By Zack Moncrieff
Assistant Editor of On The Edge
April 21, 2022
I did not feel like my time at Edgewood College was truly ending until March 29, the first day of spring. Seeing campus and my neighborhood come back alive after winter has always been a reflective time for me. It is an unavoidable constant of living in the Midwest that gives us perspective and hope for what is to come.
As I begin to pack up my apartment, I scan memories of these past four years with an eye on graduation day this May. One thought runs over and over in my mind: The past two years unalterably changed my generation with the historic pandemic we called COVID-19.
Few other generations have had this many disruptions to their educational routines, finances, and community. Students around the world left college in spring of 2019 and couldn’t imagine that we had just seen the last views of the open and free-wheeling campuses that we had dreamed about as highschoolers.
Even before the pandemic hit, there were ominous signs that our college experience would be unprecedented. Higher education as an industry began to face significant cutbacks due to low enrollments and higher costs leading to strapped staff resources and fewer faculty. At Edgewood, I watched silently as the College laid off faculty laid and Predolin became a revolving door for administrators.
Many of us spent the spring of 2020 quarantined in our childhood bedrooms scrolling through headlines of police brutality. There were resources from the college and the community to help us and I am grateful for that. But few of us now in college have been able to shake the disappointment.
The past two years, in particular, truncated our young adult lives. Inflation is soaring, and we worry about how we will support ourselves in the confusing labor market. A new strain of COVID has hit the East Coast as I write this and in Philadelphia, mask mandates are back.
We will leave with a laundry list of firsts. We lived through an era in which not wearing a mask can create a pandemic that kills millions in faraway lands. We watched a contested presidential election and an assault on the nation’s Capitol. And we now face the challenge of stopping a brutal dictator who indiscriminately kills children and families—and then lies about it when we can see what he is doing on our phones.
We have no choice but to move “forward,” just as the Wisconsin motto states. We need to find our rhythm again.
The Class of 2022 will graduate with unexpected knowledge and perspective of our role in this world. I hope to take this with me for the rest of my life after I leave Edgewood.
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