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Social Distancing - Self Distancing

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Title (Dublin Core)

Social Distancing - Self Distancing

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DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment prompt. See Linked Data.

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When the Covid-19 pandemic caused New York City to go into lockdown the second week of March, it never once crossed my mind how large of an impact this shutdown would have in my personal life. In the picture below I show a poem I wrote during the sixth month of quarantine:

My days felt like they were going on a loop. Everyday felt like a continuation of the day before and my mind was tired of it. In my poem I expressed that I felt like a bird that crashes on the windshield of a car, signaling the repetitiveness of my life in my small NYC apartment. I think that this time was one of the most difficult times for my mental health and I tried desperately to find a way of coping. Essentially, this poem represents the mental state I found myself in trying to find different ways to deal with the fact that life had paused abruptly and that nothing was certain anymore.
One of the ways that I found myself doing a lot during this time was sleeping. I began to get worried when one day I woke up at 4pm and felt as if I had woken up at 9am. I knew my sleep schedule was a disaster, but I think that this represents how monotone life felt.

On another hand, I think that the lockdown served as an opportunity to reorganize my priorities and discover new likes and dislikes. Since I had recently changed my major from Biology to English, this time helped me realize how much I enjoy writing and learning about other writers and their work. I never thought I would enjoy my major as much as I am enjoying it, especially since I can dedicate more time on it thanks to the spare time staying at home gives me.

I think that this poem will benefit future historians in their study of the effects the COVID-19 lockdown on people’s mental health. Specifically, historians will be able to be exposed to the anxiety the world felt knowing that there was little we could do to reverse the effects the lockdown was having in our mental stability. Basically, historians will be able to analyze how much the pandemic affected us beyond the physical aspect but the detrimental effects it held against our mental health.

All in all, COVID-19 surely fits the line by Charles Dickens, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.
Undergrad Student majoring in English.

Date (Dublin Core)

Creator (Dublin Core)

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

Partner (Dublin Core)

Type (Dublin Core)

poem
personal essay

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English
English

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

05/16/2021

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

05/17/2021
09/15/2021
03/27/2022
11/05/2023

Date Created (Dublin Core)

05/01/2020

Format (Dublin Core)

application/pdf

Rights (Dublin Core)

CC-ND-NC 4.0

Transcription (Omeka Classic)

Ginangel Moya
HIS 20
Primary Source Assignment
Professor Culkin

When the Covid-19 pandemic caused New York City to go into lockdown the second week of March, it never once crossed my mind how large of an impact this shutdown would have in my personal life. In the picture below I show a poem I wrote during the sixth month of quarantine:

Like a bird smashes into a car’s windshield
So does my brush surpass the paper that I carry on high
Shocking! Seriously a show
First, I launch
and then I jump really high
to burst into a Saturday rain
on the windshield of a car
The only thing is
I'm not flying
and I fall

My days felt like they were going on a loop. Everyday felt like a continuation of the day
before and my mind was tired of it. In my poem I expressed that I felt like a bird that crashes on the windshield of a car, signaling the repetitiveness of my life in my small NYC apartment. I think that this time was one of the most difficult times for my mental health and I tried desperately to find a way of coping. Essentially, this poem represents the mental state I found myself in trying to find different ways to deal with the fact that life had paused abruptly and that nothing was certain anymore.

One of the ways that I found myself doing a lot during this time was sleeping. I began to
get worried when one day I woke up at 4pm and felt as if I had woken up at 9am. I knew my sleep schedule was a disaster, but I think that this represents how monotone life felt.
On another hand, I think that the lockdown served as an opportunity to reorganize my
priorities and discover new likes and dislikes. Since I had recently changed my major from Biology to English, this time helped me realize how much I enjoy writing and learning about other writers and their work. I never thought I would enjoy my major as much as I am enjoying it, especially since I can dedicate more time on it thanks to the spare time staying at home gives me.

I think that this poem will benefit future historians in their study of the effects the COVID19 lockdown on people’s mental health. Specifically, historians will be able to be exposed to the anxiety the world felt knowing that there was little we could do to reverse the effects the lockdown was having in our mental stability. Basically, historians will be able to analyze how much the pandemic affected us beyond the physical aspect but the detrimental effects it held against our mental health.

All in all, COVID-19 surely fits the line by Charles Dickens, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.

Item sets

This item was submitted on May 16, 2021 by [anonymous user] using the form “Share your story- Bronx” on the site “Bronx Community College New York”: https://covid-19archive.org/s/bronx-community-college-new-york

Click here to view the collected data.

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