If I could describe my second year of college in a single sentence, it’d be this: You don’t truly understand how good something is until it’s taken away from you. At the end of my first year as a student at the University of Virginia (UVA), I was drained from a long year of staying afloat both medically and emotionally.

I had done the hard self-reflection and waited for the work to pay off. Slowly, my hard-earned progress turned a much-needed corner at the opening of my second year. I had paid my dues—living in dorms, not having a fake ID (kidding!), knowing no one hosting parties, being completely clueless about my academic direction—and made it to the other side.

My best friend Stephanie and I had decided to live together during our second year maybe a month into first year, when we quickly discovered how uncannily similar and compatible we were. There we were a year later, still generally clueless but excited for the best parts of our experiences ahead.

We lived in a tiny two-bedroom apartment off Wertland Street near the Corner, on the second floor of the back unit. In all honesty, it was a college apartment. Everything was chaotically yet perfectly organized, and there was no coherent aesthetic. I’ve never met a college student with an aesthetic coherence.

There was something so liberating about having first year behind me immediately. I had space to roam, a car to drive, a kitchen to cook in, and that beautifully false sense of superiority over younger students.

Knowing that I had made it through all my many orthopedic surgeries successfully and that I was in a new space mentally and physically, I felt inspired to branch out. Instead of continuing to pout about “missed” opportunities in my first year, I took advantage of the present moment and seized college’s sheer social abundance.

After my somewhat short-lived basketball phase, I knew that I needed to find a team sport. I looked through the club team list and came across water polo, which I had never even googled before that moment. I looked it up and it seemed insane. Naturally, I signed up for tryouts within a day.

There’s something so unshakably powerful about trying something you know nothing about in front of strangers. That was water polo: eggbeatering and being held by the shoulders underwater.

We practiced three nights a week for several hours in an Olympic-sized pool; it was absurdly challenging. I realized quickly that, given the contact-driven and aggressive nature of the sport—my body and its injury history would have a poor reaction.

I gave water polo my best and grew to love the girls on my team. It was maybe a month before I had to permanently pull back from the sport because my nerve damage from a prior hip procedure had made existing unbearable. The sport was doing more harm than good to my body, and, for the first time in my life, I walked away before things got worse.

Having disbanded water polo at the end of October that semester, I almost didn’t care because of the social network I had for the first time since arriving at UVA. Trying and failing didn’t disempower me; rather, it motivated me to keep looking for where I belonged.

Now, the unfortunate part comes.

Maybe a week after I quit water polo, I was approached and recruited by one of the head crew coaches at UVA. She saw me working out and generally existing as a 6’2 woman, and we exchanged numbers. Our encounter was exciting and took me completely by surprise. The prospect planted itself firmly in the back of my mind.

Flash-forward one week, I was doing a pushup in the gym when I suddenly felt a pop in my shoulder. It collapsed from under me, and I knew that something had happened. The pain wasn’t overly concerning but I couldn’t shake this nagging worry in the back of my mind. Let's give it a few days, I told myself.

With a new mild level of discomfort in my upper body, I was at a fraternity party one night when I decided to climb on a table. I tripped trying to get up and landed on my injured arm—I physically felt my labrum tear and immediately lost substantial strength in that arm.

I was pissed. I knew exactly what was happening, I had just pushed the idea of being injured again out of my mind. Being unable to conceptualize another surgery and recovery, I focused instead on preventing the injury from worsening, which I managed to do successfully for a few months.

Despite the ever-present, delicate injury and the unknown future it foretold, I had to keep living my life! This next part of my second-year lore is funny to me now.

I don’t know when exactly, but I decided to rush sororities over that winter break. Even as someone opposed to the archaic, oppressive, gendered structure of Greek life, I was still 19 years old and curious. I made it through maybe the first 48 hours of a days-long recruitment process. Small talk was exhausting, and the power dynamic in building “friendships” predicated upon wealth unsettled me deeply. So, I crossed it off my bucket list and left.

The day that I dropped out of the rush, I pulled out the rowing coach’s phone number and called her. We talked through the details, and I left the phone call feeling enthusiastic. I did explain to her that I’d have to have a minor revision surgery on one of my pesky, nerve-damaged hips and that I had a shoulder that was likely torn. Once my injuries were healed, though, I’d be ready to start in person in my third year.

I felt pretty good overall about my creative outlets, social groups, and plans for the immediate future. The day before spring break, the weather was beautiful. The sun shone warmly on my pale, freckled shoulders and I walked home listening to my music, smiling from ear to ear.

This feeling was what I had been yearning for for the longest time: I finally belonged at UVA, and I was ready for everything to come.

At the beginning of spring break, I had a small surgical procedure done on one of my hips to help alleviate nerve damage sustained in an operation the previous year. The recovery time was quick and the damage non-extensive. When we flew back home to Richmond after surgery in Boston, we got an email from UVA. There was some novel virus going around that had infected a staff member at the Women’s Center. F*ck.

We were delayed in coming back to Grounds for two weeks initially before anyone knew the magnitude of what was transpiring. The world then unraveled at break-neck speed as COVID-19 took the spotlight. Classes went online, and the quality of my education diminished dramatically. Everyone was trying their best to survive. We weren’t allowed to return to UVA except to grab any belongings left behind. Those first few months of the pandemic were terrifying and upsetting for me and everyone I knew.

Selfishly, I was devastated at the state of my college experience. College is supposed to be four years of fun, harmless selfishness, and making mistakes. Suddenly something else took precedence and the veil was lifted. I wouldn't have access to the same experience that so many people were lucky enough to have. I still mourn this concept.

Every plan was seemingly foiled by COVID. I didn’t know what was going to happen with rowing, and I didn’t know when I was going to see my friends. I was living at my childhood home and became understandably depressed. I lost any appetite for joy that I had built in the months prior.

College was ruined.

My woe-is-me feelings aside, I coped like the rest of the world and did my best each day. I attempted to balance fear with gratitude, to some avail. Days were spent on my phone, waiting for an email to give us the good news that never came.

As I finished my second year and faced the openly traumatic and ongoing experience of the pandemic, my shoulder injury had worsened dramatically. Such is a labrum injury: The injury starts relatively small, but it unavoidably continues to tear over time. I tore all the way through, and partially into my rotator cuff.

I could no longer lift my arm, and my shoulder would dislocate out of the socket whenever I tried to put a shirt on in the morning. Within a week of daily dislocations, I had “emergency” (no imminent threat of death, but critical, high-risk injury) surgery on my shoulder in June of that year.

Recovery was awful and I don’t want to linger too much on all these injuries—it’s hard to go into every detail when you’ve had this many procedures—but being injured was worse. I saddled up and did what had to be done. Plus, free time was abundant!

I tried something new and accepted where I was at, the dream of rowing on the women’s team post-COVID acting as my guiding north star. Clinging to this dream, I found the mental fortitude to recover and reorient. I knew what I wanted, and I focused on that drive, something I remain grateful for.

My second year ended and I, like so many others, felt afraid and unsure. Each day of not knowing was agony, and I could feel the experience slipping away. Looking back, how did we sustain this?

Like everyone else I’ve ever met, I wish that the pandemic had never happened. I’m also traumatized by the whiplash of the event, a sentiment shared by all.

I wish it could have happened at any other time in my life, but I had to accept it and hope for the best. More than anything, I left second year missing my friends and yearning to be back on Grounds.

That summer was tough, but I completed my first internship and turned my sights toward the next school year. I adapted despite the discomfort. And I braced myself for the unknown!