Yesterday, I moved back to Penn State into a brand new apartment. I am so excited because I'm living with my friends off campus and I get to live by my own rules again. I love mom and dad, but after being home for five months, I was ready for some freedom again. Except this kind of freedom is nothing like I've ever experienced before. I'm living on my own, cooking for myself, taking care of the apartment, all normal adult things. But now I have something else to worry about: getting COVID-19.
I am not even stressed out about school or cocking for myself, or having to figure out how to find a balance in my life. I am the most stressed about getting COVID-19. I have to wear a mask everywhere I go, and I am limiting myself on where I can even go.
The only places I'm going to go is to my one class in person, Blue Band practice, grocery shopping, and maybe one of my friends' apartments. So basically, I'm not going anywhere exciting. College is all about living your life to the fullest and going out with your friends and having the time of your life. Now with COVID, all of that has been put on pause.
Life is in some sort of weird limbo, where we can't do anything in public, we can't meet with more than ten people, and have to wear masks everywhere. College life was usually fairly care free (besides for classes of course), but now we have to be more cautious than ever.
When I moved in, I saw a majority of people wearing masks on campus, some were not outside but then when they go the building they would put one on. Seeing everyone walk around with masks on is so crazy. We never had to experience anything like this, so seeing it on a college campus is very odd.
With everyone having to wear masks all the time, I am starting to question how many people will actually do it. Since college kids are usually seen as carefree and wanting to live their best life, how many will actually follow the safety guidelines. How many people will actually end up throwing parties and how many people will go? Will some students have the thought process that this virus shouldn't affect their life, that they shouldn't have to put their social life on pause for the health and safety of others?
Will we potentially get kicked off campus from all the people partying and going out and not following rules? How quickly would that happen? UNC sent students home after a week of being on campus.
There are so many what ifs that could happen in this situation. The real question is that if people follow the guidelines, we should be fable to stay till the end of november, but how many people do we think will actually follow them? And how many people will ruin it for the rest of us, and get us shut down and sent home?
