Student Blog: What Am I Doing?

I've never put a lot of stock in the clock striking midnight on New Year's Eve. Sure, the numbers on the calendar change. The start of a new semester comes closer. You stare down into that mysterious, foggy abyss known as the future. You can make as many resolutions and promises as you want and put all of your stock in the hope that when the clock strikes midnight your life will magically transform, but when the sun comes up, it's just another day.

I've always felt this way. This year, however, it seems like everybody is starting to notice this. Perhaps it's because we spent all of 2021 in a pandemic. We exited the same way we entered. Of course, there were vaccines and masks and a return to in-person events-I, for one, was relieved to return to live theatre, first outdoors and later indoors-but ultimately, it feels as though we're spinning out rather than moving forward. Broadway has been starting, then stopping, then starting and stopping again. Variants threaten to take away everything from us once more, and we're used to it. We expect it.

The COVID-19 pandemic started during my freshman year of college. I also started writing for BroadwayWorld during my freshman year. Now, I just completed the first semester of my junior year. This is somewhere in the ballpark of my thirty-fifth article. And yet, I feel like I'm exactly where I was when I started here. I'm very nearly the exact same person who was sent home from college in March of 2020. I've read new books, I've written new stories, I've bought new clothes, but I remain unchanged. I suspect that a lot of students feel the same way: stunted by the nearly two years we have spent revving our engines rather than speeding down the highway.

I've buried the lede here. For the first time, I'm certain that my life won't be stuck in the monotony of the past two years. I'm about to make a big change in my life, one that I have planned and dreamed about for as long as I can remember. In a little over a week, I'm moving to England for six months to study at a different university. I'm excited. I'm scared. I'm waiting for the new COVID variant to swoop in and take yet another thing away. I remember thinking during March of 2020 that, at the very least, the world will be "back to normal" by the time I reached my study abroad benchmark of spring 2022.

That, obviously, has not happened. My plans are still moving forward despite this.

I think that a drastic change like moving to another country, however terrifying it may be, is the exact thing that I need after the same-old, same-old pandemic student life. Sure, I'll still be wearing a mask and sticking a swab up my nose once a week, but I'll be doing it in a brand-new place that I've never explored before.

As the title of this blog suggests, I keep remembering my rapidly-approaching plans and asking myself "what am I doing?" The truth is, I don't know. If there's anything that the simultaneously quick and slow two years of the pandemic have shown me, nothing is certain. I think that a change will be good. I think it will make my life interesting again. At this point, for all of us at uncertain crossroads in our young adult lives, I'm pretty sure that following these thoughts is the only way forward. In a world where we cannot be sure of anything anymore, it is important to take chances and follow whims. You never know where they might lead you-to another country, to another passion, to another accomplishment.

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