Note: this was written Wednesday, March 18 a day after my parents and I decided I was going to stay in Utrecht. 24 hours later, I was booking a flight home. This has sat in my drafts for a week now, and I decided I might as well publish it.
Spoiler: I’m staying *insert wolf of wall street ‘I’m not leaving’ gif*
This past week might be one of the most confusing and frustrating situations I’ve ever been in. Mostly because my situation was constantly changing and everyone’s opinions shifted each day, including mine.
Every hour the last weekend, something was different and there were so many things to factor into my decision to leave the Netherlands or stay. Through many, many discussions and research and deliberating, I have decided to stay in the Netherlands for the time being and my parents are being very supportive of me. I am grateful to them for listening and choosing to support my decision even though this entire situation is incredibly stressful and the future is uncertain. It’s times like these that I hold onto knowing that God is in control and whatever comes to be, He has planned.
The spread of COVID-19 across the world has put many people into a panic. It is understandable to a level, given that we have seen the worst case scenario play out in Italy and China. It is truly awful what their reality became. But other countries have seen that play out and pretty much every one of them is taking every preventative measure possible.
In the Netherlands, by Thursday night (March 12), all universities were closing. Over the weekend, all schools, cafes, restaurants and fitness centers were closed until April 6. Scientists in Amsterdam believe they have found an antibody capable of fighting off COVID-19. My friends and I live in a building on our campus that is a 20-minute bus ride from the city center. All these factors have made me feel that the situation I am in is safe.
That, and my friends here are taking this seriously in regard to washing hands, keeping eating areas sanitized and things like that. The only times I leave my apartment is to go get groceries or to go on a bike ride or run in the paths that wind through the woods behind our building.
The most challenging part of transitioning to online classes will be this week. Monday we were still waiting to hear from our director and most of our professors to know how we were going to have class moving forward. That, plus the fact that adjusting to having absolutely no schedule has been new territory for someone like me. I’m used to having a schedule far too busy for my own good and constantly being on the run. To have pretty much zero obligations besides a few online class video chats…is equally as horrifying as it is freeing.
It’s not even that I have much free time–it’s the illusion of free time. There’s always an assignment I could be working on, or I could go for a jog, or I could clean, but there’s no schedule to stick to. The time management skills I thought I had are now completely nonexistent. I guess packing your schedule so full you don’t have free time isn’t the same as managing your time.
[That’s all I had written before I had to attend my 4.5 hour film lecture online. You can imagine why this never got finished or published that day.]
a midwestern girl in a European world 