COVID-19 in College

A bit of background information: I am a sophomore honors economics major at Morehouse College, a Historically Black College (one of the best), in Atlanta, GA. We are neighbored by Spelman College, an all-women’s college that is ranked #1 HBCU in the country by U.S. News for 13 consecutive years, and Clark Atlanta University, which has been making significant progress in the rankings. At the college, I am deeply involved with campus life and serve on numerous boards and committees. This allows me to better understand the inter-workings of the college and navigate the various challenges that college students face much easier than my peers.

My goal in writing this is to give you an update in my life and share the perspective of how I have experienced life as a college student during this pandemic, and spoiler alert: it is extremely hard.

How I first saw my world change:

I was in the middle of spring break in my hometown of Chicago when I found out that my year at Morehouse had ended abruptly. Due to COVID-19, I forwent my usual visit to my father's place in sunny Miami Beach to go to my mother's home in cold COLD Chicago, but I saw this as a minor inconvenience until the virus was no longer contained. As someone who makes the college business my business, I was deeply shocked when I heard the bad news from one of my friends on the Student Government Association (SGA) some hours before the college had officially announced the closure. Now, of course, Morehouse did it in typical HBCU fashion where they sent an email saying "students are instructed not to return to campus from spring break and those students on campus are instructed to move out of their residences" but then walked it back and told us to come down and get our stuff as the college will not be liable for it. I remember getting on a jet with my roommate, we both are from Chicago and were home for the break and walking through campus and seeing that most of my friends were gone and the hallways were filled with the personal belongings my brothers could not take with them. I quickly went to some of the rooms of my friends who stayed in my hall at 1 AM and was banging on their doors and opening many to find empty rooms. There were a few guys in the halls that I spoke to about the situation and everyone was extremely disheartened by how quickly everything unfolded. I had ordered some food from one of my favorite late-night restaurants and ate with my roommate and his girlfriend in the front of campus where I wished her well and gave them some alone time and as I was walking back to my hall I felt the reality of the situation. I do not think I made it to my room before I broke down in tears and cried myself to sleep dawning on the reality of not being able to see, and in some cases even talk to, a lot of my friends for an unknown amount of time. For me, Morehouse College and the greater Atlanta University Center was my home. I did not want to pack my room up as I saw it as me metaphorically dismantling the life I built for myself on campus, and I certainly did NOT want to come back to Chicago I had already seen that part of my life as over and that there was little left for me here. It was midnight on Sunday when I got back to campus, however, I did not even start packing until 5 AM on Tuesday. I made it my mission to try to say goodbye to everyone I could before I left because I did not know if I would ever see them again. That was what the energy being given off by a lot of people felt like. No one knew if we would see the cafeteria workers who had been swiping us in and laughing with us every day for years. Nor did we know if a lot of the elderly faculty and staff would make it through this pandemic. For a lot of us, this was the most traumatic event in our lives. And for anyone to say that college students across the country are not deeply affected by this lacks the understanding of what it is like to be a part of a community and have it set on fire with the understanding of it never being the same again during your time there.

After leaving campus:

Eventually, I was able to get everything shipped to my Godparents and I set up my home office and began to attempt to adjust to a forced new life. I am extremely fortunate to say that I do not directly know anyone, to my knowledge, who has COVID-19. However, it is extremely painful for me to get on calls and check in with my community one-on-one and hear people tell me their stories about their loved ones who have the virus and are dying from it. I was on a general check-in call for the honors program at Morehouse where someone shared that a nine-year-old kid on their block died from COVID-19. It is extremely hard for me to deal with it because I feel like I have always been a person people can come to for help and I will be able to work with them to get them in a better spot. Yet, there are so many people around me who are suffering immensely, and I cannot do anything about it. Shortly after leaving campus, I received a call from one of my Spelman sisters. She was in tears telling me that she needs to find work ASAP as she has numerous bills due on the first of the month that she can't miss. I know her family situation where she does not have parents to take care of her and as the eldest child, she has siblings to take care of as well. And so, while I direct her to the Vice President at Spelman to apply for their emergency funds, I know that the funds are extremely limited and that I am powerless in helping her in her dire situation. I attempted to follow up with her shortly after the initial conversation, however, I have yet to be able to get in contact with her which causes me to worry even more. I try to talk with my brothers and sisters from school every day to see where their heads at with everything and I bounce ideas off them from time to time on what we can be doing to support each other. It's very hard for a lot of us because the scenario is so unique where it's everyone who is struggling and not just a few.

Academics during COVID-19:

Some of us are going through the worst period in our existence, and still are expected to regularly attend 5-6 classes a week online and keep up with daily assignments and work and while most professors have been understanding and accommodating, there have been a few who have not been and have even increased the workload on us from when we were on campus. I just withdrew from my Calculus 1 class where 75% of the class was failing and our grades were only based off of one test and the professor did not grade any future assignments or the second test we took, nor offered any curve, extra credit, or solution on how we could be successful in the class other than continue to attend the daily mandatory calls and turn in the daily assignments that were not for credit. To add to the issue, many students have withdrawn from the class after a direct protest to the professor, who is also the department chair, and to college administrators who don't address the issue. For me, it's times like this that test my faith in Morehouse and where I convince myself to continue doing the "Morehouse Shuffle" (that many HBCU students experience as well and is impossible to do over the phone) and hope that I will begin to collect dividends soon for doing so. I hope that Morehouse while going through these unprecedented times, will do what's right by the students and allow us to earn success. I see things like our president, David A. Thomas, writing op-eds in CNN and working with Microsoft to address the digital divide for incoming students and I have faith that the college is doing what it can to play a role in making life easier for us and it even makes me proud to be a student at Morehouse as other school's president's aren't leading like ours is.

Life during COVID-19:

In my immediate circles, my friends seem to be dealing with this in different ways. My friend Lunden is coming out with a chapbook (which is a small collection of poetry, generally no more than 40 pages, that often centers on a specific theme) called Untitled, and he sent me the manuscript a month in advanced and it seemed very introspective. My friend Kyle is searching for a sponsor to get his Series 7 license so he can start trading for real. A few other friends are working. A lot of my peers are pressed on finding an internship for the summer. I don't believe anyone would fault them if they didn't have one, but we all feel pressured to solidify one. I am fortunate to have impressed the director of the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), who has wanted me to intern for him for two years now, and so like almost every internship I have had before at other firms, he's allowing me to choose what I want to work on and is supporting me through the whole process (which makes for an excellent internship and a terrific mentor). I have been working on my skin and trying to stay in my cleansing routine. I found probably the best show of the year on netflix called #BlackAF, made by a Clark Atlanta University alumni, and I'll properly review it at some point. I try to stay busy outside of my schoolwork by applying for scholarships and talking with my peers about ideas on what Morehouse can be doing to make this easier for us and then I'll call the college dean and run some of the ideas by him. I'm also working on a project outside of school like launching a membership-based platform called DOLPHWORLD which provides valuable information and insights on cultural drivers in many different industries and I'm writing a book that talks about my struggles of being ignorant to the corporate world as a black youth on the south side of Chicago and how I fought and gained advocates to allow me to be the youngest intern in Loop Capital's Investment Banking Division and the youngest intern to work in the Mayor's Office along with the only to have a triple internship and a few other notable accomplishments. I've also been creating art and circulating some of the pieces on my art Instagram page, @doriencreative, and I've been working on a podcast series where I address issues that we don't talk about as a society that plague our daily life and a solo album to put out on all streaming platforms where I rap about themes of loyalty, greed, and excess. I'm also reading (a book by someone I deeply idolize) Michael Bloomberg's Bloomberg by Bloomberg to learn more about his life and what he thinks drove his success. I've always been comfortable when I am extremely busy (one of my favorite expressions goes something like: why would I ever complain about having too much on my plate when the goal is to eat). I think we must find what works best for us individually and stick with it if we are ever going to survive this.

Through all this, I think I've learned to value small things in life like being able to walk around campus or the daily interactions I used to have with members of the Atlanta University Center community. I've also learned not to take for granted the sleepovers at Spelman either as who knows if I'll ever be able to do that again. However, everything puts my issues in perspective to the issues people are facing in the world and reminds of how fortunate I am in my circumstance despite how I might be feeling. And while we might all feel some sense of being powerless, I think the only thing we can do is continue to do the right thing by doing our part to minimize the risk of perpetuating the virus and check up on our friends and loved ones, even if the conversation is hard. It's important to be there for each other in this time of need as we are all that we have now.