Items

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  2020-09-08

  From always on the go to no where to go.w

  Before the pandemic had hit the United States my family and I had always been on the go between work, school and sports. A father who works crazy shifts a mother who works your typical eight am to five pm shift for her company then going to pick up her children for any after school activity that may have been going on at the time. We had family time but not enough, not like we had during the beginning of the pandemic. Once we were put into lockdown both my sister and I had been stuck at home, no more sports or clubs. While my mom also started working from home and still is today. It was kind of a blessing with the fact she wasn't driving an hour back and forth everyday. But my dad was still working. Even though my father had still been working on his days off, we had played many uno games, my sister and I had also learned how to play scatt a card game. But overall covid did bring us closer as a family, giving us time to really focus on each other. The photo I chose to send in is a photo of my sister on her first day of high school. High school to a ninth grader is already an unknown territory but going to classes through a computer at your desk at home is not ideal. Which I do have to say she handled it like a champ but it was something new, something so scary. From my experience it was unsettling to never know truly when you were going to go back to the classroom. The lack of interaction too just makes things worse. We got better as time went on but the Pandemic definitely had changed things, some things for the best and some for the worst.
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  2020-10-27

  How am I Supposed to be a Student When the World is Burning Down Around Me? A Student’s Personal Experience

  I wanted to share the kitchen table's image in my family's house because it has become my workspace and classroom. I have my laptop, water, and food in the image because the virtual college has become a non-stop task. As an undergraduate student transitioning to virtual learning, I have struggled greatly. The weekdays are filled with zoom classes, discussion boards, dozens of essays, and monotonous assignments that feel like busywork. Weekdays and weekends are the same. Universities and professors have maintained high expectations for students even though we are in a pandemic, economic depression, detrimental election year, and significant social justice movement. Most days, I struggle to want to be the best student I can be when I feel less like a person. It is difficult to get out of bed, especially as hope fades every day with an increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths, people becoming jobless, homeless, and the human rights of so many people being violated. It feels insane sometimes to log on for hours when the world seems to be burning down around me.