I was socially distancing with my friend Julie this weekend and as we were hanging out at Lulu’s (a cute local ice cream parlor, I recommend the Huckleberry Haven), lo and behold who approached but one of Julie’s roommates, a friend I hadn’t met before. We’ve all been in situations where our outings were derailed by one circumstance or another and additional persons change up the dynamic of the day, but this particular occurrence was a very positive one. Julie, her roommate and I, clicked and started talking like we had all known each other for years. Minutes turned to hours and hours turned into the better part of a full day. 

And while for me it felt like I had known both of them for years, Julie and her roommate Michelle really had known each other for that long. They were the best of friends. It wasn’t like talking to two people who simply knew each other, it was like talking to two people who had an unseen yet tangible connection, like an invisible bungee cord, a Hallmark-movie fated meeting, contagious IBS, or some other experience that binds people together.

As I made my way through the standard icebreakers, I eventually got to: “How do you two know each other?” And I learned that they had met three years ago at freshman orientation. I thought that that was so sweet, and that it was so cool that such a strong friendship had been birthed and maintained by and through college. 

The conversation continued and while we were talking about improv groups and whatever else our brains collectively spat out and found interesting, as it would have it, another member of Julie’s friend group appeared. And then another, and then another. Somehow someway I had been meeting with Julie at the exact right place and time for her entire roommate enclave to apparate to and socially-distance for a spell with us.

It was awesome, actually, like stepping into someone else’s shoes for a day and seeing the world they revolve inside of, and it helped that everyone was so nice too! Everyone was friends. Everyone had playful drama and embarrassing shared history to spill tea about and punch each other’s shoulders with mock appall as I giggled through my mask.

But the coolest thing was the pattern that quickly revealed itself as the conversation ran on. All four of these friends had met each other during the exact same initial freshman orientation. This group of people had come together one fateful freshman day, and had grown to love one another so much that they stuck together for three whole years!

Anyone that’s been quarantining for even just a few months with the same few people know how strong and how quickly a relationship can grow through facing challenges together. You learn these quirks, specialties, and deep facts about people, like how this person uses yogurt instead of mayonnaise in her tuna fish sandwiches (eww), how no matter how damp with tears your sister’s shoulder is she’ll still readily offer it for you to cry on, and how no matter how many times you tell him otherwise this person seems just plain unable to do his own dishes for some reason.

And, in some ways, your college friends fulfill a very similar niche to your quarantine partners. Going to college, and moving to college especially can be a really nerve-racking experience. But, hanging out with Julie this weekend proved that that nervous-potentially-terrifying-and-utterly-exciting energy that surrounds everyone’s first college day can be the exact sort of external challenge that will forge friendships that last a lifetime.

I won’t speak for them, of course, but just from the stories told, I could tell that Julie and her friends had been there for each other through thick and thin, and they were committed to being there for each other for a long time to come. They’d help each other study for tests in addition to hiding a body together, and would probably do both at the same time if they needed to.

Hyperbole aside, Julie is one of many people who has life-long friends from college, and in the time of uncertainty and scariness that is 2020, knowing that those friends could be out there, waiting for you to meet them, might be the encouragement you need to be able to approach college and the next phase of life with a bold face and a smile.

It is scary, and it is nerve-racking, and that’s okay! Because so many people there with you will also be scared and nervous, but also excited, and you’ll be able to join together with each other and become the absolute best of friends. Who doesn’t want a college squad to back you up in life?

P.S. Yes, I’m putting you on blast Julie. Yogurt in your tuna fish sandwiches? Really? It’s not even like you hate mayo, you just don’t use it in this one specific circumstance? C’mon girl.

I finally admitted to myself that the quarantine was getting to me when I realized that I was learning how to juggle.

It’s an easily missed snowball effect, one that you don’t realize you yourself are engaging in as you begin to resemble a plummeting ball of frozen ice rolling down a mountain steadily picking up more and more hobbies to distract yourself from the outside world. It starts with succulent gardening, eventually gets around to sourdough baking, and, for me, at least, it ultimately lands on juggling.

It’s something everyone has tried to do at least once, it feels a little childish, but also kind of fun, and secretly everyone has thought about it and realized that they too could learn how to juggle if they focused and put a handful of hours of work into it.

But as cheesy as it sounds, obvious metaphor acknowledged, learning to juggle helped me juggle online learning.

If you want to, you can imply that juggling is very much like studying for your Astronomy midterm on Tuesday while also remembering that you have a Zoom meeting at three in the afternoon for your Intro to Fine Arts class, and having the back of your mind focused on how your boss has asked you repeatedly to do a better job washing the store’s windows and you really need to watch a couple tutorials on YouTube before going to work at five. You are tracking, catching, and tossing what feels like a thousand different things at once. It can be complicated, stressful, and requires a great deal of conscious thought.

You could imply that that’s what juggling is like. But, personally, my experience with juggling was the exact opposite of that description.

After digging around the dim garage and procuring three somewhat musty smelling and Valley dust filled tennis balls, I was naively readying myself to engage in a focused mental task coordinating my hands with my eyes, and fighting through frustration and accomplishing my goal anyways: to continuously juggle for at least thirty seconds.

It started out that way, I could barely catch what I was throwing, my eyes were all over the place, and I spent more time chasing dropped tennis balls than I did juggling them. But, incredibly quickly, the “intellectual” element melted away. There is an intensely primal aspect about something as physical as juggling. After a while, you’re not thinking about juggling, you simply are juggling.

An hour into throwing around these three tennis balls, I could only juggle for ten seconds at a time before accidentally reenacting a Looney Tunes scene and having to scramble around to pick up everything that had fallen. And yet, every time I reached those ten seconds, I drifted into a trance. The stress and confusion of a million different school assignments, job necessities, and social obligations, all floated away from me. I was no longer “Nathan the college student”, “Nathan the supportive friend”, or “Nathan the good employee”… I was just “Nathan”.

That first hour zipped by in a flash, and when my timer went off telling me to go back to my laptop and hammer out the next essay, I was refreshed. Revitalized. That stress that had melted away didn’t come back.

You’ve probably figured it out already, but I’m not really advocating that you should learn to juggle to become a better student, I’m advocating that you should take care of your body and mind to become a better student.

Online learning is new for a lot of us, and it can be stressful and confusing and sometimes even feel unfulfilling. I could blab on for literal hours about how I organize my life on color-coordinated planners, post-it-notes, highlighters, and weekly phone alarms just to make sure I’m getting those grades I want. But you probably already have a system for that that works for you. But have you found something that doesn’t require thought yet? Something that works your body more than your mind?

Once I started juggling, it became easier to hash through my school to-do list. I started to plan my days with the words “Juggling Break” worked into my schedule. That all-consuming stress and worry about fulfilling all of my different roles as student, son, friend, and worker, became a heck of a lot more manageable when I started dedicating specific blocks of time to not thinking.

For me, juggling is just goofy and skilled enough to fit into my personality, but for you it could be anything. Maybe it is juggling, maybe it’s yoga, jogging, lumberjack axe throwing, cowboy action shooting, meditating, or playing Just Dance for hours at a time until your body is sore and you’re standing in your own puddle of sweat. (I may have experience with that last one… maybe).

But if you feel like it’s becoming harder and harder to “juggle” online learning, then maybe it’s worth it to look for another new hobby. But not one that takes thought, and not even one to take very seriously. Just something that will help you zone out, detox, and have a little bit of fun with. Before you even realize it, you’ll meet your initial goal and zoom past it. Soon you won’t be juggling to reach the next goal of forty seconds, or a minute of continuous juggling, you’ll just be doing it for the sake of it. And it will be relieving.