It looks like the ship might actually be going down. My First Officer and Chief Engineer have been called home by the Admiralty (our parents are the Admiralty). Chief Engineer was called home late last night, and First Officer was called in this morning. Neither of them have actually left yet, but both will be gone by Friday. This whole situation has developed in such a fucking bizarre way. A week ago, Spring Break was the biggest concern. We were being directed to cancel all non-essential travel because we might not be welcome back on campus if we left. Overnight, we had our first case and everything changed. Now I'm trying to get access to the library to get notes on my Senior Project back and we're all making plans about how we're going to leave if there's no other choice.
I'm lucky. I live relatively close by, and my own Admiral has made staying or going my call, even in the worst case. I've decided to pack everything non-essential for day to day life in my dorm room in case I have to leave quickly. It's going to make for a pretty depressing space, but it will give me the opportunity to do what any good captain should: make sure my crew are all taken care of before I abandon ship, or go down with it. It's been especially hard on my Pilot lately. She lives the furthest away out of any of us, so she has particular difficulty making a bug-out plan. We're all doing the best we can to help her.
I've spent some time letting myself feel bad about it, too. I'm a Senior. I don't get to come back again. This school has been my home, and I'm saying goodbye to it under such strange circumstances. There won't be circus shows or musicals. Bard hasn't officially cancelled it yet, but with the way things are going now there might not even be commencement. I don't know if it would even be worth it to go if there was, because so many of the people I would've shared that moment with are gone and might not be able to come back. I'm doing my best to stay positive, because I think that's what we need, but I want to acknowledge that some of this just fucking sucks.
It's important to keep up your sense of humor even when things really suck, so of course there are memes:
I'm lucky. I live relatively close by, and my own Admiral has made staying or going my call, even in the worst case. I've decided to pack everything non-essential for day to day life in my dorm room in case I have to leave quickly. It's going to make for a pretty depressing space, but it will give me the opportunity to do what any good captain should: make sure my crew are all taken care of before I abandon ship, or go down with it. It's been especially hard on my Pilot lately. She lives the furthest away out of any of us, so she has particular difficulty making a bug-out plan. We're all doing the best we can to help her.
I've spent some time letting myself feel bad about it, too. I'm a Senior. I don't get to come back again. This school has been my home, and I'm saying goodbye to it under such strange circumstances. There won't be circus shows or musicals. Bard hasn't officially cancelled it yet, but with the way things are going now there might not even be commencement. I don't know if it would even be worth it to go if there was, because so many of the people I would've shared that moment with are gone and might not be able to come back. I'm doing my best to stay positive, because I think that's what we need, but I want to acknowledge that some of this just fucking sucks.
It's important to keep up your sense of humor even when things really suck, so of course there are memes:
I'm not actually as upset about the potential loss of a graduation ceremony as I thought I would be. Botstein would give a really long speech, I would get an exceptionally nice piece of paper, and either my family would go out to dinner or we'd go to the campus barbeque so some of my friends could also be there. What I really feel robbed of is time with my friends, working on shows, late nights studying, laughing together at three in the morning when nothing has meaning anymore. I wasn't sure I was ready for that to be over in two months. I'm even less sure I'm ready for it to end, slowly and whimpering, over the course of a few weeks.
For the moment, I'm still staying. I'm not a fool. I'm not a fan of captains going down with their ships unless lives are saved that way. I'm staying until I know all my friends are settled with whatever they're doing, that they'll be as safe as anyone can be wherever they end up. I wanted to wait to write and post this until I had something more positive to say, but honestly, it's just been a rough day here.
I've also been thinking a lot, as we've been working on our worst-case plans, about what happens to this blog if we all go home, if the crew in its entirety has to split up. I made a joke to my dad earlier that this would be my shortest-lived blog yet. No point, after all, in running a blog about Post-Apocalyptic Bard no longer at Bard. Then I thought about everything else I've been forced to give up in the past few days alone, and decided fuck that. I'm not giving this up too, because there's a lot I refuse to give up. I will still be going to online classes, I will still be finishing a Senior Project the likes of which this college has never seen, and I will still be spending time with my friends even if it's just digitally. The fact that I might do all of that with a purring cat in my lap? Bonus.
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