Reflections on a Week in Ann Arbor
The beginning of the end…
It’s been a week since I moved into my new apartment in Ann Arbor in anticipation of my last year at Michigan.
And my god, has it been a week.
My apartment isn’t too different from what I’ve known for the past two years. We moved down a few floors into a bigger unit this year, so our living space is much more spacious now, and we added a few new roommates to the mix, and I have my own room for the first time in college. But aside from that, most things feel relatively the same.
It was really weird saying goodbye to 1101, but possibly even more weird to be only moving a simple 7 floors down. I’ll miss that brown leather couch and the memories we made there, but it doesn’t feel like I’ve said goodbye because an exactly identical couch now sits in our new unit. I’ll miss the room that I shared with one of the most important people in my life, but now she’s just 10 paces away in the next room and I can’t really complain about having the luxury of my own room. I’ll miss my brick wall view out the living room window and the silhouette people of Tower Plaza, but the view we have now means we get real sunlight and it’s magical to watch the sunset together every night.
The unit surely hasn’t fallen short of entertainment either, with those slight inconveniences that keep things interesting and make living in a new place feel a little more like home. In the past week, we’ve had two freaky spider incidents and two smoking gas tops. We’ve learned to tell the time and the weather by the odd sounds that echo throughout the space, from the plumbing pipe that goes directly through our unit to the incessant tapping of water falling from the roof onto our window sill. We’ve struggled in the timeless battle against our in-unit dryer that loves playing its Russian-roulette game of sometimes leaving our clothes sopping wet and sometimes drying them out until they shrink two sizes. Oh, and we still have yet to put up our decorations.
But quite frankly, we’re all glad that we have this unit, especially in current circumstances. It feels like the perfect size for the escapades that we’ll embark on as pandemic-seniors. There’s plenty of space for game nights and dance parties, there’s a hallway that we’ve dedicated to our various yoga practices, and plenty of cabinet space for our quarantine snacks. It’s nice knowing that we have this comfortable home to call our own since we’ll be spending a lot of time here as things inevitably transition to virtual lock-down learning again.
In this week, we’ve learned to live by entirely new rules, seeing Ann Arbor in a way that we haven’t ever before. Half of our favorite businesses have closed down (rest in peace Espresso Royale <3) and Bubble Tea spots keep taking over the empty storefronts (seriously, how much bubble tea are y’all gonna drink?) Our welcome care packages from the University included masks and bandanas (that apparently failed the lighter test…) and we all sat through 30 minute COVID safety training (that I guarantee you no one actually watched). I haven’t ventured into University buildings yet, but I guarantee you the insides are wildly different even as the exteriors loom familiarly above us. Walking around in the daylight, you see hoards of people – some masked, some not – but still, more people in one place than I have seen all summer. The streets are blocked off and restaurants have outdoor seating set up in the middle of the yellow-striped roads, so that downtown feels like one really long summer festival. Except, talking between tables is strictly policed and if there were ways to make us eat through our masks, I’m sure they would enforce that too. All around us, we see new normals trying to be established, but people are stubborn and old habits die really, really hard.
Reconnecting with friends is an especially sweet treat; many of these people we haven’t seen since before Spring Break in February, and many more we haven’t seen since December because of study abroad semesters. But reconnecting is also odd – people are masked up and air hugs and elbow bumps are the new normal. For someone who’s love language is strongly tied to physical touch, it’s weird not being able to hug my friends to tell them how much I’ve missed them.
A socially-distant sunset-watching reunion with Drisha <3
At night, drunk college kids take over the streets and saunter down the sidewalks in obnoxiously loud clothes and voices, and looking out the window at these kids, you know that this is the exact reason why we won’t last on campus longer than September. I want to be frustrated, but truly, I expected nothing else.
Navigating new normals will always be a challenge, but even more so when everyone is on different pages. Ann Arbor and the UMich community has people from the entire spectrum: anti-maskers, paranoid Cloroxers, happy mediums-finders, rule defiers and rule makers. It’s an added layer of complexity for my final year on campus – one that none of us bargained for. As an underclassman, there are so many things you look forward to finally getting to do once you’re a senior. And yet, here we are, tamping our expectations and having to define new ways to make the most of this year.
Sometimes I think about how much different this year will actually be from the year I was planning to have. A big part of being a senior meant being 21 and being able to get into places that I wasn’t allowed in before. I’m thinking Rick’s Thursdays – a college bar/club tradition that Ross seniors go to on Thursday nights to celebrate our three day weekends. It meant being literally the top of the undergrad food chain, knowing how to handle school and extracurriculars and still making time for yourself and for friends. It meant getting to own full-time recruiting like it was your own jungle gym. It meant getting to explore campus as more of a fully-formed adult than ever before. It meant so many things, but the pandemic has really put those things into perspective for me.
It’s allowed me to reflect on what is really important to me, what values I want to have and hold and what aspects of life are actually necessary for me to thrive. What I’ve learned while on campus for this short week is that I never really cared about Rick’s Thursdays or house parties or half of the people I would have had to force myself to be drunk just to be around. I’ve come to enjoy the effort and time it takes to maintain those few relationships that are important to me; the text conversations, the FaceTimes, the socially distant walks and dinners around campus. It has allowed me to focus on cultivating real memories and getting to know these friends on levels that I haven’t ever before, and that we probably wouldn’t have been able to get to with the distractions of regular life.
I’ve learned that being productive and filling up my schedule in meaningful ways is important to me and that I’m also okay with it when I have the downtime to just sit and read a book or write a paragraph instead of constantly being out and about with people. I’ve learned that making your workspace aesthetically pleasing is actually important and that I have a knack for productivity organizing. I’ve learned that cooking is a good way to destress and that Netflix has a lot more shows on it than just The Office and New Girl. I’ve learned that I don’t like social media. I’ve learned how empathy works and how to use it to navigate difficult situations when two people are not on the same page about boundaries, health, and social responsibility. I’ve learned what it means to be responsible and to find yourself as a part of a great whole.
So, as much as we hate this pandemic, as much as we complain about the year we’ve had, as much as we are disappointed for the year we’re about to have, I’m grateful for how much I’ve grown and learned in these six months. And I’m really ready to make the most of this college experience.