Starting Senior Year During a Pandemic

Hello! My name is Matthew Brightbill, and I just started my senior year as a musical theater major at Ohio Northern University. Welcome to my blog dedicated to passing one of the last classes I need to get my public relations minor.

It feels surreal to be back in a place that I had to evacuate due to the outbreak of COVID-19 five long months ago. It feels surreal to be back with my friends and peers again after spending all of March through July strictly seeing my immediate family every day, with visits to see my boyfriend on the weekends. It is tough starting this year knowing my friends are again so close to me, but also knowing it is unwise to get too close to them or spend time with them as we would in previous years because they just came back from all over the country and they could transmit COVID-19 to me without even knowing they were carrying it. With all this being said, it still feels good to regain some semblance of normalcy in my life.

It feels good starting a new normal and starting to work through the rustiness of not having performed all summer. In order to stay in good shape for singing, acting, and dancing you have to work these skills as you would a muscle, and I found it hard to find the motivation to keep on top of my game while the industry I was supposed to be working in was completely shut down. Truth be told, I have never gone this long without performing since my time onstage began in eighth grade. Before coming back on campus I felt rusty and as if I wasn't going to be good enough to be senior in an intensive musical theater training program, but coming back to classes and getting back into in-person training these last couple days has assured me I can find success this year.

As a way to keep everyone safe who is participating in in-person classes, everyone returning to campus had to take a "polar pledge." This involved online training about what COVID-19 is, how it is transmitted, and the steps we have to follow in order to keep everyone safe this year. The first step of this process is taking your temperature every day, and staying home if it is above 100.4 degrees. My friends and I have made a game out of this where we share pictures of us taking our temperatures in the morning and seeing who had the lowest temperature. You can see examples of this at the top of this post. The polar pledge also involves wearing masks all the time on campus and in classrooms and maintaining six feet of distance from everyone else. This has proved incredibly sweaty in classes that require a lot of movement, like jazz dance, tap dance, or acting Shakespeare. Wearing masks all day in these types of classes will probably do damage to my skin due to the amount I'm dripping sweat, but I can't wait to see what I am able to learn this year.