Items

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  2020-03-19

  Early Moveout

  Had to move out of my dorm 2 months early, a few weeks after classes were cancelled. The roommate was from Colombia, had to leave behind half of his stuff to get on a flight home.
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  2020-05-06

  A Bad Time for My Appendix To Act Up

  I knew Cinco De Mayo in quarantine wasn't going to be as fun, but I wasn't expecting a really concentrated stomach ache after eating my mom's steak nachos. I was slogging through a now fully online spring semester of college and adapting my school's live sketch show FreqOut to be live-streamed instead over Zoom, so I had plenty on my plate. The next day, the pain increased to the point that I could no longer get comfortable in any position. My mom, after plying me with painkillers and crackers for a few days, decided to call in a family friend and registered nurse to check on me. She poked my stomach and said it was probably appendicitis and that I had to go to the hospital. I hadn't been to the hospital since I was carried out in my mom's arms and, this time, nobody was allowed to go in with me. I stumbled through telling people my symptoms as I had many more nurses and doctors poke me in that same spot and wheel me into different rooms. My poor mom was woken up around midnight by a call from my surgeon saying that my appendix was very sick but that I wouldn't have to worry about it since it was no longer in my body. Falling asleep in a hospital bed to the dulcet tones of a terrible HGTV show was the best sleep I'd had all year. They asked if I wanted to bring my appendix home with me, to which I responded "If I wanted to keep it, I wouldn't have paid you all that money to pull it out of me."
• 
  2020-03-13

  My UC SmashBubble

  I was a college freshman only a few weeks into my spring semester when COVID got real. On March 13th, the entire school received an email that academics would be halted and that no guests would be allowed in any of the dorms. In essence, Columbia College Chicago was on lockdown. There was no leaving the dorms because there was no reason to leave. Any comedy gigs that I had were cancelled as theatres began to shut down, school assignments were postponed as schools struggled to find solutions, and most of my friends living in the other dorm buildings were far away. I had washed and sanitized my hands so manically that they were chapped and burning. I was too afraid to go to the pharmacy across the street because I didn't have a mask. The grey walls of a dorm feel a lot more grey when they're the only things you see. I was scared and alone when I heard a ruckus coming from the dorm I shared a bathroom with. One of my suitemates had gathered some friends to play Super Smash Brothers. I had played with him and my roommate in the past, but he was entertaining a group of people I had only seen in passing glances in the hall. I picked up a controller and, for the next two weeks, they were my only friends. We did everything together, played games, ate together, watched TV (turns out they like to watch Wheel Of Fortune, a game that I've won many times from the comfort of my couch), they even persuaded me to watch a little of the anime they all enjoyed. After a few terrible days of thinking only about my problems and what this pandemic meant for my future, a fun, tight-knit group of friends was just what the doctor ordered. I made a lot of fantastic memories with them and, if it wasn't for COVID, they would have remained passing faces in the hallway.