are plenty of ways to be a good human being, specifically during a pandemic, and most of them relate to helping stop the spread of the virus.
There are many ways to have fun and exciting adventures, meet new people, get together with friends and have a blast of a semester without putting yourselves and others in danger of catching a deadly virus! One may have to crunch their brain wrinkles up a little more than usual, but I have faith that we all as a community of URI students can do it!
So climb a tree with one or two of your best pals, visit the greenhouses and say hello to Frank the Turtle, grab your friend who is enamoured with the boy who has the perfect flow who they saw in line to the dining hall and whom they think is their soulmate and drip candle wax into a bowl of water in order for the drips to tell them that the first letter of their true love’s name begins with a different letter than that man’s. Whatever you must do to socialize safely in small groups, do it. I hope you all are able to take to heart these words and find ways to have a splendid time this semester, as I will also be doing!