Cristiana's Quarantine Chronicles

Next Sunday, May 23rd, would have been my college graduation. I'm graduating from St. Olaf College with a degree in French and Media Studies and had some tentative plans post-grad, but they're all mixed up now. Graduating right now is so weird because the feelings are very different. It doesn't feel like a celebration, but also at the same time, our graduation year is getting more attention than maybe any other year ever. Or at least in a long time. I don't have a college graduation photo but here's one from high school (Note that a lot of this post will be St. Olaf specific, so the contextual definitions of the starred words will be down at the bottom of this post, for your convenience.) I was trying to explain to my dad how I was feeling the other night. It was my last day of actual class on Wednesday and it was both sadder and more anti-climactic than I thought it would be. And I ended up explaining to my dad that it feels a little like taking an Irish g...

Good morning everyone, Because when I'm writing this, it is just barely morning. 11:46am. So it will undoubtedly be posted sometime around 2 or 3pm. But know that it was morning and I was writing! I'm sitting out in our backyard in a swimsuit and soaking up the sun. Right now is one of those good quarantine moments. If not for COVID, I would be back on campus, probably still asleep, and not enjoying the sunshine. This week has been (like I'm sure most of your weeks) full of these little moments of goodness and full of some less good ones. There should be a different, entirely separate word for a bad quarantine moment. Because half the time there's nothing even bad actually happening to ignite that feeling. A lot of the time, it just feels like your body and brain had momentarily forgotten we were in a pandemic, and then it all came crashing back down on you. Not one particular thing, like a missed birthday, or graduation, or grieving a lost job. Just some of all ...