Raven Devanney

I came back from spring break on that Tuesday. I had been at a music festival in Florida without cell service so I was very tuned out from the world. I didn’t really know what was going on with coronavirus and how it was escalating. I got back to Emerson in the middle of the day and was kind of just recovering from spring break, and then I see this email pop up that said we were moving to online classes. I felt instantly numb and instantly in shock and disbelief. This couldn’t be happening.

I’m the co-president of Earth Emerson, and April is Earth Month so we had events planned almost every day. They were just all of these huge events that were going on that I had spent the entire first and beginning of second-semester planning. We had spent so much energy and time doing the not fun work to plan for these really fun rewarding events, and then right when everything was about to come to fruition we were told we couldn’t do it anymore. So that was really devastating for me.

Senior year was probably the most creatively fulfilling time in my college career. I finished a documentary that I had filmed and edited. It was actually my first film that got accepted into a film festival that unfortunately was postponed because of COVID-19. But I think my favorite times at Emerson are in the spring. April and the beginning of May in Boston are just so beautiful and we get to be with friends and have our projects finished, so I’m definitely missing that a lot.

I was devastated when I found out about graduation. I’m the oldest sibling in my family and the first one in my family to go through college and I was really looking forward to having that moment with my classmates and my family. It’s really just devastating that we’re not going to get that closure.

It’s been hard being at home. I feel trapped. I worked so freaking hard to fly the nest and get away and make something of myself. And I did it. I got to go to the school of my dreams and make a mark on campus by being an RA and an org leader. I did all of this work and now I’m right back where I started.

But I’ve really been trying to take advantage of the fact that this is the first time ever, where I’m being told to just stay home and take care of myself and treat myself better than I probably would have if I was still in school.