Life-Cycle Stages Perspective - Covid-19 Personal Reflection Paper
Life-Cycle Stages Perspective - Covid-19 Personal Reflection Paper
The pandemic hit a few months into my first semester at Brooklyn College (BC). Beginning a little over two years ago, my time at BC has been the first time I was on my own both financially and emotionally. Taking responsibility for my livelihood and wellbeing has proven to be significantly more challenging than expected. The stress associated with paying bills and maintaining a relatively structured life suddenly became a very real and palpable undertaking. Emerging as a young adult (life-cycle stage #1) in a college setting in NYC has always been a dream of mine. Now that I was actually in this phase, I had to come to terms with the real-life implications and anxieties that accompanied it.
When I first heard about the coronavirus from a friend, it sounded like something very distant. At the same time, I remember acknowledging that this new virus also had the potential to really upend life the way we knew it. Needless to say, when the virus hit the US, I felt extremely distressed by the new and seemingly endless level of unpredictability that now governed my life. Before covid, I was finally beginning to feel like I was getting a handle on my life as a young adult in college, but now every day presented new hardships that slowly began to overwhelm my body and spirit. The lockdowns, the mask mandate, and the travel restrictions all began to chip away at the relatively normal lifestyle I had once simply taken for granted.
Luckily, there were other things characterizing this stage of my life that remained intact and assisted me in navigating this new “post-covid” life. While I very much enjoyed the individuality and level of “differentiation” (especially from family) that I have cultivated during this period in my life, I continued to forge and nurture my existing close relationships with peers and family members. This helped me feel supported and less isolated through those initial difficult stages of the pandemic. I also joined a weekly online 90-minute zoom session support group. This group was a community of like-minded people who were all dealing with similar issues and served as a great way to address and discuss current events and struggles.
Although the pandemic has certainly impacted my development and general mobility during this life-cycle stage, I believe that through tapping into my resilience and perseverance I will emerge having learned more about myself and the extent of what I am capable of. It is my hope that these times will prove to have made me a better, stronger, and most importantly, kinder and more empathic person - for many years to come.