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This has been a year like no other in living memory. As 2020 draws to a close, we are asking people from around Ireland to write a letter to the person they were 12 months ago. Today Kathryn Glen, 21, an undergraduate student in Dublin, shares some advice for her pre-pandemic self.
Dear past me,
Welcome to 2020. Scrap your plans and buy stocks in Zoom.
You don’t know what Zoom is yet, but you will.
There will be a pandemic. It will be awful. You will get through it.
Your university will close on the same day you are timetabled to attend a lecture entitled “Plagues Throughout History”. You will find this quite funny.
In fact, you will laugh a lot this year, mainly because you need to.
You will turn twenty-one on the same day Ireland goes into lockdown. It will be an anticlimactic but unforgettable start to your twenties.
You will live through a period of time while being fully conscious that it will go down in history. You will try to keep a diary, but you won’t succeed. You will be surprised to discover that day-to-day life in a pandemic feels so boring.
You will grow very, very tired of the word “unprecedented”. The same will be true of the phrase “global pandemic”.
You will feel proud that you belong to a community that will willingly sacrifice so much to protect the vulnerable.
During a period where you should be growing more independent, suddenly you will have never spent more time with your family. While this should feel frustrating, watching others not able to see their parents makes you feel very grateful for this time with them.
Seeing crowds in television shows filmed before the pandemic will make you flinch. You will wonder if there will ever be a time where you will stand in a crowd and won’t imagine the spread of a virus through it.
You will struggle to stay motivated in university. The coming year will put things into perspective for you, and suddenly grades will feel very unimportant. Know that this is normal, and to not be so hard on yourself. Generally this year you will learn not to be so hard on yourself.
Listen to “Sunscreen” by Baz Luhrmann as often as you can. It helps.
You will never see your friends so little, or appreciate them so much. You will watch Normal People, and miss the normal college experience acutely.
You will know exactly how far 5km from your house is. You will become highly enthusiastic about yoga. This will also be true for sea swimming.
Once restrictions relax a bit in the summer, you will go on many hikes. You will gain a real, and hopefully permanent, appreciation of nature and the beauty of this little island. Luckily, it will be a gorgeous summer.
You will miss your grandparents so much it hurts, but you will also talk to them more than you ever have before.
You will appreciate every bit of travel you ever went on. The reminders on your phone of photos from “This Day Last Year” will be painful to see, but you’ll always look at them anyway.
This will be a heart-wrenching, infuriating year and you will sign a lot of petitions.
You will find out that masks look kind of cool, actually. You should really invest in de-fogging gel for your glasses, though.
You will wear more make-up for Zoom calls inside your house than you do when leaving the house wearing a mask.
You will find it hard to concentrate on studying while wearing a mask in the library. You will feel a lot of respect for your younger brother sitting the Leaving Certificate who wears a mask all day in secondary school.
You will avoid maskless people, quite literally, like the plague.
You will never get used to the phrase “wet pub”. Nor should you.
You will get a kitten. Because of your constant presence, you will raise a friendly cat, but possibly also the only cat you know with separation anxiety.
You will buy local.
The Late Late Toy Show this year will be the best one you’ve ever seen. Seeing Adam’s virtual hug stamped on the top left of an envelope delivering a Christmas card will make you quite emotional.
You will get emotional very easily this year – just go with it.
Thankfully, three vaccines will be announced in the space of three weeks. This will come after months of doubt whether they would be created at all.
You will miss so many things, and in a lot of ways 2020 will feel like a year of life lost. At least what resilience you get out of it will be with you for the rest of your years.
After the 1918 Spanish Flu came the roaring twenties. Hopefully the same can be said for the next decade.
For 2021 and beyond, you will look forward to appreciating normal life in the years to come far more than you ever did before Covid-19.
Here’s to roaring through these twenties.
Kathryn Glen is a fourth year History and Political Science student at Trinity College Dublin.
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You could try longer Dail sessions/less holidays for a start alex.
so here is a guy who has freely admitted that there is E.U law being passed without scrutiny ; that just about makes the E.U. totally illegal in Ireland !
I think the penny is finally dropping with the Irish People that our Govt and the EU don’t have our best interests at heart.
why do you say that Toby? because unfortunately ff and fg are still
topping polls.
Because Richard, the polls are indicating that the recommendation made by the Govt is being questioned by the Irish People.
Huh? Toby the most recent one I saw, fg were actually gaining points, There seems to have been a rise in ‘don’t knows’, but honestly that only ultimately contributes to fg’s gain.
hence my belief a need for DDI
Almost 40% said they wouldn’t vote for any party or independent. Those percentages are taken from the remaining 60%, that’s good news.
There’s a change coming.
These political tugs must for once recognise that Ireland is a sovereign nation and never will it be governed by Europe. I can see why they like the idea of outsourcing all government decisions to the EU, as it removes responsibility some what. Now debating is off the table, what next ? your right to speak.
The EU is just a monstrous undemocratic bureaucracy now pumping out legislation by the barrel-load.. all the while incapable of fixing itself. It fails to recognise that it is flawed fundamentally by half-assing federalisation (with the Euro especially).
It’s about time Ireland stopped drinking the “More EU” kool-aid and considered that perhaps the project has gone far enough (even too far) in some respects. That if we leave it to the Eurocrats in Brussels, they will not stop until the EU has all the federal powers of the US and the Fed, something we should not aspire to.
+billion of bit coins for that comment. Hats off to you sir, very well said.
Hear here !
Why not use the Senate all the time?
I’m sure reforms can improve its use. Pity we don’t have a preferendum.
Alex White is such a lemming. He’s too boring to think about. I give up.
Wow we have a guy in Government who doesn’t understand the difference between the words “everything and “anything”…
You could all get off ya holes and bring this country out of the hell hole FF got it into.
Too bloody busy digging a bigger hole! A tunnel if you will, light at the end not included.
Neither the Dail nor the Seanad actually debate anything. The government of the day uses the guillotine to push through their legislation – and we call this a democracy.
You would warn. A Child not to sign anything without understanding its relevance
Send the directives back and tell them when you get a chance you will look at them ,that’s what you tell us when when you are engaging
The Fine Gael/Labour Programme for Government, 2011-2016 (from which the following extract is taken) may help – if anyone bothers to read it:
“Transposing EU Legislative Measures
The situation can no longer be tolerated where Irish Ministers enact EU legislation by statutory instrument. The checks and balances of parliamentary democracy are by-passed. The parliamentary treatment accorded home-produced draft legislation must be extended to draft legislation initiated within the EU institutions.
The Regulatory Impact Assessments prepared for Ministers on all EU Directives and significant Regulations will be forwarded automatically to the relevant sectoral Oireachtas Committees. These Committees should advise the Minister and the Joint Committee on European Affairs as to whether the transposition should take place by Statutory Instrument or by primary legislation. Where primary legislation is recommended the full Oireachtas plenary process should be followed.”
So they have proposed a policy that defies their job description ; That means no citizen is required to pay tax ! Tax Strike !
Maybe if the Dail didn’t spend so long on holidays more could be debated Mr. White…..
some awful EU Directives have been accepted the EU Treaty Rights for starters…..mostly in immigration, people in sham marriages with EU nationals were required to live in the EU nationals country (ie latvia, poland etc) before they could live in Ireland thus very few sham marriages existed however the EU removed that as a directive ands its open season
I disagree.
How democratic! Underlines the need – despite its major shortcomings – to retain and reform the Seanad to tackle this issue. A reformed Seanad should not have the whip system. That way it can revise and scrutinise legislation without political heavies leaning on them.
have your say