Taking my first college class, a seminar on essay writing, completely online has left me wondering how different my experience was from an in-person one. I found myself even less motivated than I was my last semester of high school when the pandemic first hit.

Eight months have passed since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, but sometimes it feels like we never left March. Among fear, anxiety and mind-deadening boredom, the pandemic has upended our sense of time.

In three days, 300 clubs, 300 Zoom links. A daunting Google Spreadsheet.  Over the three-day Brown Student Activities Fair, I joined a scant nine of the 300 some student activities links. I ended up leaving nearly all Zoom calls thinking, “I’d love to join on campus, but I won’t join virtually.”

In late August, I rode the train — the light rail — through Minneapolis. Collapsed buildings, piles of rubble and boarded-up stores blurred past my window. Minneapolis, which I had known for a decade, was a city that I had never seen before: It was ravaged.