"I live in a pod."

"What's a pod?"

One of many sentences that would have made no sense prior to 2020. The concept of a secluded bubble of people with which you don't need to wear a mask is so foreign, in every way. These are the only people's faces you get to actually see in full in person. It almost seems like something out of a sci-fi movie on another planet. Of course the first travelers to Mars would live in a bubble. They're millions of miles away from anyone else. But no, my pod is right next door to another pod and there's actually a pod below and above us and six in our dorm. So our pod is not distant or unique but it is still secluded in a way. For awhile the only new faces I fully saw were my podmates. Lunch had a whole new marvel to it. It was an opportunity to see so many new faces because for a brief 30 minute period I could finally see your most identifying feature even if we'd been friends in class for days already. While covid may have placed walls between us, the pod tries to break them back down. It's the randomly selected four people who may be separated from you by the walls of your dorm but you're free to break these down. In fact you're encouraged to break this natural separation now because they're the only four people you can see. But a pod is a Williams idea. People ask what a pod is when I tell them I live in one because they don't exist outside of Williamstown. Well not by name. At home, my pod becomes my family. I never call them my pod, they're just the people I live. At the end of the day, a pod is a 2020 concept that separates society into little manageable cells. Like compartments in a ship, if one pod is compromised, ideally the spread can be contained to that pod. So that's what the pod is; An intangible concept engineered by the scientists to stop the spread of disease, the effects of which ripple through every corner of my life now.

So I start, "It's the four people I don't need to wear a mask with."

-- Jacob Cohen '24