By: Madeline

To me, perhaps the oddest thing is that for once, the whole world agrees on something. Whether I speak to my friends down the street in Memphis, in New York or California, in England or Togo or Singapore, we are all afraid of the same thing. It started with an outbreak, "In Wuhan, China" the news said. I wrote it down for my French news notes and wondered what Wuhan was. Some people in China were sick. Then four people in France had this virus and I wondered if it was close to where my friends live. Then there was a case in New York or California or Washington or something. We all went "Hm." I stopped watching the news when I went on spring break. Five days later I got an email saying I would be required to move out of my dorm because nobody was going back to school. We were doing all of our classes online and it was suggested that everyone start social distancing. This phrase was introduced into my vocabulary only weeks ago and now it defines my every decision

     During my gap year, I spent the summer back in my hometown in Togo conducting interviews for the clinic. Because I was a Hope Through Health volunteer, I was able to live in the compound that was provided for their volunteers. There were several students from Harvard and MIT, a few Peace Corps Volunteers, and some other European volunteers. When I arrived, I met and shared a room with a person who I will call 'Roommate,' a college freshman sent by MIT’s chapter of GlobeMed. Even though I was fresh out of high school and the youngest person in the compound, I still had an entire childhood of experiences living in Kara behind me. This led to a few disagreements between me and the other volunteers, most of which I kept quiet on.       Roommate mentioned one night at dinner that she needed to get her visa renewed – tomorrow – the other volunteers casually assured her that she could simply let it expire and go later this week; that you just had to pay a small bribe and nothin

     I have a good many travel stories, having grown up with a fairly bohemian, nomadic family. On the day that this story takes place, my dear friend Jacob Moore asked me what my craziest travel story is. That day ended up being one of them.      The fall semester of my third year at Rhodes, I studied abroad in Europe. One of the most trying and wonderful times of my life. The program put us atop a mountain in Sewanee, TN for three weeks, in an Oxford College established in the 15th century for six weeks, and traveling continental Europe for six weeks. While at Oxford, we took three condensed courses divided up into two halves, the three courses being Medieval and Renaissance Art, History, and Literature. The modus operandi of the 'euro studs' is to spend a good deal of time working on classes and a great deal of time experiencing British culture and life (keep in mind that this was pre-Brexit, you know, when Britain was a part of Europe). Oxford is a beautiful, magical place

     Now that you're all holed up in your homes in sweatpants and work-appropriate attire from the waist up for your Zoom meetings...      My goal for this age of social distancing and pandemic is to write more. And hike more but that is beside the point. When I lived in Togo, I participated in National Novel Writing Month three times. That is three years of writing 50,000 words in one month. That's insane. Now that I'm in college, I probably write 50,000 words in an academic year. But I find that aside from a few special papers I've written for particularly inspiring classes, most of these written words mean nothing to me. But things are changing now.      Our world is experiencing something that people alive now have never experienced. It is new territory for everyone, and if anyone else shares my feelings about the way COVID-19 is taking over our lives, it feels like everything is out of our control. Three weeks ago I was writing a few bullet points about coronav