“You will die,” Professor Sarah J. Hart said.

Thus ended a class Zoom of Death, Dying & The Afterlife, a new course offered by the department of religious studies. The weekly assignments are based on questions such as “Would you whisper guidance to a corpse for 49 days?” and “Can we reconcile living in the present with the knowledge that we’ll die?” On Fridays we have optional grave cleaning sessions at the local cemetery, all designed to help students confront and cope with the knowledge that they, too, will die.

As in Petrarch’s time of the plague, the highly charged air encourages death talk beyond the scope of the readings, as any good discussion-based class should. Deaths in the family are mentioned, as well as the experiences of older people who remember 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Cannibalism has been brought up twice to the disgust of the professor. Only one of them was me.

Prep-wise, students can expect around an hour of reading per class. The class is broken into four sections- The classics, such as Hamlet, The Odyssey, and Keats. It is succeeded by death’s denial, the first stage of grief as penned by Dylan Thomas and Keats. We enter a more modern, gritty take in acceptance and Its injuries with death doctor Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and portrayals of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. The final four weeks are perhaps the trippiest as we discuss intimations of immortality. Not necessarily true immortality, but what we leave behind and why our society needs death in spite of our fear of it.

And do we really fear death? Death is commonly portrayed as humanity’s greatest fear, and yet we see presidents such as Gerald Ford survive two assassination attempts and refuse to be shut in the White House for protection. We fear other things more than our fear of death, but we don’t examine this fear. We don’t challenge it, because death is inevitable. This class allows students a safe space to challenge that irrational fear.

“Death makes me sad and fearful,” student Jacob Hummel said. “My hope is that by furthering my understanding in any way might help to reduce these feelings or offer an understanding as to why I view death the way I do.”

Some views of death are more comedic, including takes on the death of religion if we stopped dying without explanation. Jose Saramago’s “Death With Interruptions” was met with enthusiasm from several students wishing to read more of it. In it, Death takes a holiday and human reactions vary, from general happiness, to worry over death and religious industries, and the horror of families with loved ones in comas that can neither wake up nor die.

More zealous students may be satisfied by the decent amount of poetry analysis. Vincent Milay wrote of an “unhappy planet born to die” decades before Silent Spring. How did she know? What did she see in the man who “shone an hour… And like the sun went down into the sea, Leaving no spark to be remembered by.”

Eco death returns with Katrina, as we watch a first person account of the terror and death. Our protagonist, Kimberly Rivers Roberts, filmed herself, family, friends and dogs as they waited for and witnessed the storm. It is interspaced with dry news coverage that doesn’t reflect the realities of the people trapped in it, as well as mentions of Bush’s war and his reluctance to pull troops into hurricane aid.

What will students gain from taking such a class?

“I have no agenda,” Hart said. “My hope is that students will be a little more comfortable approaching death as part of life, as approaching dying as an inevitability for all of us.”

With death, there is also the legacy of the dying to consider. Why did those before us die, and what are we going to be known as when we die?

In the words of student Joan Esquibel, “Death is fascinating not because of the act itself, but the productions that are formulated in its wake. Its anonymity allows for beautiful pieces that we project our own feelings towards. These works are something worth understanding for myself and as an honor of their creators who are long gone, taken by their muse.”

It’s the middle of the day and you’re exhausted. You stayed up entirely too late last night and you’re not going to make it through the rest of the day, so you decided to take a nap. You lay in bed for half an hour with thoughts swirling madly about your mind before you fall asleep. You wake up and it’s dark outside – five hours have passed since you first laid down. You’re too tired to get out of bed, but the swirling thoughts have returned. You lay there for another half-hour, trying to slip back into blissful slumber, but the sweet sensation evades you. Reluctantly, you crawl out of bed and start the second half of your day.

Fast-forward. It’s three in the morning. You’re not tired, but you’ve got places to be at nine, so, reluctantly, you climb back in bed – only to stare at the ceiling for an hour while the swirling thoughts throw a rager in your brain. Your alarm goes off at eight O’clock and you hate yourself. You hit the snooze button.

Fast-forward. It’s the middle of the day again. Your mind is an empty fog and your eyelids carry the weight of the world. Every instinct in your being urges you to fight the temptation, but you’re weak, so you climb back in bed. And the vicious cycle continues tomorrow – long gone are the fond memories of preschool nap times.

The indoor lifestyle forced upon us by the COVID-19 pandemic has presented every opportunity for the weak willed to fall victim to the seducing beckoning of their mattress. Combining a lack of exercise with inconsistent eating habits brought upon by a non-existent sleep schedule, many wake in the morning feeling exhausted. Days quickly blur together as they grow more distant without anything exciting to distinguish one from another, and the monotony of daily life creates a chronic mental fatigue that leads right back to bed.

While you sleep, everything else melts away – COVID-19 is nothing but a distant memory. You’re greeted by smiling faces as you walk down the street. Children share their toys in the yard. The smell of barbeque fills the air. But eventually, you have to wake up.

Over a year has passed now with you sleepwalking through life, waiting for things to return to “normal.” You’re not stupid, you can see where this is going – even with a vaccine, the end of the pandemic remains out of sight, and a return to the society you knew before will be separated by years of economic recovery. But, you’re tired. So, you take that nap anyway. Self-care, right?

Waking up early in the morning is already not high on my list of favorite things to do on a Sunday. Waking up to find that my car was not where I left it in front of my house, however, has to be one of the worst ways to spend a Sunday morning.

The moment I was told that the car quite simply wasn’t there, I could feel my stomach tie itself in a thousand painful knots. There had been plenty of times over the years when I worried randomly that the plucky little Del Sol wouldn’t be where I parked it, but they were always followed by the expected relief of seeing it waiting for me when I rounded the corner. This time though, I was standing on the curb in front of my house giving a police officer the description of my beloved first car in the hopes that somebody, somewhere would find it and wishing that it would be in one piece.

My car was stolen from right in front of my house where I parked it the night before after work just like I do every evening.

We spent the next four hours zigzagging through Eureka, hoping to catch a glimpse of the silver two-seater along some side street or alley. Despite our efforts nothing turned up that day and I returned home, utterly exhausted from the morning even before leaving for work that night.

The next morning I woke up to a call from the Arcata Police Department. They had found it. Immediately, I was buzzing, already ecstatic to go out and retrieve my little tin can as I affectionately refer to it. When we got to the car I was thrilled but also dismayed.

The interior smelled heavily of alcohol and cigarettes. Inside were piles of just pure junk –– balls of discarded wires, old Playstation discs, driftwood from the beach, among other random garbage that somehow ended up there in the 24 hours or so the car was missing. Piled on top of all of that was a stack of newspapers. Copies of the Lumberjack from back when I delivered the papers. And perched on top of that pile was a box of business cards with my name and email on them. It felt like a fitting metaphor.

The worst part to deal with was the exterior. The car had not been crashed. It even seemed to start up okay. But marring the silver paint was a sloppy stain of black spray paint plastered across the driver’s side. When I saw that, my stomach sank all over again. It just felt wrong in a way that I couldn’t explain. There was no reason for the paint. It was senseless and utterly frustrating to see.

The trash was cleaned from the seats and trunk, a stolen shift knob replaced and the spray paint removed by lacquer thinner that probably took a year off of my life from the fumes alone. What struck me most while I cleaned the car was just how helpless it felt. The car was still my own, but it felt as though I had been violated when it was taken.

The car was stolen on Feb. 21 and it’s only been in the last couple of weeks that I have actually come to terms with the reality that it was swiped from in front of my home. Most of the repairs have been made.The rest will be done for my sister who will be using the car as her own first while she’s in high school after she gets her permit this summer. Oddly, this is what finally put me at peace with the situation.

While my journey with my little Honda Del Sol is complete for the time being, I can finally look back on the fond memories that I have with the car without worrying about returning it to exactly how it was before that Sunday morning

I remember the road trips down south to cover the national cross country meet. I remember the Sharks game just a few days after Christmas. And some of my favorite memories are the simple drives just to clear my mind after a long week just going nowhere in particular.

I have never experienced a so-called “normal” life. I’ve never experienced a brain that wasn’t plagued by anxiety and lacking the proper chemicals to make me entirely happy. I did experience mocking of my mental illnesses. I did experience doctors who didn’t believe me.

I remember one doctor telling me “you don’t look like you’d be mentally ill” when I first reached out for help. How does one even “look” mentally ill?

I never experienced truly fitting in with other people. I couldn’t maintain friendships with many. I only really had one person who consistently understood my brain. But I did feel connected to nature and to animals.

I grew up with dogs and cats, and always the occasional fish, hamster, or currently, a tree frog. Days of mental hardships always led me to them. I would hold my pets close to me when I felt alone.

I felt afraid of the world often. It scared me. But not as much as my own brain. I became suicidal. I developed body dysmorphia. I struggled from multiple mental disorders. I tried medications and therapy, but sometimes those things didn’t work.

My two consistent forms of support were my best friend and my pets. When my head was shaking and the world screamed at me, my dog Peanut would sit with me and lick my tears away— a comfort I couldn’t attain from people, a connection that was completely made of love and support, held together with no judgement or hate.

I moved over 1,000 miles away from everyone I knew to start fresh, away from every person who had ever hurt me and every fear I had in my old town. But this also meant the support of my pets was left behind as well. I felt more alone than I ever had.

I knew I needed an animal in my life, other than my tree frog, who doesn’t provide the same connection that a dog or cat would. I spoke with people I knew who have mental illnesses and it came to my attention that I could get an emotional support animal. It would give me a reason to wake up, a reason to go outside and a reason to stay alive.

I felt hopeful, yet hopeless. Was I even ill enough to deserve this form of help?

I began the process of adopting an ESA, afraid that if it fell through my loneliness would only grow worse and that my nightmare of mental health would continue— not that a single animal would solve all my problems, but it would absolutely help.

I began meeting cats and kittens, hoping I’d find one that I felt a connection with. It took a few weeks before I met her. She was alone in the shelter in a little room and immediately greeted me as I walked in. Her sweet brilliant blue eyes gazed up at me with hope that she’d finally be going home after being a stray and now a shelter cat.

Her name was Georgia, likely named after Curious George, because she is immensely curious about everything. She had a unique look, calico and siamese with polka dots on her back and every color of cat on her face, with a little racoon tail and the softest white toes.

They told me Georgia was quite young, just out of kittenhood and had already given birth. But now sweet Mama Georgia needed a home. I had seen her online before I met her and immediately felt hope. This was the connection I was looking for, and I knew she was going to impact my life.

Two days later I took her home, and those two days of waiting were the longest of my life.

While I loved her name, I didn’t feel it belonged to her. Now her last name, as it was part of her past. Winifred Fig Georgia, that would be her name. One that felt full of love and light and gave her a new beginning.

Because Winnie was so young, she learned quite quickly to fit my emotional needs. She discovered how to help during my breakdowns, how to be there for me in my anxiety, and how to cuddle with me when I need love. She never leaves my side, even joining me on walks and hikes in the forest and on the beach.

I now have a reason to get up in the morning, instead of sitting in my sorrow, because my Winnie needs food and attention. I have a reason to leave my room because she needs exercise and to go on walks every day. She reminds me of the importance of eating, because if she, a little kitty can eat, I can too.

Winnie comforts me in ways a human being can’t. I’m able to cuddle with her when I feel most alone. She helps me function. When days feel like anxiety filled years, I have a companion to remind me of the beautiful little things in life, and appreciate them. She motivates me to get up and actually live my life.

I have never felt so supported as I am now, with Winnie. I truly believe Winnie saved my life by giving me a reason to be here everyday. If you are struggling, I highly recommend getting an ESA. Give yourself a reason to be here, one that can’t just go away. Finding my best friend and biggest supporter in the form of a cat has been more than the world could give me.

Every day I wake up and remember the face of joy that Winnie is. She has given me a purpose in life, as now my life isn’t the only one I’m caring for. She is my tree, the thing that keeps me rooted to life.

The best memories in life involve the people we love most. With the passage of time, simple occasions become extraordinary through the tint of our rose colored goggles. All too often, we fail to appreciate the blessings in our lives until we no longer have them.

Celebrating Easter with my family on my grandmother’s lawn, on the cliff overlooking the ocean, I think to myself: “what could possibly be better than this?” But we all have our own idea of happiness.

When I was a freshman in college, I woke up one day to tragic news. The family loaded up in the car and we drove two and a half hours from our house in Ettersburg to pick up my grandmother in Ukiah. Then, we drove back, past our home, to Whale Gulch, where she lived.

When she was in her twenties, my grandmother moved from the city to Humboldt County, bought a house, and gradually added to it in the years to come. For more than half of her life, she lived off the land, harnessing energy from the sun, growing vegetables in the garden and pumping water from a well. Then, in an instant, it evaporated in a cloud of smoke.

I didn’t really believe it until I saw it for myself. All that was left of a lifetime of meticulously collected and maintained possession was a smouldering heap of ash, shattered glass and unidentifiable tokens of the past. For hours, we watched helplessly, as the smoke continued to rise from the ground. Then, the sun disappeared behind the trees and we drove back to Ettersburg in silence.

For nearly two years, my grandmother struggled to motivate herself to research the values and put together a list of everything she lost in the fire, for the insurance company. For nearly two years, she focused all of her energy on a project that constantly reminded her of the loss she suffered – she no longer had a home. For nearly two years, she wasn’t the same joyful grandmother I grew up with.

Time passed and my grandmother eventually found a new home in Shelter Cove, on the cliff overlooking the ocean. Out of the woods, she no longer has to be concerned with collecting her own water and power. Her new house is not as large, but more than makes up for that fact in elegance. Despite the breathtaking view, however, the land is drastically smaller and less private. The property is amazing, but it’s not home.

Since beginning college, I’ve lived in five different locations. The place I currently call home is a roomy apartment, centrally located between nature and society, and only a brisk walk away from campus (if it were open). I love where I live, but it’s not home. My home is up the street from my grandmother’s house in Shelter Cove, where I spent the formative years of my youth riding bikes and playing Pokémon.

Standing now on the ground where my grandmother’s home used to be, weeds have begun to take over, but evidence of the destruction that took place here clearly remains. All I can see, however, is the house where I spent countless hours shooting baskets on my Nerf hoop and riding my big wheel down the driveway. I see the table where we played board games, cards or dominoes each time I would visit. I see the couch where we rewatched the same dozen Disney movies a million times and where my grandmother read me bedtime stories from the Clifford the Big Red Dog collection. I see the outdoor bathtub where I would play with my collection of rubber pirate toys. I see the room my grandmother set aside for me when my mom threw me out of the house.

Nearly three years have passed, since I or anyone else stepped foot inside my grandmother’s home. Just because it’s gone, however, doesn’t mean that it no longer exists. Home is much more than just a destination on a map. Home is an inescapable connection you share with an environment and its inhabitants – for better or worse. Though there may come a time when you cannot physically return, home will always live on within you and those you’ve shared it with.

There are plenty of things to love and plenty of things to hate about college, and roommates are a textbook example of each.

Having lived with my mother then in a studio apartment while I was attending community college, it wasn’t until my first semester at HSU that I got to experience the wonderful highs and woeful lows of living with roommates.

My first experience with roommates lasted a grand total of five months. Spoiling a decade-long friendship, my roommate and his girlfriend removed their names from our lease behind my back. I was left with less than a month of break to find new roommates and, because I no longer qualified for my lease, a new apartment. Needless to say, the experience left a sour taste in my mouth.

By the grace of Ghandi I secured a new roommate and a much nicer apartment, much closer to campus. My new and current roommate is someone I’ve known for the majority of my life, however, the four years standing between us prevented us from ever becoming close friends before moving in together. In contrast to living with my original roommates, whom I’d previously developed much more intimate relationships with, this arrangement has been a significant growing process.

The difference between living with a close friend and a friendly acquaintance is night and day. When it comes to romantic relationships, commitments of this magnitude are almost never taken lightly, and for good reason: moving in with someone unfailingly leads to confrontation. It’s the little things that get in the way of getting along, like a sink that’s constantly full of dishes or the inevitable awkwardness of an imbalance of wealth – things you’d be more willing to forgive coming from a close friend. In time, however, as we grow to become a more constant presence in one another’s life, the dynamic of our relationship will likely either evolve into a strong bond or you will prove incompatible.

When COVID-19 made its presence felt in the United States last March, the way we interact as individuals in a society completely changed. As a result, countless relationships have been put to the test in entirely new and intensified ways. This, however, has not been the case for my roommate and I.

Following the abridged in-person instruction of the spring semester, my roommate opted out of returning to online classes in the fall. While I logged into my classroom each day from within the all-too-familiar walls of our apartment, my roommate split his time and his nights between working in Southern Humboldt and coaching baseball at College of the Redwoods. With my roommate gone more often than not and my family living hours away, I became the boy in the bubble.

In the months leading up to the pandemic, my roommate and I developed a genuine friendship, reaching beyond the surface level interactions of our past. It has only been in his significant absence, however, that I’ve come to truly appreciate his presence. Naturally, when your time with a person is limited, you become inclined to celebrate the occasions that you’re together. Rather than spending time dragging each other down, participating in more casual activities like watching movies and playing video games as we’d frequently done in the past, we’ve come to use much more of the time we have to lift each other up in our prospective pursuits.

Ten years from now, when I look back on the times I spent with my college roommates, it won’t be the cold showers I took because all the hot water was used up or the extra trips I took to the grocery store because my milk disappeared again that I’ll remember. Instead, I’ll fondly reminisce upon the final days before I felt the full weight of adulthood – when we created our own adventures and answered to no one.

Growing up in a resort town with high rates of attraction, I have witnessed over the last ten or so years how social media has affected our town. This summer especially, the volume of tourism was out of control. Given the pandemic, parks, campgrounds and recreational facilities were closed. Many saw this as an opportunity to camp wherever they desired. Often in areas specifically closed off for parking and overnight camping. None of this stopped the weekend-warrior, city crowds, however, from adventuring up north and all over. Nor did they respect the land either by packing out what they packed in. Leaving our town littered with other people’s trash and even feces — as public restrooms were closed.

This is not just an issue within my hometown — this is happening around the globe. Destination locations are being exploited daily, so much so that many businesses have spoken out despite recognizing the revenue they bring.

The trend of geotagging among influencer’s has become increasingly problematic for small communities who are unable to accommodate resulting floods in tourism.

There are plenty of influencers, as well as celebrities, using their platforms to provide awareness, intentionality and education — to speak on behalf of racial injustice, systemic oppression, intersectional environmentalism, political propaganda amongst many other topics. At the same time, their carelessness in regard to geotagging is becoming a recurring problem. Towns bordering national parks in particular are being most affected, Mammoth Lakes and Lake Tahoe in the Eastern Sierra, Bend and surrounding towns in the Cascade Mountains, areas in close proximity to the Rockies, McCall in Idaho, surrounding areas near Jackson Hole and the list goes on.

I am not so naive to think that individuals will stop geotagging on social media. Nor do I think the majority of influencers understand the magnitude of their actions. It is irrefutable, irresponsible and disrespectful to advertise photos and Tik Tok videos to 1 million or more followers, telling them explicitly to visit such pristine locations with a local community of merely 390 people who can’t accommodate them. Local grocery stores are running out of food in an attempt to feed the influx of individuals flocking these towns. Trash and waste is not being discarded properly. Tourism tax has skyrocketed, making it difficult for local families to afford produce in their own community.

Christine Bumatay, in a Huffpost article, found influencers’ impact on small communities, like the Philippines, to be debilitating. Boracay Island, for example, has in the past shut down for restoration due to experiencing years of over-tourism.

Bumatay spoke with White Banana Beach Club, a local business on Siargao Island, to investigate the damaging effects of influencers targeting luxury resorts and local businesses as a marketing tactic to monetize their platform.

“We are receiving many messages regarding collaborations with influencers. We kindly would like to announce that White Banana is not interested to ‘collaborate’ with self-proclaimed ‘influencers.’ And we would like to suggest to try another way to eat, drink, or sleep for free. Or try to actually work.”

Public land is under threat as a result of mass amounts of tourism, a NY Times article suggests. According to the article, Jackson Hole Travel & Tourism Board have begun asking influencers to stop geotagging photographs on social media in an effort to protect the state’s beautiful vistas. Where a once nine-mile trek up to Delta Lake would attract one to two hikers a day, there are now as many as 145 people on a given day. Because of the increase in heavy foot traffic among the trail, it has begun showing signs of erosion.

“We want people to have a real connection to nature,” Mr. Modena, a tourism-board member in Wyoming, said, “not just a page with a pin on it.”

Of course we are free to do with our social media accounts as we wish and many will continue to do so — geotagging as desired.

However, it is crucial we rethink our approach to tourism as a whole and the message we are sending to the public. It is paramount effort be made for solutions and outreach regarding mindful, sustainable tourism in heavily trafficked destinations with scarce resources and small communities at stake. Education among travelers and tourists to further advocate for minimizing our tourist footprint needs to be a priority. Instead consider using generic locations for geotagging like, “Tag Responsibly,” and hashtags like, #nogeotag.

The solution starts with us.