A Message to My Fellow 2020 Students

By Vivian Stuart

We all became students in 2020. Brought to the same level by inexperience, we learned together the best ways to navigate a new world. We learned how to properly wear a mask and practice social distancing to protect ourselves and our neighbors. Actively listening to the cries for social justice, we studied how to be better allies and enact real change. We all learned what grief was. We grieved the loss of normalcy and loved ones, accompanied by the heartache of separation. Some of us paid special attention to political platforms and policies in order to fill in ballots responsibly before placing our votes in the mail. We discovered safe ways to conduct our day-to-day lives, manage the difficulties of isolation and celebrate special moments.

I started 2020 as a teacher. Serving as a Peace Corps volunteer, I lived in a rural town in northern Benin teaching English to middle school students. I was planning a spelling bee when I was evacuated in March due to the pandemic. The whiplash exacted by Covid-19 left me dizzied and unemployed, unsure of how to plan for an uncertain future. For me, a new path in our new world was carved out with the help of an old friend. Michael Gallagher II, a fellow Peace Corps Benin evacuee, told me he’d found a graduate Global Communications program at a university in Paris and extended an invitation that I couldn’t turn down.

My time at AUP began last fall, in one of the beautiful campus classrooms with high ceilings and tall windows that flood the room with natural light, sitting at a desk next to Michael. Our face masks disguised our knowing smiles, expressing how far the two of us had come – across three continents – to sit at a lecture side by side.

Even with lessons learned from the prior year, we found ourselves unprepared for the momentous events and challenges that would unfold. 2021 was ushered in with the introduction of a new Covid variant, a new threat to our lives, and the insurrection at the US Capitol, a threat to democracy. Terrible and worrying events that seem to continuously stack upon one another, weighing on our already heavy hearts.

The world keeps turning, even when we ourselves feel frozen in moments of grief and disbelief. My life came to a sudden standstill in early December, when I was informed that Michael had died in a car accident two days after we celebrated his 24th birthday. Despite all I had learned about grief, I am still learning how to carry it.

Lightening this load are the warm smiles that greet me on Teams calls, worn by new and familiar faces. AUP students and professors are starting the Spring semester online, together on screen but scattered around Paris and the world, sharing the same hopes of seeing each other in person very soon. I am attending lectures from my Paris apartment, feeling my best friend by my side and, as he would be, looking forward to getting back in the classroom.

I spent much of last year looking back – wishing for what was or what could have been, reminiscing, mourning and reflecting. In 2021 I am looking forward. Like the transition from winter to spring, we are gaining a little more light every day. Covid-19 vaccines are being distributed around the world, and the US has inaugurated President Joe Biden who promises to unite rather than divide.

The greatest lesson I have learned is that the best ways to move through challenges – personal and global – is through communication, connection, collaboration and solidarity.

This is achieved by a collection of amazingly talented and supportive people working together on platforms like the Peacock Plume, which brings to life informative, meaningful journalism that brings our student body, as well as our worldwide audience, together. We are still students in our ever-changing circumstances, bettered by resources like the Peacock Plume, which strengthens us by making us look at ourselves and the world, and then to the future.