In this third week or so, I’ve truly come to understand why people go insane when they are put into solitary confinement.
Someone I can relate to right now is the character Five from Netflix’s “Umbrella Academy.” Five is a time-traveling teleporter in this edgy sibling superhero story who gets stuck in a post-apocalyptic future and makes a dramatic return in the first episode. You find out later Five had had a relationship in the future: a mannequin named Dolores. I’m not quite at Five’s level but I can definitely empathize with him.
Miraculously, thanks to an assignment on mindfulness assigned by my Professor Walt Paquin, where I set a time and duration for disconnecting with whatever I defined as social media, I started to ask, “Why am I so afraid of just sitting… just being?”
I began to wonder if the others on campus were feeling as restless as I was. I also really wanted to know if their sleep schedules were as weird as mine has been as of the last few weeks.
So I grabbed my camera and took to the ghost campus that is Bluffton University. I started with Neufeld Hall’s Hall Director, Nicholas Hoffman, senior accounting and business administration major.
When I arrived, I awkwardly explained to Hoffman that I was interested in seeing and documenting how the last remnants of the student body were passing the time and not going insane.
I was invited inside of Hoffman’s apartment and I found some really cool stuff. Hoffman had a completed puzzle of a compilation of Star Wars posters, a few fish tanks and a whole bunch of other stuff. It felt like I had just stepped inside the toy chest of a college adult.
I asked Hoffman if he had been working on any new skills.
“My life was that puzzle and that couch,” said Hoffman. “I have been practicing darts though.”
I eagerly asked him to demonstrate and watched as he laid on the couch and proceeded to throw the darts at the dartboard from a crossed-legged position on his back.
Astounding talent: only two out of 6 darts missed the board entirely.
My next stop was Hirschy Annex. I was fairly certain no one was left inside of Hirschy Annex, but I was on a mission. I had to find as many people as I could, at least before my camera died.
I called up and down Hirschy Annex’s halls to no avail. It truly felt like I was Cillian Murphy’s character in “28 Days Later,” calling to no one in an uninhabited land, clueless and naive.
I pushed on to Hirschy Hall. I had seen lights on at night a few days before, so I was sure I would find someone.
I walked in and started to head upstairs to where I knew people remained. Before I got up the steps though, I spotted Tovah Wilson, the hall director for the Hirschy Complex, entering the building. She was being dropped off by Residence Life’s secret weapon, Amber Smith.
They informed me they had just finished dropping off food and supplies for remaining residents on campus—a true blessing.
After chatting with Willson for a few, I went on looking for people in Hirschy Hall but none of them answered. I wasn’t bothered though. That’s just a part of the new campus life. People need space and, thankfully, they have it. And thus, the expedition continued.
I rode my steed, my bike, to Bren-Dell Hall. Hopefully, those folks over there would be open to talking and sharing with me what they’ve been doing.
In Bren-Dell, I found Stacey Chirewa, Naoki Edasawa and Ermias Assefa.
Chirewa, sophomore accounting and business administration major, and I talked first since she was on the second floor and the other boys were on the third.
She and I have been bonding on how odd our sleep schedules have been as of late. That day she told me she had risen at 2 p.m. That day I had done a great job and had woken up at an unheard of 10 p.m. I am stating this only slightly sarcastically. We decided that we had to be more productive and we made plans to run the next Monday. Writing this now, that Monday has passed and we definitely did not run. It was cold. We’ll try next Monday.
Chirewa and I went upstairs to bother—I mean, to check-in and interview Assefa, a sophomore mathematics major and computer science minor, and Edasawa, a junior information technology major.
The first thing I noticed was that Bren-Dell’s floor kitchen had clearly been taken over. A table held a bowl of half-eaten something, an opened microwave, some eating utensils and other miscellaneous things.
Seeing this made a warmth stir within me. “I’m not the only one,” I thought to myself. I do try to keep second-floor Ropp Annex’s kitchen clean but it has been a seemingly universal struggle on campus.
Once we got to the Bren-Dell men’s room, Assefa answered and we got to chat a bit. Edasawa was taking a nap though so we couldn’t talk too much. Assefa said he hadn’t been doing much except reading and sleeping. We didn’t get to see too much of their room but I did get a sneak peek at Assefa’s book collection. There was also a cool model sea vessel in their window but I didn’t get to ask who built it. That will have to be another question for next time.
At this point, my camera was dying. I got to Ropp Hall and spoke with HD, Kirk Kauder, senior accounting and business major, briefly. We talked a bit about his progress in “Grey’s Anatomy” and thus inspired me to actually stop putting it off and listen to my younger sister’s incessant pleading for me to start it. I just got to season two yesterday.
I’d like to continue doing this, so soon I’ll be reporting on the people in Ropp and going to find those folks I couldn’t get in touch with in Hirschy. I will also be editing my footage and hopefully releasing that to the website.
It’s been an interesting experience, catching up with people after feeling so isolated. Behaviors within myself that I have pegged as abnormal are turning out to be very normal — for better or for worse.
It’s reassuring to know that there are other people awake in the wee hours of the morning. It’s reassuring to know that I’m not the only one that might be fined for leaving his kitchen a mess. It’s reassuring to know that I am not alone.
