Items

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  2020-05

  A Pandemic Ending

  The memory I think of first when asked about my experience with the pandemic was my last day of school. In May of 2020, I was a high school senior (and convinced I had the worst luck). It started in mid-March with two weeks of online school, which was then followed by morning after morning of anxiously checking the news to see if the nightmare was finally over. Day after day I was met with more uncertainty and yearning for an email saying everything could return to the way it was. After weeks of being let down the day finally came, my last day of school. Twelve years of education coming to a close on a Google Hangouts call. As I saw my classmates pop up on tiny boxes on my screen I began to think. This was the only year I wanted to savor every day. Every class, no matter how dry, was meant to be mine. I wished away three years of school just to have the days I waited for be ripped away from me. I frantically search for somewhere to place blame, someone to direct all my anger towards. I closed my laptop, walked into the kitchen, and that was it. It was all over. No hugging friends in the hallway, thanking teachers for the impact they had, crying in the parking lot with my best friend, or struggling to open my locker one last time. At that point, the only positive I could find was the next day was a weekday and I could sleep until noon. I was told to look on the bright side, that I would be off to college in a few months and it would be a time for new experiences. Although this would be something a normal high school senior would be excited about, nothing about my class was normal. In a matter of a few weeks, we learned that none of the “fundamental” milestones of growing up were guaranteed. It was up in the air whether I would be moving halfway across the country or be confined to my childhood bedroom in August. At the time it felt like things were not over yet. That is the fall I would head back to high school and finally close that chapter of my life. But that never came. Two years later so many of us are in search of closure, feeling as though we’re imposters who are not qualified to be where we are.
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  2020-05-20

  Jeff Plapp Oral History, 2020/03/20

  C19OH
• 
  2020-04

  “So I'm a Christian and I feel like it's affected my beliefs in positive and negative ways."

  “So I'm a Christian and I feel like it's affected my beliefs in positive and negative ways. In the negative ways our churches isn’t able to meet publicly and I really rely on a lot of people for emotional support and it’s kinda like a nice at the end of the week you get to go to church and see all these people and it's really refreshing.”
• 
  2020-03-30

  Michael Wager

  As the Covid-19 virus comes closer to reaching its expected peak, more and more of New York State is shutting down. For almost everyone, the economy is the most impactful result of this virus, with many workers now out of work. My entry is going to reflect on how the Covid-19 virus is impacting students in higher education. I am currently a sophomore at Siena College in Albany, New York studying history education, but might be switching to business. During our spring break, we received an email from the interim president that our break would be extended for an additional week as the school continued to monitor the virus. A few days later, we received another email from our interim president stating that our classes would be moved online until after Easter break. SUNY schools had moved online for the remainder of the semester weeks prior and most of the private schools had also made the decision to move online were slowing following. Siena College, on the other hand, decided to wait it out as long as possible, but on Friday, March, 27th, we received the email stating Siena College would now be closed for the remainder of the semester. Typical days for students and professors now seems to be uploading assignments on Canvas, a program that we had used previously, and conducting classes online via Zoom and Google Hangout. While this type of learning is not ideal, it will have to do as we continue to hope that this pandemic comes to an end.