What the Pandemic Has Done to the Class of 2020
Noah Baumbach’s 1995 film, Kicking and Screaming, opens at a college-graduation party. Students dressed in boxy suits and flouncy dresses mill around campus, savoring their final moments of collegiate aimlessness: Today I am a student, an English major. Tomorrow these identities will fall away and I will have no idea who or what I am anymore. A group of friends gathers around a table to play a game in which a topic is chosen and players buzz in with answers that fit the category. One character suggests worst-case scenarios after graduation, and students chime in:
Bzz. “Heart attack.”
Bzz. “Live in Milwaukee.”
What would my answer have been? Trick question, because I didn’t go to any graduation parties. I attended my final Kenyon College classes over Zoom, three feet from my childhood bed, then watched my live-streamed graduation
