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| Post-Breakfast Group Photo - Day 3 of the DECA State Conference March 7, 2020 |
While this picture may seem like just a random picture of a group of my friends, it means so much more.
Let me set the scene, we had just had breakfast at an adorable little bakery in downtown Detroit, and were on our way to the people mover. It was DECA weekend 2020, the weekend of March 7th. All of us were dressed in our business attire, ready to anxiously wait in the TCF center conference hall to see what awards we would possibly win. While extremely nervous, this breakfast was a short period of time that we could all relax amongst one of the most anxious days of our lives.
The significance of this picture to me is that this was the “last hoorah” before COVID-19 hit and everything quickly shut down. All of the DECA competitors were shocked upon hearing that we couldn’t even shake our judges hand due to this mysterious disease that we had heard so much yet so little about. This felt like what was the beginning of the end, but we didn’t know that at the time. We were having the time of our lives exploring downtown Detroit with some of our best friends, and staying the weekend in a hotel together was more than fun. The only cares we had at the time were surrounding how we did at the DECA state conference competition, still blissfully unaware of the terrible times that were to hit us in just the next few upcoming days.
This picture represents the carefree mindset we all shared, and looking back, all I can see is the long period of time before I could ever be that close to my friends again. From that date on, I still have not been in any type of public area like that without a mask (rightfully so!), and could not even imagine being in a packed hall of thousands of kids. The night before, we all attended the Bernie Sanders rally that was also taking place at the TCF center, and the amount of people so closely together without masks still baffles me to this day. Of course then no one knew what was to come, but the mindset that has replaced what was previously the norm still looks at those pictures from the DECA conference in utter shock and disbelief that this was only days before what felt like the beginning of the apocalypse.
To me this simple group picture represents the last time I experienced any sort of normalcy. Rather than have my biggest worry be whether or not I would get a medal for my presentations at the conference, now my worries surround the future of our country due to COVID-19, the election, and this time being both the end and beginning of a new chapter of my life with college applications.
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