Senior Reflection: A Love Letter to the Things We Can’t Replace
(Photo courtesy of Jessica Greenman)
By Jessica Greenman
On the evening of my last Tuesday at Gettysburg, I went early to orchestra rehearsal. A few of us, as members of a recently-organized student board, discussed ways to promote the ensemble in the college community. One of our first steps was social media, which could start that very night—we would take a short video of each senior. It was simple enough: Name. Class year. Major and minor. Length of time you’ve been in the orchestra. Why do you like the orchestra?
We took the videos during the ten-minute break in the middle of rehearsal. Since the best kind of capital-L Leadership happens by example, I tried to project enthusiasm in front of the camera, even though I’m usually more confident behind the scenes. After a moment to gather my thoughts, I took a deep breath:
“Hi, my name is Jessica Greenman. I’m a senior graduating this May, and a History Major with a Writing minor. I have been in the orchestra for all four of my years at Gettysburg… and I love the orchestra because I wasn’t sure how much I was going to be able to continue music in college, and I’m so glad I was able to have that opportunity, surrounded by so many amazing and talented people.”
I didn’t know it at the time, but when I returned to the stage, I did so for the last time. Zoom can do many things. Rehearsing a forty-piece symphony isn’t one of them. We have other programming lined up for the spring, including guest speakers and sectional workshops. It’s actually an opportunity to explore aspects of the musical trade that we normally can’t when we’re rehearsing on stage, including the perspective of female directors in an industry that despite many years of progress still wants for women in its leadership. We will still have a musical education. Better still, we can have a bit of group contact while we’re getting it. It even
has a charming name—“Zorchestra,” for “Zoom Orchestra.” The only part we can’t reproduce is the making of music together in real time. The orchestra’s performance season is over.
I know I can’t be alone in taking the abrupt end of our on-campus semester hard. The reason we have to disperse is one of the things that brought me to Gettysburg in the first place—the closeness that a small campus like ours allows. Marina Keegan called the sense of community she found as a student at Yale “the opposite of loneliness.” Now that I am half a dozen states away from Gettysburg, I feel the loss of that opposite quite keenly.
That seems to be the hardest thing about leaving. My family has plenty of food and physical safety. I will be able to finish my coursework just fine. I was able to pack up and get off campus, so I have all my things. It’s not even about Commencement (although the arrival of my graduation invites in the mail last week did feel like a swift kick in the teeth). The wonders of modern technology make it so that I can communicate with any individual I might want to. But as much as I miss individual friends, they aren’t what I feel like I’ve lost.
I had a seventeen-hour train ride home, and on the way south through the Carolinas I wrote down a few of the things I realize I’ve seen, heard, or done for the last time and don’t want to forget. Unsurprisingly, lots of them have to do with music.
I can remember clearly the little fiddlings of the orchestra as we warmed up. The instrument cases, coats, and bags of sheet music that covered every horizontal surface in the red and yellow dressing rooms at the Majestic. The way we leaned over each other’s shoulders to copy bow or finger patterns marked in our classmates’ parts. The way you could feel vibrations from lower-register instruments through the soles of your shoes on the stage, or when my entire violin rang sympathetically when another section hit a particularly resonant pitch. The impromptu footwork lessons that put our dance music into context. The tick-tick-tick of Dr.
Leal’s baton on his music stand when he wanted our attention, and his grin whenever he reminded us that stylistic markings, whatever they might actually say in Italian, should translate to “watch César.”
A few weeks ago, we sight-read Offenbach’s Overture to Orpheus in the Underworld, which concludes with the famous “Can-Can.” Despite the roughness inherent to a first reading, Paul Recital Hall echoed with the bombastic melody. Dr. Leal stepped away from his podium while we were playing and peered out the open doors of the recital hall. “There are people dancing in the hallway,” he told us. It was one of the only times we played the piece as a group.
I miss the orchestra for the connectedness of it—for the special brand of weird that makes the group of us schlep over to the theater in the rain or snow for rehearsals that run into the night, for the backstage improvisations, for the even longer hours spent alone, locked in tiny practice rooms. I joined the orchestra because I wanted to be surrounded by people who were passionate and talented and kind enough to forgive me if I missed an entrance or never managed to remember exactly what a hemiola is. I found those people. If we’re being honest, I don’t even like performing very much. I get terrible stage fright, my hands shake, and I don’t play well. I’m absolutely crushed that I won’t be able to do it with this ensemble one more time.
Of course the orchestra is not the only group of its kind on our campus. I have also ridden with the Equestrian Team for the last time, our plans for fundraising, one last show, and end-of-year riding scuttled. I have thought for a while that I might have to take some time off from both the time commitment and the expense after graduation. I don’t know when I’ll be in the saddle again. It might be years.
In the weeks before we left, my residents had a lot of questions about housing selection for next year. I promised to answer them at our March community meeting. Now, we don’t
know when or how that process will be happening. The rest of staff was planning an event for the whole East Quad in April, one that had a lot of success last year. Silly as it is, I feel like a liar for making plans and promises that I now can’t keep.
We all made plans for the spring. For every organization I’m missing, there are twenty more full of others who are feeling the same loss, just with different details. I am sure that the coming weeks will be filled with efforts to remunerate some of that loss. It’s important to keep focused on the things we do have in front of us.
That said, I see no purpose in denying that some of our lost time absolutely cannot be made up.
It remains to be seen just how much this crisis will damage the college as we know it, or indeed the world at large. I think it’s important to recognize that damage for what it is. I have confidence that the community’s wounds will heal, I’m just wrapping my head around the idea that I won’t get to be a part of that.
Juniors might remember with some irony that the 2017 Common Read, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, was about the aftermath of a viral apocalypse. The characters traveled across the broken remains of North America with an orchestra and theater troupe. Why? Because, as they stenciled on the side of their caravan, “survival is insufficient.” This isolation is about survival. Already, we’ve started reaching out for moments of digital contact, for little glimmers of something more. It’s encouraging. It’s nonetheless a poor substitute for true community. That is not something that can be replaced. We’re building something new and different. It’s okay to both participate enthusiastically in that, and still be sad for the things that this emergency has taken away.
There will be plenty to look forward to in the future, and I’m unspeakably jealous of everyone who will be in Gettysburg to usher in the brave new world. But for the time being, there has to be room for grief. It was distinct privilege to live and study with all of you, and the loss of that time hurts more than I can describe. I think the magnitude of that loss says a lot about what we had on campus. If our community could be truly reproduced from a distance, it wouldn’t have been terribly remarkable in the first place. Thank you, Gettysburg, for being irreplaceable.
(…And we had better have the biggest class reunions this institution has ever seen.)
This piece is part of a series of invited essays by members of the graduating senior class in which they reflect on their time at Gettysburg College.
