#magsgoestocollege

[magsgoestocollege]

fun fact: my profile pic is a version of tutter from bear and the big blue house holding the bagpipes and wearing a kilt because I always said if I wanted to study abroad anywhere it would be scotland.

and I’m proud to say after 4 years and a pandemic, I successfully achieved my dream :’)

[magsgoestocollege]

ngl I kinda feel like I’m being catapulted into full adulthood with no warning when I thought I had 4 years to develop a sense of gradual independence in the safety of a supported environment

then covid and society said “fuck that! you can’t go back to school unless you’re literally willing to risk the lives of yourself and those around you. also, your options are live at home with your parents in an extremely delicate stage of life or sign a lease you are woefully unprepared for. oh! and you should be prepared to isolate yourself from everyone you love in the event you get sick, and while you’re at it, be prepared for the very real possibility that everyone around you could get sick and die! sorry the economy and job market are in shambles and you have a government willing to let you die for the stock market! good luck!”

[magsgoestocollege]

one of my fave organization tools: assignment tracker

So I’m generally a pretty organized person and I always used to use a planner but then I kept forgetting to write shit down or I’d forget my planner when I was going to study or I just don’t like using a planner or something so here’s what I use that I’d highly recommend.

Google Sheets has this template at the ready!! It’s super cool bc you can go to the “Subjects” tab at the bottom and change the template class options to whatever you’re taking and then it adds it to the drop-down menu on the left. Plus, you can change the “Status” under the other drop-down and the row will change based on what you put. (Like the row is greyed out now bc I finished that reading.) AND when the due date gets close the date will turn red to be like hey!!! this is coming up!!! don’t forget! and it’s really nice.

(It’s also super validating to see everything you gotta do in a huge list bc a) you can plan ahead and b) when a bunch of stuff is greyed out it’s so satisfying.)

Here’s how you find it:

1. Go to Google Drive/Google Sheets and find their templates.

2. This one is literally called “Assignment Tracker”

3. Click on it and it’ll open a tab with something that looks like the pic but with a couple more columns (I deleted two of them bc I don’t really use them but they show when you started the assignment and how much time you’ve spent working on it)

4. Customize to your liking and have fun with your super fancy cool assignment tracker :))

[magsgoestocollege]

Alright team

Gap year is officially happening. Wish me luck I guess? I’m still gonna be involved with stuff at my school so not to worry; this blog will still be college-based.

If anything, this is why I made this blog. To show that college experiences are diverse, and they often don’t look like what the media, studyblrs, and, like, society show them as.

Stick around!

[magsgoestocollege]

Prof: remind me to hit record on the zoom lecture. Here I’ll write a sticky note that says “start recording. Duh.”

*several minutes into the lecture, not recording*

Student: miRANDA YOUR STICKY NOTE

[magsgoestocollege]

“hey how’re online classes going?”

my prof:

[magsgoestocollege]

The Resident Director of Hamilton: *casually zooms into my class*

[magsgoestocollege]

End of Spring 2.0

I done did survive my first year of college. Kinda. I mean, I made it through 3/4 of it? And then got sent home? But at least I can say it was eventful.

I finished the year pretty strong. My motivation really dropped after getting home, but I ended with A’s in all my classes. My finals consisted of a final set design, a ten-page paper about how I’d direct a revival of a show, an eleven-page paper about patriarchal authority in Fences, and an infographic about John Mulaney’s adjective use. HWC liberal arts colleges, amiright? Ok but honestly they weren’t bad and I take humanities classes so that helps.

The show I was working on this summer got cancelled, so I’m currently just chilling at home while looking for ways to make money probably online. (If I get ONE sugar daddy bot on this post, I’m gonna cackle.) I might do some HS writing tutoring or copy editing so if you need any hmu. 

I’m hopefully still gonna Zoom call my friends a couple times a week, but it’s technically not the school year anymore so I’m worried it’ll feel like I’m pushing it since I’m not technically Social Chair rn. (But I did get re-elected for the fall and in the spring I’m directing a musical so...) Plus there are some people who come to the calls I’m not the most fond of. They’re fine but y’know those people who just lack social awareness? Yeah.

Oh I also apparently got nominated for an Impact Award which I think is a leadership award? I’m assuming it’s for doing all this social stuff but I don’t really know. I’m not gonna win it so I honestly don’t really care and I didn’t know it existed before my friend texted me to congratulate my on my nomination and I was super confused. I find out about that on May 15, so we’ll see. 

Obviously,  I wish I were on campus and enjoying the chaos of packing up and saying goodbye with time to prepare. Not the frantic jumble that was March. I miss my friends. I miss my school. I miss life they way it should’ve been. 

My therapist and I were talking about how this pandemic is affecting those of us who are at really formative stages in our lives. Instead of developing my independence and learning how to be an adult, I’m living at home. I should be ~rebelling~ and getting that classic “College Experience(TM)” but nope. And I realize this is so far out of my control and all things considered I’m very well off, but it’s still sad, y’know? I just keep telling myself at least I get to go back. 

[magsgoestocollege]

y’all ever have songs that remind you of a very specific time in your life?

I’m listening to a playlist I made while sitting in in the mezzanine of the arts library in the twinkle lights after coming inside from a light rain. It was overcast, and I knew once I finished my essay, I was going to go back to my dorm and make hot chocolate. My heavy winter coat was next to me on the floor, and the drops that accumulated on the outside were cold and wet where they soaked into my jeans. It was just days before I left for thanksgiving break. 

I listened to the same playlist on the 8 hour train ride home. The fall leaves were so beautiful with the sun shining through them as I traveled along the east coast. The view from the train window was so relaxing, and I spent an hour just looking through the glass. The songs are a little darker than I’d normally listen to, but I’d taken them from the Spotify account of a girl I liked at the time. They match her aesthetic perfectly. 

Now, I’m in my childhood bedroom, reliving the memories of the independence I got to taste for two-thirds of the school year. I caved and had an iced pumpkin spice latte earlier today. It tasted like the day I walked to the Starbucks downtown after my acting class let out an hour early. I sipped my drink and sat on the bench overlooking the pond and the waterfall. It was overcast then, too. I used the cup as a toothbrush holder for a month afterwards. 

God, I miss my college. Fuck COVID, fuck Trump for fucking up the US’s pandemic, and fuck everyone who voted for him.

Taking a gap year is the right call for me, but man, it fucking sucks.

[magsgoestocollege]

It’s almost the end of the semester, I have one final to go, and I was doing fine emotionally until I went to my friend’s Zoom thesis presentation where she played an album of songs she wrote across her time at college. It suddenly hit me that it’s all ending. And I’ll never see her again.

[magsgoestocollege]

Big moment guys I just pulled my first all nighter by accident

[magsgoestocollege]

So I’m Social Chair of my org and the other day I hosted the Presentation Game where you design a presentation and someone else presents it having never seen it before and I wanted to share these gems

[magsgoestocollege]

sometimes an OBC member of A Chorus Line comes to your Zoom class

[magsgoestocollege]

Plans for 2020-2021 School Year

Long post ahead (something to help me process and decide my future)

If you’re new to this blog, hi, I’m Mags and I’m supposed to be a sophomore in college this year. Except my college experience got corona’d, obviously, so now we’re here.

A couple days ago, my school announced that first years and sophomores would be allowed back in the fall, and juniors and seniors would be allowed back in the spring if all goes well. The problem is I have no fucking clue what I want to do. I go to a small liberal arts college where the experience is heavily rooted in the people there. Our classes and houses are small, and we value the community above most things. With only half the campus back, and with the first years who have never been here before and us the sophomores who only got like 2/3s of a year on campus. We have no clue what we’re doing.

My class can’t be responsible for educating and helping an entire batch of new kids adjust to college life when we aren’t fully adjusted ourselves. Campus and house and club traditions are so important to our cschool culture and my class has no clue how to do them. That being said I am always Mom Friend(TM) and will absolutely take any and all first years under my wing if I go back to campus because I was super lonely last year and I don’t want anyone to feel that way again. (Check out #the dark side of college tag if you wan’t to read about that.) But the thing is... I don’t know if I want to go back to school this year.

Do I really want to go spend a year and thousands of dollars on a college experience I don’t really want? Do I want to be in a place that’s now structured like a prison for three-ish months only to be send home at the end to keep doing online classes? Do I want to be at a school where I cant see my friends? Do I want to be at a school without my upperclassmen friends who I care about and were so influential to my experience?

With only first-years on campus (and some sophomore friends), I’d end up essentially having to start my social life from scratch again. I don’t know if I can handle that. Even if COVID is a major bonding item for the whole campus. It comes down to would I rather take time off and hope things get better and we get a vaccine, or do I want to go and be on campus for a few months and be part of a historical event that metaphorically unites the school while literally dividing us.

Here are my options:

1) Go to school in the fall, be online for a month after Thanksgiving, and do my whole spring semester online (or maybe possibly in person if things get much better.)

2) Go to school in the fall semester and take the spring semester off.

3) Study remotely but not from home.

4) Take a full year off and come back 2021-2022 with hopefully a vaccine and a more normal college experience with the things I love.

4a) Take a year off and still live at home with my parents.

4b) Take a year off and move in with friends somewhere else.

Let’s break these down, shall we? (God I don’t want to.)

Option 1. Go to school in the fall. This means: reregistering for all my classes, being assigned to a new room in possibly a new house (latter is unlikely), and having part in-person part remote classes. Profs have the choice of being partially in person or fully online. It is suspected that most profs will go fully online because it’s easier to teach to the students who are still remote (mostly juniors and seniors). So living on-campus would basically be just that: living. I’d most likely end up taking online classes from my dorm room.

Everyone has a single so no need to worry about roommates, and they’re limiting the number of people on a floor to limit the number of people sharing a bathroom. All communal areas will be sanitized twice a day in the house, and as often as possible everywhere else. Masks and social distancing at all times, no more than two people in a dorm room at once, and COVID testing for everyone as often as twice a week. for meals, you pre-order on an app and pick up a grab n go container at a scheduled time to go eat it elsewhere. We don’t find out what classes will even be offered until after we commit.

I think I’ll be randomly assigned to a room, so that doesn’t really matter and I should stay in my house. Just first-years and sophomores means few house traditions. However, it gives me a chance to feel needed and goddamn if that’s not an addictive feeling. I’m excellent at planning social activities and fostering community. I think I could really help the first years adjust and help everyone adapt to the situation. I like the idea of this being a very uniting experience, living through history doesn’t happen every day. My dad agrees with this and thinks I should go basically just to say that I did. I agree.

But I don’t want to do something just because someone thinks I should. I need to make this choice because it’s what I want. I’m really struggling to separate doing what I want to because I want to and doing it because I think it’s what society wants me to do.

I’d get to see some of my friends, but not all of them. Plus, if people take time off I won’t see them and then when they get back I’l have to leave them. On the flip side, if people take time off and I do too, I’ll see them when we get back like no time passed. (Not really but like you get it.)

If I go, I won’t get to do theatre which is the thing I live for at school. I’d still get to do work with the theatre department, and arguably I’d be able to do a lot more work because the upperclassmen won’t be there so I’ll get to do more hands-on work. But my musical theatre org, the reason I’m still at my school, where all of my closest friends are won’t really exist. We can do cabaret or something but we can’t do a full show. I can’t direct anymore. I haven’t even had time to grieve the loss of my show. Do I take a gap year just to have the chance to do more shows? Logically speaking, the longer I wait to enter the theatre industry the more time it has to recover and the more jobs will be open.

A lot of juniors and seniors are planning on renting somewhere near campus so they might be able to slip into in person classes, but that kinda defeats the purpose because they’re not social distancing. However, this means some of my friends will be nearby during the fall. And one of my junior friends will be on campus in the fall for work. In the spring, the sophomores and first-years will take over leases in the spring.

Option 2. Not a great option. I’d have to be a J-term grad which is fine, but I’d miss out on all the spring traditions and I don’t really like that idea. I wouldn’t have to do online classes though. This is what a lot of people are doing. Some juniors and seniors are taking fall off and going in the spring.

Option 3. If I’m going to have to do online classes part of me wants to do it with other students somewhere I can enjoy myself. Maybe I’ll go live in the woods and do Zoom classes from my cottage. I don’t know. Or I could go live off campus so I can still feel like I’m near my friends but not take classes. Kind of like a bonus year but without the online courses. But this would mean having to learn how to live on my own with only a bare safety net, but I wouldn’t be alone.

Option 4. The only other option I’m very seriously considering. Taking a full gap year. I really don’t want to, but unless I want to be a mid-year grad or have to take at least some online classes, this is the best option. I’ve talked to some friends about maybe renting somewhere either near campus or elsewhere but I don’t know how I’d work out the logistics. I’ve never lived on my own before, and I’m not a great cook but I could learn. We’re only semi-seriously considering fucking off into the middle of nowhere and living my cottagecore dreams with some friends. 

This would mean I would become class of 2024 instead of 2023, but I would get the chance to at least try and have a “normal” college experience on campus. The problem is, I don’t know if things will be better in a year, or two years, or five. So will I just “waste” - for lack of a better term - a year hoping we’ll have a vaccine? 

I don’t know what I’ll do for a year. I can’t really work, I can’t really get an internship, I can’t travel. Do I stay at home? Do I get an apartment off-campus? Somewhere else? 

At the same time, I don’t know if I want to be on a campus without my friends and the clubs and experience that I’ve loved. The other part of me wants to be part of history and worries that we just won’t get better for years and I’ll just be stuck stagnant. Another part of me still wants to be unique and a little selfish and take the gap year so I don’t have to be the guinea pig for this weird online hybrid program. 

My mom always said she wished she took a gap year before starting college. Maybe I should take this chance. But I’d miss the few friends that I get to see unless I was living with them. Even if I still do online classes, I don’t want to take them from home, which my parents probably won’t like. I know they’ll support me, but it would still be cheaper to live with them and I don’t know if that’s something I want.

I just don’t know.

[magsgoestocollege]

I never thought I’d long to be at school and yet here I am

[magsgoestocollege]

my prof has us raise our hands in the zoom call if we’re done and I raised mine too fast and she thought I had a question but I just finished whejekrkgm