The steady hum of the bus pierced my thoughts. The ride felt unusually rough that day, though perhaps
that was just the feeling of my heart pounding with anticipation and trepidation. Outside the window, I saw the familiar flashes of Wallingford — the subway that took me an hour to find last year and the convenience stores that seem to line every corner. Those are places that I had missed so much before coming back to campus, yet in this moment they felt so eerily different. Barren shops and sidewalks littered the roads to my left and right, and their emptiness was a reminder of how long and devastating this pandemic has been.
Sitting alone in my bus seat on the way to the vaccine clinic, my head swam with excitement and worry. On one hand, there was the excitement of finally getting my first vaccine shot. Soon, I would be protected from the deadly Covid-19; a critical first step in returning to a normal lifestyle. But also, I had worries. I was afraid of how severe the side effects would be, and I couldn’t help but to feel a little uneasy about how short the vaccine development time had been.
Rolling into the vaccination site, I was startled to see an airfield and that we were to be vaccinated on our bus. Around us, the National Guard and volunteer medical staff quickly entered our bus and checked our identification. Watching them out there in the rain, I felt immense gratitude and respect.
Seeing the needle in the nurse’s hand, I had a sudden feeling of extreme relief, security, and hope — a feeling that normalcy might finally return and that a burden had been lifted. I had never felt that way about a shot before. The vaccinations went surprisingly smoothly given our large numbers, and I appreciated how the School managed to streamline the process.
As the dull pain on my left arm subsided, however, I began to feel guilty about how I was fortunate enough to get this shot, while so many people around the world are not.
Still, I convinced myself that getting the shot was the right thing to do. Getting vaccinated was my responsibility, an action that I took not only for my sake but also for the sake of the community around me. It was for the family members I wanted to embrace, the friends I wanted to talk maskless with, and the restaurants I wanted to dine in. By vaccinating our population as quickly as possible, we can achieve the threshold for herd immunity sooner, which will in turn protect those who cannot be vaccinated and shield ourselves from future variants of the virus.
The ride back to campus felt shorter and more light-hearted. As we laughed our way through Dr. Chris Hogue’s trivia questions, it felt as if everything was back to normal again. It was almost like the trivia I used to do with Mr. Ned Gallagher while heading to squash games. The scene made me hopeful that this nightmarish pandemic would finally be coming to an end. Again, my heart was pounding, but this time it was from the anticipation for a safer future.
