By Dustin S. Martinez, Fellow Class of 2018
University of Colorado at Boulder
Best laid plans are not sober; even with meticulously plans from start to finish, these plans might still fail due to unexpected events. Needless to say, this year was full of unexpected historic moments arising from unplanned events. The United States Congress Impeached the President and tried him before the nation (the third in the history of our nation), the Australian forest fires became rampant and will scar Australia for decades to come; and not long after both of these events, COVID-19 took the world by storm as the economy and governments closed down in response to the looming threat to the vulnerable. All of these events occurred within the first few months of 2020, yet they are more prominent in my mind than those of the Fall semester of 2019 for the very reason that one event directly affected my routine as well as life across America.
I fell into a routine before quarantine happened. I woke up, went to classes, studied, worked, ate, (maybe) checked social media and the news, and then fell asleep. It was routine, and part of the plan. Sure, there were bumps along the road, I switch jobs due to the company I had been working for cutting of hours, but it was not anything major. The plan was still to keep up on my education, study when I could, and then work when I was required to do so.
It was routine. It was simple. There was a plan in place, and I was comfortable with it. But then something started to happen across the coasts of our nation, and I soon started to suspect my routine might come to a halt. People contracted COVID-19 and widespread panic ensued, first along the coastal states and then making its way to the inner states. I recognized it right away, as I was right there in the frontlines working at Target. People started to buy “Essential supplies” such as canned food, bottled water, disinfection wipes, toilet paper… It was absolute chaos at my work as we struggled to even restock the shelves. When you brought toilet paper to the sales floor, you would have thought that I was carrying the Ark of the Covenant instead of soft easily soaked paper rolls. That is not the only thing that had started to happen either.
Classes went online, and campus shut its doors. At first it was gradual, it was only the dining halls and classes that had shutdown. Soon so did the Recreational Center and the Library as well. Things started to become increasingly hard to keep track of as the days melted together and it became hard to find information about online courses, as a lot of professors struggled to get the classes to an online format. No one was prepared. This blindsided and no one was ready for the transition. The world was in panic and no one knew what to do.
Despite the odd circumstances, I was still doing things that I would have normally done. Being only “slightly extroverted” meant that the changes were not too big. I still had a job, attended classes, and worked out outside. But as I began, I remembered best laid plans are not sober. Two weeks into April, I developed a fever and, so being responsible, I decided to quarantine myself for 14 days. Although I won’t go into too much detail, I will say that it wasn’t as bad for me as it has been for other people. Still put a giant clog into a fine-tuned machine.
I was now stuck in the house with no contact to the outside world but through the phone. I cannot run because the illness would have progressed. I obviously did not go to work out of fear of infecting others. This made my routine stagnant, and I realized that things had to change. Although you cannot choose what will happen along the routes that you take, what you can choose to do is adapt and come out for the better. So that is exactly what I set out to do.
The goal: adapt to the new conditions that have been set before me. No going outside, keep on doing what I could, keep my mind sharp, and try to stay calm. I divided my living space into four areas. One for creative activities one for sleep, one for work, and one for eating and relaxing. The idea here was to keep each one sacred and separate from the others so that one could focus on the task at hand and hone that specific task. This helped me stay sane and organized without becoming a slob. As I could not do anything about the situation outside, I decided that I would change what I could on the inside in my area of influence and leave the situation outside for the people who could help.
This lasted two weeks, and as I come out of self-isolation, I realized something. You never know what life will throw at you; unexpected events can change your plans in an instant no matter how well prepared you are. What matters in the end is how you end up responding and reacting to these events. If you lose your cool or decide to give up hope when things like this happen, you will end up missing an opportunity to grow as an individual. The worst of circumstances bring out the true character of the individual, and, although on one hand, these circumstances can show the worst of humanity, on the other hand you can see the most brilliant lights shine in the darkest of nights. There is no formula for success during times of panic; but if you can stay cool, do what is reasonable, and do what you can in the moment, in the end you will end up better off than you were.
So, best laid plans are not sober; if plans end up changing, remember that it is not the end of the world, but it can be, only the start of something bigger and better for the future.
