A Coming of Age Story featuring COVID-19
Written by: Ashima Agarwal
“It seems like yesterday when I was standing in Marquette’s Business School lobby joking with friends about the spike in prices over simple cleaning products and toilet paper. I recall thinking, ‘Corona? It’s a joke! It’s never going to reach here.’ Clearly, I was wrong.” — anonymous student, March 2020.
The world came to a gradual halt in March 2020 when COVID-19 became more than a joke laughed about in passing. While it seems every industry, professional, and parent has voiced their outcry over the patter, college students have been disregarded and labeled. “They are responsible for super spreading it”- Karen, a 2020 meme. The truth of the matter is that students have been faced with a harsh reality as well. “College is meant to be a time for students to test freedom, learn about themselves, and ultimately prepare themselves for life beyond education.” — anonymous professor. Their promised best four years of their life have been swiped from them and much more… the anticipated freedom that comes with independence from home… gone with a single blow. However, even as uncertainty plays on the public’s mind, students have found strength and resilience in this trying time. Lexi Harwick, current sophomore majoring in social welfare justice and Psychology at Marquette University, shares insight on part of her coming-of-age story and it certainly has its unique twists.
Lexi started school in the fall of 2019. Like most students, she found was ecstatic. “I’d finally like morphed into my student identity and like figured out kind of like where my interests were.” An important part of her growth was finding a routine. She mentions that it aided her in “finding a sense of who I am, these are my goals, and like I had daily goals.” And then… “we got sent home and that all changed.” -*Que Avatar: The Last Airbender’s Intro*
Lexi recalls how she had, “just found this routine, and this set group and felt very confident in my student identity.” So, “Getting sent home was shocking and uprooted to that whole sense of identity. The idea of being sent home in the middle of her freshman year was damaging for her because it was a taste of what she had been searching for. “I felt like really disconnected from my college education which I’d finally like found, was really proud and excited about so that I feel was like ripped away from me and I felt really bitter in like that first like prime quarantine”. She recalls finding solace only in her room and her devices — hello, TikTok, and endless Zoom meetings.
“My mom used to come into my room every day and just ask me one or two questions. It was so small, but it helped me start to get out of my funk.” After the snow melted, she recalls starting to feel lighter as well because she got to utilize the running trails around her home. “My best friend and I went on daily bike rides and it was therapeutic. Then summer hit and we have a boat because we live on the Mississippi River so that kind of like just being outdoors was like the only things like restored a sense of normalcy”.
While she experienced defeat and heavy sadness at first, thinking back she is appreciative of the time she got at home. Lexi mentions how previously she didn’t want “to ever come back to La Crosse unless necessary” and how through this forced experience she “lost that mentality and shifted to an appreciation for how I grew up.” Part of that can be attributed to how “I grew extremely close with my family. I think having those first few months at Marquette away from home was definitely like a formative experience and then coming home to Lacrosse- I was able to understand my parents as adults.” When asked what made her entire COVID19 experience, she says “Being sent home”. Elaborating, she said she found peace and closure with things in her past that she wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do otherwise. Lexi summed up her positive outcomes from being home as her time to “build bridges and just reconnect in positive ways” with a community she had been eager to leave once upon a time.
As far as the community she returned to, Harwick reflects on the idea that everyone changed during this time of adversity. She finds herself with a different approach and standard towards the people in her life. This paired with her inner peace allows her to positively look forward. With an unpaid internship working with an attorney at a domestic violence abuse shelter on the horizon, she is excited to learn and make a difference.
