Despite government bans, young people want to get rid of the anxiety of 2020 by celebrating, sometimes in large groups, the New Year.
“Tonight, we will be around thirty” confesses Diane, a student in Bordeaux. She and her friends have chosen to ignore government restrictions for the New Year that private gatherings cannot exceed six people. The group meets in a country house. The Bordelaise lives with her parents, so she wants to take precautions and will confine herself from January 1 in an apartment of her family. Usually she and her friends avoid getting together in such large numbers, but “the new year, for us, is kind of wanting to turn the page on a year that has been so complicated, we want to celebrate it together. “” I know very well that this is not the most responsible or the most reasonable of things to do, it is a little selfish of our part ”admits Diane,“ but we are so tired of the situation. Since the confinement in March, the majority of students have taken courses at a distance. “No longer going to college means being alone all day in front of your screen. It’s no longer seeing your friends on a daily basis, no longer going out, no longer playing sports in a club. You think about your life, you get demoralized and then you fall into a very negative circle. She regrets, “It was supposed to be one of the happiest times of our lives in our twenties.” »In an interview for France Info, Michel Deneken the president of the University of Strasbourg explained about the students: ” All indicators at national and international level are red for mental health. I believe that eventually it will kill more than the virus ».
- Atmosphere from another era
So, according to Diane, the new year certainly represents a departure from current measures, but above all, an evening during which she will be able to get rid of part of the anxiety of the year. Julien, twenty, understands this choice, even if he does not approve of it ” Young people are fed up. We are at an age where we are supposed to be always active, in the discovery of oneself and others “. He preferred to give up his New Year’s Eve party, so as not to endanger his parents with whom he lives. But the decision, he explains, was complicated to make. The young Bordeaux resident is in preparatory school, in addition to a course at the faculty of biology. “This year was very busy. It’s psychologically complicated, being at home all the time, sometimes I want to stop everything. So, yes, to drop everything for the New Year, that would have done me a lot of good, it was very hard for me to refuse the evening that I was offered, but there were about twenty guests ”. For Marie, a literature student, stone is too often thrown at young people. ” I think you have to release the pressure from the students’ shoulders, they have lived an isolated year, alone at an age where you are not supposed to be “. Tonight she will be with six friends in an apartment. She is counting well, for a few hours, to forget distance lessons, exams, loneliness and hope that next year will wipe out, if only a little, the anxiety of 2020.
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