The views expressed in this article are the views of the author.

March 12, 2020

2:32 a.m. GMT: In your dorm room at the University of Brighton in Brighton, England, you are awake.

It has been a rough, anxious day. The World Health Organization classified the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic. President Donald Trump announced new travel restrictions between the United States and Europe (excluding the United Kingdom) intended to curb the virus’s spread. Now you have received an email from the Education Abroad Office stating that the University of Maryland, Baltimore County is immediately suspending all study abroad programs in Europe, and suddenly you can’t breathe.

Within two minutes you fire off a reply, holding out hope: given the travel restrictions, are UK programs included?

The response comes a minute later: Yes.

Your world caves in.

4:18 a.m.: You turn off your laptop at last, trembling with exhaustion. You have just booked your flight home for slightly under 56 hours from now. This ticket cost more than twice as much as your original (June) return ticket did, but you don’t have time to worry about that. Right now your priority is returning home as quickly as you can. 

You have also just hung up from a long Skype call with your family, which you placed as soon as you heard the news. Your mother and sister both cried. You haven’t, though: you’re in shock. Your heart is pounding, your head is spinning,  your chest is tight and that’s all you know.

It is hard to fall asleep.

10:31 a.m.: You are drained and devastated, but on a mission nonetheless: you need to deliver the news to UoB’s Study Abroad Office. Through the door you can see the office manager standing in the lobby with three students from the University Studies Abroad Consortium. Everyone turns to look at you as you enter. You see it in their eyes, as they do yours: UMBC is not the only university that recalled students today.

You’ll be the first in the cohort to leave, so the entire SAO team comes out to see you off. You know it’s probably irresponsible, but you’re grateful that they all insist on hugging you goodbye.

9:03 p.m.: This is real. This is happening. This is really happening.

Brighton has felt like Brighton all day long, more or less: though COVID-19 is looming, everyone you’ve seen in town has been moving about as if the world isn’t caving in. But you have not felt like you all day long. The weight of the dwindling time you have left (39 hours now!) keeps crashing over you like waves against the Palace Pier.

Tonight, your friends from the UoB Musical Theatre Society threw you a goodbye party. Now you and your friends are heading to the bus stop, and you know this is goodbye, and you’re not ready. Everyone is grinning, and most people are singing, and a few others are hugging you. The wave crashes and you can’t fight it off this time. Soon enough you’re sobbing through the streets, overflowing with gratitude and grief.

You’re not ready to leave them or this beautiful place. But you have to.

March 13, 2020

12:36 a.m.: While you’re packing, another email renders you breathless: USAC is terminating all of its European study abroad programs. Everyone you’re with in Brighton is going home. Everyone’s world is caving in.

2:32 a.m.: You’re jolted awake when you hear shouting outside your window: “F*** CORONA!”, over and over, in both American and British accents.

Nothing is ever going to be the same again. No one is ready.

1:22 p.m.: You buy a UoB sweatshirt from the Students’ Union Shop. Then you come back and pack.

1:53 p.m.: You say goodbye to the kind staff at the farmer’s market down the road. Then you come back and pack.

2:48 p.m.: You play a final song on the keyboard you rented out for the semester. Then you return it to its original owner. And then you come back and finish packing.

6:36 p.m.: You’re on Brighton Beach, saying goodbye to the sea and to the closest friend you made here. She wraps you in a long hug. You sob into her coat sleeve.

Waves crash against the Palace Pier. You have to turn away.

March 14, 2020

5:18 a.m.: In your dorm room at the University of Brighton in Brighton, England, you are awake. And you can’t stop crying.

6:23 a.m.: You close the door to your flat for the last time. You cross the courtyard to Reception and return your key. And then you lug your heavy suitcases up the hill and across campus to the station, where you catch a train out of Brighton to London Gatwick Airport.

You’re not ready to leave this beautiful place. But you do.

Written by Tess McRae. McRae is a junior pursuing a degree in English Communication & Technology with a minor in Creative Writing.

The views expressed in this article are the views of the author.

Life has changed considerably for all of us over the course of these past few weeks. And this whole time, I have been watching all of it unfold online from a hospital room in Johns Hopkins’ 11th-floor oncology ward.

A lot of students here at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County have been ousted from our on-campus dorms and apartments, separated from our friends and forced to abruptly cancel all our plans and ambitions for the end of the school year. For the graduating class, this has resulted in a lot of confusion and uncertainty about finishing degrees, completing internships and receiving any sort of recognition for our accomplishments over the past few years as the commencement ceremony is canceled for this upcoming May. I have seen so much sadness online from my friends and community members as life as we have known it has been completely upturned in such a relatively short period.

On Wednesday, March 11, two days before UMBC’s sudden closure as a result of Governor Larry Hogan’s order to close all Maryland campuses in response to the coronavirus, I checked into the emergency room for what I thought would be a quick visit to check on some bruises and nosebleeds that I had been getting for the past month or so. I left my internship during a two-hour break with plans to return for the rest of the afternoon, but 11 days have passed since then and I have still not left the hospital. During this time, I have been diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia, a type of blood cancer that makes me one of the most prone members of the population to coronavirus. I have been quarantined from my friends and family, and as time has gone on, limitations on who can be near me have only increased. The only person allowed to visit me in the hospital is my father.

Discovering that you suddenly have cancer at 22 is already painful enough on its own. I was feeling completely fine except for the occasional unexplained bruise or nosebleed, so the shock of this diagnosis came from nowhere and with absolutely no warning. I have been trying desperately to cope with the fact that everything I wanted to do with my life has to be put on halt as I undergo daily chemotherapy for months on end, but it has been all the more impossible with no one here to support me.

With everyone I love quarantined in their own homes to protect both themselves and me from a deadly pandemic, I can’t help but feel selfishly angry. What did I do to deserve both of these things happening simultaneously? Why do I, like everyone else, get my senior year compromised, my graduation canceled, and all my hopes for a happy end to college completely destroyed, but with no sense of solidarity from the people around me? Everyone else is so caught up in what the virus is taking from them that nobody seems to notice or care that in the middle of all this, I have cancer. I know that this is an irrational way to look at such an unprecedented situation, but wouldn’t you be hurt if every time you opened Facebook it was your friends out on hikes with their partners and families, or at home cooking or drawing or singing, and all they can talk about it how difficult and disappointing losing their semester has been for them? I understand and I sympathize, but I would kill to just be able to go outside and get fresh air, or to be near a friend.

What I hope to say here is that even though this is a truly horrific time for all of us, please try to remember that we at least have each other. While the coronavirus is destroying plans and forcing people to change their lives, please remember that there is value in having a community, even if it is at a distance. Please remember to check in on your friends and family, because you do not know what else they might be going through in the midst of all of this. Remind those close to you that we can and will get through this, and that even if times are hard there is still something to cling on to. There is an end in sight, and we will all get to that end together.

Written by Ari Page. Page is a senior pursuing an English major with a minor in History.