Coming to campus is a risk and it comes with the potential of being placed into isolation or quarantine. On March 14, I was placed into a ten-day quarantine in my room. Now, I know for many, being put into quarantine is a scary thing, but I want to write this article now and another before I am released in the middle of next week to compare my mind set. Currently, I am living! Like living, but like even more living because I have been doing nothing but painting for four hours straight while watching “Kitchen Nightmares.” Is it how I deal with my current anxiety? Yes! Does it maybe make me psychotic outside of being placed in quarantine? Yes! I mean “Kitchen Nightmares” shouldn’t really be the television show people go to, to relax or honestly do anything to. Yet somehow, hearing Gordon Ramsey call a poor chef a doughnut for saying they do not microwave salads is what I am living for right now.
I mean I now have so much time to spend in my room to just watch Gordon Ramsey videos and learn tons of new insults for when I get out of here. Who knows! I am so thrilled to be able to have so much time that maybe when I get out of here, I will take two pieces of bread and put them on either side of someone’s head and call them an idiot sandwich! Or who knows maybe I will be just walk into Sherman and start yelling, eff off eff off eff off eff off eff off eff off to everyone I see in there just for the fun of it. Either way I know I am looking forward for this great opportunity to reflect on myself, not just my insults, and really get to know who I am on the inside.
Fortunately, enough for me that will be really easy with the Sodexo food that will be delivered to my room. That stuff will pass me so fast even Usain Bolt will be jealous of my speed. I mean if there is any truly great way to know who you are on the inside it’s with a week of Sodexo’s cooking. My insides will be all over and it will give me tons of opportunities to really rid myself of who I once was. I’ll be changing alright and this will be good because I can also see the world change a little. I will be able to watch spring bloom from my Rosie windows and enviously watch as kids play on Chapels Field. I will also be able to watch the demon children from across the street come onto campus to throw baseballs at people in the face and then yell “heads” right before it hits them.
When I come out of quarantine, I will be able to do all the usual Brandeis things again that I will no longer take for granted. I can once again be afraid of the geese which terrorize our campus. I will be able to once again go to Sherman and think, “well, it may give me food poisoning but what else can I eat here really?” I could also go to Gosman and head to the weight room and remember how much it sucks. Or, I could go all the way to Upper Usdan by making the perilous journey of hiking up the mountain that is campus. Passing the library of sweaty trolls that stay in there for hours and venture beyond G-zang and the hoards of anxious pre-med major ogres! Then and only then will I reach Upper where I can get my Tres Habaneros and remember how it is so much worse than Curritos and find tons of plastic in my food.
Quarantine will be transformational but I know that no matter how much I change this campus will always be its good old terrible self. Who knows maybe on my next check up I will be doing even better than before at the end of all this!
