CT and LG Oral History, 2021/12/16

Part Two

This is the second part of a podcast by two college students. In this part they discuss the similarities they have found in how they experienced COVID and what they learned about past pandemics.

December 16, 2021

Northeastern University

audio

English Education--Universities

English Health & Wellness

pandemic

history

comparison

student

College

12/17/2021

12/29/2022

12/16/2021

CT

LG

CT

LG

02110

Massachusetts

Boston

United States of America

audio

english

00:04:51

Two college students recall how their final years of high school were changed by COVID-19, discussing how sports were canceled and classes went online.

CT 00:00
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to our COVID-19 interview podcast I'm [redacted] and today I'm here with [redacted], do you consent to be interviewed for the COVID-19 archive project today?

LG 00:09
Yes, I consent, do you consent?

CT 00:11
I also consent can you please state the date and time for me?

LG 00:13
Today is Monday, December 6 2021, at 8:44pm.

CT 00:18
All right, let's get started.

LG 00:19
So Kara, how was your college experience given COVID circumstances?

CT 00:23
Honestly, COVID hasn't played that big of a role. My college experience, I think, in high school was much of a bigger factor. Especially since it was so new then now we've kind of experienced it for a while. Definitely the masks have probably been the biggest thing. I did have to go home and isolate at one point because one of my friends did get COVID And I had symptoms, so they sent me home. But other than that, it's been all good.

LG 00:49
Yeah, I'd agree with that. I definitely think it was hard to adapt to the concept of online school. I know for a lot of people is difficult to participate more. I felt like we were always talking over each other, it was definitely hard for teachers. So in terms of college, I'm very appreciative that we got to spend a lot of class time in person and be able to discuss face to face I think it's a lot easier to communicate, and it's just overall a more personal experience.

CT 01:13
Next question I have for you Leah is how has learning with the past, pandemics affected your perception of our current pandemic.

LG 01:19
I think it's important to know how difficult it is to actually combat a pandemic given circumstances, such as distributing vaccines, implementing quarantine measures, and overall, keeping up with all the variants of the virus that later come into play

LG 01:35
In this battle to keep up with combating the pandemic is especially hard given that there's billions of microbes constantly trying to survive just like us as humans are trying to survive. And so we have to constantly adapt and change our methods to control the disease.

CT 01:50
Through reading all of the past pandemics that we see now that obviously we're not dealing with them as much anymore understood, like the flu and stuff like that will be eradicated smallpox, I think it made me optimistic to know that things will improve. And as much as we think things are difficult to COVID right now and all the uncertainty, the chances are very high that things are gonna we're gonna come through it, and it's gonna be okay.

LG 02:12
And for you, Cara, how do you think this pandemic compares the past pandemics?

CT 02:17
Through all pandemics we've learned about I think they're all very similar. Everyone was taking comparable measures. But obviously, people will react in chaos. At first, they don't know what to do with this completely new thing. No one knows what's happening with all the uncertainty. But I do think we did have an advantage right now because we have so much advanced technology that we didn't have in the past. And we know so much about medical things. [laughter] Yeah, all we know what's really just made it. I feel as though it could have been worse if we didn't know all the things we know we didn't have all the experience from past pandemics.

LG 02:51
I think it's important to realize that there's been pandemics, where the effects or the death rate was a lot more catastrophic. Not to say that our death rate has not been terrible. But um, we have to be as optimistic as possible. There's been many worse symptoms of the Black Death being one of the worst. And I think it's important to note that the multiple articles stated the importance of getting out correct information to the public so that people are prepared and can prepare.

CT 03:24
This last question I have for you, it really ties on to the last thing we've been talking about. I'm interested in how you think humans have learned from their prior experiences.

LG 03:33
To put it very simply, we've just learned to be more prepared. And we've learned to educate ourselves and adapt. Also think we've learned to come together as a community better. I think at the beginning of COVID there was obviously the very selfish, like raiding grocery stores for toilet paper. For some reason my grandma got aloe, I'm not sure why she accumulated so much Aloe for a pandemic.

CT 03:57
Yeah, I remember we talked about that.

LG 03:58
Yeah.

CT 03:58
In the first interview.

LG 03:59
No, I just I really wanted to hit that home. But yeah, I think we went from being

CT 04:04
[both speaking] my dad had toilet paper sanctuary.

LG 04:06
Sorry. Okay. Okay.

CT 04:07
I'm not stopping

LG 04:08
To call me Taylor's community and accepting the fact that this pandemic isn't just going to go away in like, two weeks like we thought it's not going to be a two week quarantine. And it's over with. So we really came together.

CT 04:23
Yeah, I agree. We've learned so much and I feel like we have been able to have this advantage because we are past pandemics to look at but even with that. We learned that history just continues to repeat itself. We've noticed that every single class we learned about these new pandemic same thing every single discussion seemed it was very similar. So although we do gain knowledge from past pandemics I don't know if it helps us actually, to fight against pandemics.