Last Thursday, I was on campus joking with my professors about the possibility of school being moved online. I was OK with it because I desperately wanted to go home to Houston.
I have spent almost four years at Grambling State University, and my graduation was very slowly approaching this May. I prayed many nights for the opportunity to just be able to go home and get my stuff together, and on Friday, March 13, 2020, around 10 in the morning I woke up to an email that, at first, I was excited about. Classes would be moved online effective immediately.
I am thinking to myself, Yes! I get an early spring break! But as I continued to scroll, I saw that spring commencement was cancelled. I have struggled maintaining a good GPA, working extreme hours to support myself, and was working with the Career Center to get an internship or job upon graduation, only for the school to decide that I would receive my degree in the mail and not walk at graduation because of the coronavirus.
Be careful what you wish for, right? For many other students, this is their reality.
JaColby Pemberton, a basketball player at Louisiana Tech, was in the middle of basketball tournaments when the NCAA decided the tournaments would be cancelled.
Courtney Brown, a graduating senior at Grambling State University, has been carrying around sanitizer and washing her hands after touching small things like the door handle on the fridge at her home in Dallas. She says the coronavirus has changed how she envisioned her last year at Grambling would go.
Falilat Adelakun is a senior at the University at Texas in Austin, and when she attempted to go home to Houston for her break, her mom would not let her.
Not only will seniors in college — and maybe even high school — not be able to walk the stage, we are stuck in isolation. It is not a good feeling.
Hopefully, everything blows over soon.