Courtesy of Sammy Westfall

I rode in the passenger seat of a car with a friend one Tuesday in October. It was only a short trip to Walgreens, so we laughed, we talked, we caught up and we bought a bag of Swedish Fish. We were pulling up into the Ezra Stiles college driveway, about to run in for our COVID-19 test, when he checks his phone: a friend he had recently seen had just tested positive.

Two nights later, as I was cooking dinner, my friend gave me a call. He just tested positive too. 

And with this announcement, my house of six began our eight days of quarantine.

Over the course of our time inside, there were moments of panic and spiraling. We’d work silently for thirty minutes at a time before congregating again in the common room to go over COVID-19 contagion timelines. Maybe the virus was still in its incubation period? Yeah, but the CDC says the incubation period is two to fourteen days — we just have to wait. We read every article titled “So, I’ve Been Exposed to COVID-19” or “How Soon After Exposure Will I Be Contagious?” We’d get tested every morning and over-surveille every possible symptom we had. Is this food just bad or have I lost my sense of taste? 

But, there were also moments when the worry subsided and there was peace — and at some points, even joy. We all got too excited about our new toaster, for instance. Nobody could stop talking about it. 

We started the show “I May Destroy You” together and collectively obsessed over each cliffhanger. We planned a distant future AirBnB trip at a farm for when this was all over. One friend surprised us by cooking six cheddar bbq chicken burgers for dinner, and another baked a giant strawberry Pop-Tart from scratch. 

It is hard to pinpoint exactly what this year has granted me and to recognize the takeaways I have. For most, this year was filled with pain, loss, death. The pandemic took and damaged lives in more ways than one, and the year felt numbing, overwhelming and never ending. I don’t want to say we are lucky, and I certainly don’t want to romanticize what this year has taught us.

What I can say is this: this year granted me time — and created space to reflect on what it means to be a good friend. It necessitated a slowing down of life that I wouldn’t have afforded myself before. 

In the years before COVID-19, life came at us too fast and too heavy. We rushed through Yale, piling on obligations, achievements and tasks because few things told us to do otherwise. 

For me, this meant staying up at the Yale Daily News building from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. every school night. It meant writing assignments in what small slivers of time I could find after a long day of classes. Dinner was regularly skipped, and friends’ birthdays were replaced by News commitments. 

Every night, I’d trudge home slowly after a night at the newsroom, soaking up what peace I could find on a post-midnight walk home, knowing that a class reading was waiting for me in my bedroom. There was a necessary mindlessness to this routine; affording too many emotions or too much awareness to what I was missing out on would have made it impossible to continue. 

This year, that mad rush has been put on pause. There was little sense that we were missing out. Quite frankly, there was often nowhere else to be. 

What is Yale without its towering American Collegiate Gothic structures and its hallmark traditions and events? What is Yale without classrooms, and Sterling, and The Game and Woads? What is Yale when it is whittled down to its most bare components — when everything else is locked up for the year and halted? This year showed us, by necessity, that the campus is about its people. 

The world sometimes does not grant us time. Sometimes we must carve it out ourselves. Make time for yourself. Make time for the people you care about. Spend a whole day with your friends with your mind only on the now. Bake them a giant Pop-Tart. When weeks are tough, check in. Don’t adhere to a damaging pace of life. This year showed us that we don’t have to be “too busy.” Why would we go back to the way things were?

Sammy Westfall is a graduating senior in Ezra Stiles College. She was Editor in Chief of the News for the 2019-2020 school year. Contact her at sammy.westfall@yale.edu.

SAMMY WESTFALL