During the spring semester of 2020, Grove City College was forced to close its doors and send students home due to COVID-19. But there were those of us who could not go home for one reason or another. We were “The Remnant.” During the months of online classes, I journaled about the events (or lack thereof) on campus. In my previous post, I included my first journal entry which detailed my dismay at being left alone on campus. Thankfully, I was not as alone as I thought.
March 20, 2020
T-minus three days until online classes begin. I probably should’ve spent much more time studying today than I did, but alas, here we are. In happier news, I won’t be as lonely as I originally thought! One of the students that’s staying made a telegram group chat for those of us staying on campus. We’ve named ourselves The Remnant. We all had lunch and got to know each other earlier today. To my surprise, there’s another student from Hawaii that’s in a similar situation to me. We had some friendly banter about which side of the island of Oahu is better. It had seemed to me that Hawaii was probably the farthest that people would be coming from, but I was mistaken. One of the students that’s staying in my dorm hails all the way from Hungary. The furthest student by far, however, is a girl from Australia. It was fun getting to know many of The Remnant and we plan on finding times to hang out in the coming weeks. After lunch, I went back to my room with the intent of studying for Spanish. While I did study for around 30 minutes, I was having trouble focusing. Eventually I gave up and resorted to videoing myself doing tricks with knives. When I got bored of that, I got on my computer and played games with a couple of friends for a while. This evening I decided to stay in my room for dinner. After eating my instant noodles, I entertained myself by taking apart some of my nerf guns and attempting to improve their performance. That brings us to the present. I’m going to go to bed earlier tonight than I have been the past few days. Hopefully getting up earlier will give me greater motivation to be productive. -Jacob
My bleak outlook on the future of my semester had been happily reshaped. I am a very extroverted person, so a large part of the college experience for me is hanging out with friends. Without The Remnant, I would have gone crazy being cooped up in my dorm 24/7. It is amazing how much a group of good people can shape a difficult situation for the better.
Stay tuned for further installments of The Remnant!
