Edit Desk: What it’s like having COVID during finals week

In May of 2022, I was a member of what was, and still is, an increasingly select group: those who had never contracted COVID-19. 

I wore my mask everywhere Lehigh required it, got vaccinated and boosted and self-quarantined whenever I was a close contact. I was a model CDC spokesperson for the first two years of the pandemic. 

Then, I got bored.

In the beginning of the pandemic, COVID-19 was so new and alien to our society that it was the only thing we could think to talk about. The airwaves remained crowded as public health became politicized, and vaccines became badges of (dis)honor depending on where you got your news. 

Fast forward to today, and there’s a collective groan whenever the virus is mentioned. 

We’re sick of social distancing. We’re sick of wearing masks. We’re sick of Zoom meetings! 

It’s an understandable feeling, one that I have experienced at multiple points throughout the pandemic. But it’s also a feeling that makes us complacent. It makes us forget that COVID-19 has not gone away and, in many respects, is just as prevalent as it was when it was covered on CNN every night.

In this context, I decided to go to a concert in Philadelphia with my girlfriend last spring. It was the week before finals began, and we wanted a chance to relax before the onslaught of papers and tests that would temporarily ravage our sleep schedules and permanently impact our GPAs.

The concert was fun, if not without its fair share of bright lights and inconsiderate people that you can expect at any public event. I returned to campus ready to begin the first of many marathon study sessions, unaware that with me was a pathogen passenger prepared to spoil my plans.

Three days after the concert, my girlfriend’s roommate tested positive for COVID-19, which prompted me to get a test, which was positive, which prompted some of my friends to get tests, most of which were positive as well. 

Immediately, my still-negative suitemates left to do their studying from home, and my miraculously also still-negative girlfriend began to see me exclusively through the safe buffer of a FaceTime screen.

As soon as I stopped to catch my breath, I was alone.

At around 7 p.m. on the first night of my isolation period, I sat at my desk in my room, thinking about what the rest of the week would look like. I had enough food in my suite to feed myself and more than enough schoolwork to keep me busy. 

Still, at that moment, I simply did not have the mental energy to write, study, play guitar or do anything I would usually do. So I did nothing.

Nothing started to take up huge swaths of my time. I would wake up and scroll through TikTok until my new best friend, caffeine, would temporarily cause the brain fog to abate. Then, I would do as much work as I could stand until Nothing crept up on me again. Then, I would go to bed.

A certain motivating energy permeates through a space when multiple people are studying together. Even if the people around you are studying entirely different topics for entirely different courses, productivity seems to prosper when it is concentrated. No such energy exists inside an empty dorm room.

Left to my own devices, motivation seemed to be a much rarer commodity. I needed to work as soon as I felt the urge to because I wasn’t sure if I would get that urge again.

It wasn’t all bad, though.

The studying was getting done, and the time was passing, bringing me closer and closer to reentering civilized society. Some nights, I was able to celebrate as my hometown Celtics continued to make a deep playoff run. And some nights, I would spend FaceTiming with my friends, trying to make it feel like I was with them. 

Eventually, my time was up and I couldn’t contain my smile, even behind two masks and six feet of distance.

As I am writing this edit desk today, two of my housemates are getting over COVID-19 themselves. Each time I embark on the stressful ten-minute wait period to make sure I’m still negative, I can’t help but remember how lonely isolation can be.

For now, at least, all three of us are in the larger and still growing club of those who have gotten COVID-19 once and recovered. I’m hoping to stay in that club for the foreseeable future.