I'm a senior at Harvard University who thought I had 2 months until graduation. When we heard we had five days left, my friends and I staged our own ceremony.

t
• Clifford Scott Courvoisier is a senior at Harvard University from Cloudcroft, New Mexico, a small mountain town with a population of less than one thousand.
t
• After Harvard shut down over coronavirus fears, students were given five days to evacuate, cutting Courvoisier and his classmates' senior spring off.
t
• Courvoisier and his friends made the most of their final five days as seniors on campus, hitting their favorite hangout spots and hitting bucket-list items.
t
• They also had a makeshift graduation ceremony on Harvard Yard.
t
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

This is the way a world ends: not with a bang, but a zipper.

When I went to sleep in my dorm room on March 9, 2020, I was a senior at Harvard University. I had two months left of my undergraduate career - two months to continue to "grow in wisdom" as the words above Harvard's Dexter Gate urged me to do; two months to spend with my lifelong friends before senior week and the devastating goodbyes.

But I awoke on the morning of Tuesday, March 10, to the sound of a zipper from my common room. Normally, this would not be cause for alarm - except I know my roommate very well. He carries a zipper-less briefcase and wears zipper-less coats. If I was hearing a zipper, it had to be coming from a suitcase - and, if it was coming from a suitcase, then something was very wrong.

That morning I learned that I, along with 1,600 of my fellow seniors, would not be finishing our final year on Harvard's campus. In the wake of the rapid spread of COVID-19, a strain of coronavirus, all university classes were to be moved online, and everyone was required to vacate their dorms by Sunday, March 15.