It’s been over five years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and I have yet to cease wearing my face mask. I’ve worn a mask the entirety of my college career, far outlasting my peers and others. Being one of only a few people still masking has been a major part of my routine almost every time I leave my house.

I just like wearing it, even if I’m the only one in the room doing so.

Given how divisive masking was for a time and how so many people were quick to ditch them the second they could, it surprises me that I never got many comments about why I was still masking. It seems like it just became part of the culture, though the assumption now is that you only mask when sick.

But I don’t really care what people might think of me if they see me in a mask. It’s a free (somewhat) country and masking is still a viable way to protect against viruses.

I’ve greatly enjoyed how masking has prevented me from getting colds these past few years. Back in middle school and high school, it used to be typical for me to get four or five colds a year when cold and flu season rolled around. No matter how hard I tried, it was inevitable I’d get sick and I hated it. But masking proved very effective indeed.

My pride in not having any more colds was shattered in early 2023 when I caught one from a friend’s brother as we were playing Uno. I became stricter with myself when it came to masking as I recovered. At least when I masked while sick, I could prevent myself from passing it on to others.

Masking has also given me a sense of privacy. I’m usually rather shy and dislike being looked at. Ever since I was young, I preferred to not be visible to others. Face masks provided me an opportunity to have a sense of the anonymity I craved. Even after most people stopped wearing masks and I surely was sticking out because I was still masking, I still had my privacy.

Seeing me in-person, you don’t know how I fully look and I can act with greater agency in letting you get closer or not.

It’s been fun to show off my collection of face masks over the course of my college career. I got most of them between 2020 and 2022 and have just cycled through them over the years. During the height of masking, it was fun to see people come up with designs for their masks. If we were going to be required to wear them, we would do so with style. That was the popular attitude I subscribed to at the time. And honoring my collection by showing them all off was how I could express myself at college. Not only was I the perpetual mask wearer, but I was wearer of interesting masks.

Masking has also benefitted me in terms of avoiding COVID. The only times I’ve gotten COVID was when I didn’t mask properly. The summer of 2022, my family went to Disney World for vacation and were wearing masks. In Animal Kingdom, I was wearing my mask kind of loosely and started to feel stuffy. I tried not to think of the implications and adjusted my mask. The next morning, I woke up feeling certain I was sick and did test positive for COVID. It was a week before classes for my sophomore year started.

In fall 2024, in the first week of classes of my senior year, I had a slight feeling of being sick. When I went home and tested myself, the COVID test came back positive. Déjà vu. My mom said she had it, and that she’d likely caught it while we were at the airport as we returned home from our vacation. Each time a family member or I got COVID strengthened my resolve to continue wearing the mask.

I’m not as worried about COVID as I used to be. I am lucky to be healthy enough to get through with little trouble. But it still is worth it to be careful and considerate of others who have compromised immune systems. It remains important to slow the spread of this disease that is still very present and affecting people to this day, even if it is on a much smaller scale than in previous years.

It’s not particularly enjoyable to still wear a mask. But masking still remains a recommended practice to prevent the spread of COVID. Even after the end of the public health emergency that the COVID-19 pandemic caused, we still live in its shadow every day. I mask regularly when I go out by myself, but I’ve slowly stopped when I’m out with friends or family.

Maybe I’ll remove to mask for good one of these days but for now I keep at it because I like it.

Jayden Klaus recently graduated from Central Connecticut State University with a degree in journalism.