I’m a grad school admissions counselor. Here is how Covid-19 is changing America.
When I’m not writing, I work as an admissions counselor for the grad school department in a college in VA Beach. It’s a job I never saw myself doing — but that’s my full-timer right now. I talk for a living. (or more accurately, I talk and I listen.) I talk with people about their dreams. I talk with them about their hopes. I speak to people as they share with me some of their life’s greatest triumphs and most stinging disappointments.
I talk, I listen, and I line people up with the program I feel best matches the passions burning inside of them. And while I could go on and on about the stories I have, working in that department, I have found that there is something particularly interesting going on in America right now.
One of the coolest things about the job is that I get to feel the pulse of the country as a whole. The school I work for has invested a ton into providing top-notch online programs, so we get students from all over the states (and all over the world.)
So, I talk to people all day. I talk to people from Utah; I talk to people from Texas; I talk to people from (you name it). I have been able to feel this country as a whole since the start of this pandemic. And during the first week or two, the country was filled with fear.
People were postponing their plans; they were ending their pursuit of the school, and they were coiling up in fear. And rightfully so. Many of us have lost someone to this virus. I myself have lost a friend who was a mentor to me since I was in community college.
There is great loss in this country right now.
But out of the ashes is coming new hope and new perspective, and people are evaluating who they want to be again for the first time in a long time.
They have time to think. They have time to evaluate who they want to be and the impact they want to make in the world. Now, when people call me, I am hearing them bring old dreams to me, old dusted-off dreams that some of them have had for years and never pursued because life got in the way.
Now? People are getting excited about making something more of themselves, as America is plagued by a bat virus. I am losing track of the number of times people have told me they are resetting. Finding themselves again.
And this excites me!
America is finding itself again. Not who they were told to be, not who they think they should be, but who they are.
In the next year, I believe we will see joy return to this country. We will have learned what really matters and what doesn’t. And thriving in our passions is one of the greatest ways we can spend our time on this earth.
You go, America. You go!
