Better Days

I’m sure I’m not alone in having an existential crisis during the dog days of Corona. As a young professional in my early-20s, I’ve been full steam ahead in trying to be the best professional I can be. Yet, at the same time, I’m struggling to break away from the nostalgia of being at University of Delaware and not having as many responsibilities. It’s as if each time I scroll past memories on Snapchat or Instagram, I’m rushed back to a false reality. Even GroupMe notifications from squads of past make me long for the simpler times when my biggest worry was writing a paper or what time we were going out that night.

I was fortunate enough to have graduated a year before the coronavirus rocked our world. I was able to experience those senior bar crawls, fraternity formals, and most importantly, getting to walk at graduation and have convocation. I feel for everyone, including my many friends who have been forced to graduate during these anxious times. I couldn’t imagine someone getting their last semester ripped away from them.

As I started my job in the summer of 2019 as an Accounts person in a Madison Avenue agency in New York City, I can’t help but dread having these responsibilities paired with the feeling of nostalgia in the back of my mind. It’s like the more I grow as a professional, the further I grow apart from being a college student (obvious thought alert). Perhaps it comes with time that I get used to this melancholy feeling and longing for better days. Perhaps the better days will come once I’ve learned to move on altogether. Either way, all I can do is put one foot in front of the other and figure it out along the way.

Lorenzo Riego

Lorenzo Riego is an account executive at a healthcare-centric advertising agency in midtown Manhattan. He graduated from the University of Delaware in 2019 with a degree in Media Communications.