Items

• 
  2020-03-11

  What Happen During Lockdown

  The lockdown gave me motivation like looking at the stars
• 
  2020-05-26

  Reyes_Gia_

  C19OH
• 
  2022-05-10

  BA Oral History, 2022/05/11

  A student describes their experience working during the Covid-19 outbreak.
• 
  2022-02-07T10:00:00

  Taking Covid-19 Step by Step

  My story describes the cycle of emotions I went through during the past two years of the pandemic. I try to make sense of the situation, especially with high school, and find some negative and positive outcomes from my quarantine experience.
• 
  2020-03-28

  What to do when stuck at home

  Once the world shut down and everyone had to quarantine, I found that I had a lot of new found free time to deal with. Over the first few days I thought it was awesome, because I was able to relax at home and basically do nothing. After those beginning days, things started to get boring. I didn’t know what to do with myself. It took me a few days, but I began to look for more things I could do with my life. As a music major, I practice my instrument about 3-4 hours every day. I took advantage of my free time by putting in a lot of work on the horn which greatly helped my development. I have also been very interested in learning new languages. I decided to start learning German. So far I’ve been studying German everyday on my own since then. It has been very fun to read stories and news articles in German. I have also found a great podcast and YouTube channel that does an awesome job teaching German. I had also begun to exercise more during the pandemic. My friends and I would go on runs outside together. It was a great way to meet up with friends and be healthy. The pandemic was a very difficult time when it first broke out. Most people did not know what to do with themselves. There was a lot of sitting at home, watching television, or playing video games. I didn’t want to remember the time of the pandemic as a time where I didn’t improve as a person. I had decided to make these changes or improvements to better myself for when the pandemic was over. It has been a great lesson for me as the pandemic is still going on today. I have learned how to deal with difficult situations and also how to make the most out of them
• 
  2021-05-10

  HIST30060: Helping Me Study

  This is photograph shows one of my dogs, Elfie, sitting next to where I study for university during the pandemic. She and her sister, Bowie, would fall asleep next to me and keep me company. Often, they would help keep me motivated when I was struggling by hassling me back to the table. It is easy to look back over the past two years and look at the negatives, however, it is moments like the one depicted in the picture which help remind me that there were positive moments too.
• 2020-03-15

  The Pandemic Student

  Being a student during the COVID-19 pandemic seemed easy at first since we were all going to be at home for the rest of the Spring semester of 2020. I thought of it as a time to finally relax and slow down on classes now that we were going to be home. But I didn't expect the amount of change the pandemic actually brought to my life. I didn't realize how much I relied on my everyday school schedule to organize my daily routines. When in-person classes stopped, the first week of classes at home seemed easy. I thought I could do it. But as time passed, I realized how difficult it was to keep up with class demands as well as home demands now that both were in the same environment. Some of my classes became asynchronous, while others became live. Waking up on time became difficult when I was able to stay in the comfort of my bed the whole day. And being on my laptop for all of my classes made it easy to be distracted by other things on the internet. Being at home meant I could fall asleep in class without anyone directly seeing me. With no school schedule, such as common hours, walking to and from classes, meeting up with friends during gaps, the routine in my life seemed non-existent. I was at home all day, and my sense of order seemed to fade as the semester went on. The type of student I used to be was usually a lot more punctual, submitting assignments on time, taking notes during class, finishing homework early. But the type of student the pandemic changed me into was lazy, sleepy, tired, late in submitting assignments, more careless about classwork and homework, skipping a lot of note-taking in class, and delaying work. My orderly life, my daily routine, was now out of order and out of routine. It became very hard to be a good student during the pandemic because my lack of motivation swooped low. By Fall semester of 2020, I was already falling off track within the first two to three weeks. By the end of the semester, I even failed to submit an important final on time. Although I was becoming such a terrible student, many of my professors remained understanding, kind, and caring, giving me extended time on late assignments, and providing support when I needed it. I don't think I would have passed all of my classes if it weren't for the kindness of many of my professors. My worst semester was Spring of 2021. I had to take a writing intensive course. Although I was only taking 4 classes, that one class felt so heavy that it was the main course I was focusing on. The course also had a lab section, which would've been better done in-person. Doing in-person classes online was not the best experience. While in an in-person lab students would be working together and classwork would be done together, online we were just given directions and told to submit the classwork after working on it ourselves. It became so difficult that I ended up dropping the class and taking it again in the summer. Though it was my worst semester ever, my professors were still so kind and understanding, supporting my decision and wishing me well. Although it seemed being a student during the pandemic would be easy at the beginning, I quickly realized how far that was from the truth. The pandemic teared apart my routine, which I didn't realize how heavily I relied on. The order in my life felt close to chaotic at some point and affected so many aspects of my life: as a student, a daughter, a sister, my religion, and my social life. Right now, during the Fall 2021 semester, I'm still working on building up my routine and trying to stick to it, despite being at home. I've regained some of my motivation and try to submit assignments on time, but I don't always succeed. Balance is hard when two different parts of one's life—in my case, my school and home life—become one and the same. I had a hard time allocating appropriate time for school and appropriate time for family, chores, and self-care. Perhaps by now I've gotten a bit used to the pandemic, but still prefer in-person as it would bring back that order in my life: waking up, getting ready, going to class, finishing class, doing work during schedule gaps, going to another class, etc. Now my schedule is more like: wake up, class, eat breakfast during class, be unproductive during class gaps, go to another class, etc. And through all this, I'm also on my phone or watching something else, or talking to a family member, or doing something else distracting. However, since I've been trying to build up my routine and increase my motivation, it's been easier to pay attention and work harder in class. As a senior, I obviously want to graduate on time so that is definitely a motivational factor for me to do well this semester. Because in-person class options are now available, I look forward to bringing back order to my life next Spring semester.
• 
  2021-06-13

  COVID and My Mental State

  I've never really felt like this before COVID, maybe at times but not as frequent. COVID has been a whole different experiences for me in many ways. I've never really felt so helpless even until now. Having nothing to do or being stuck at home, it took a toll on me. Many of the things I had a passion for or loved doing has made me lose motivation. I have been also slacking on my studies. COVID has also made me realized that I have no friends or personal relations outside of my family. Not going outside as also made me get terrible anxiety and talking to people has been difficult. But I have been working on it as of recently and working on myself little by little every day.
• 
  2021-03-28

  Motherhood during a pandemic

  I am researching the unintended consequences of the pandemic. One way to find some answers is to learn what real people are going through. It is easy to find people’s thoughts about the pandemic on social media, so I took to my mom groups and found people willing to let me share their thoughts anonymously. In the first screenshot, a mom talks about how she is trying to stay positive through the pandemic. From losing her job temporarily, to missing her work and family, to missing simple everyday things like shopping, this mom is feeling the brunt of lockdown in California. It is easy to pick out the negative consequences of the pandemic, but she looks for positivity anyway. The next mom is worried about how her child is going to come out on top due to homeschooling. She wants advice on how to keep her son motivated and not give up when things get hard. There is no way to tell exactly how this pandemic has affected our kids, only time will tell. But there have definitely been some unintended consequences. This example shows that while we are parents and we love our children, we have no idea what the teachers were doing to help our kids through each class before the pandemic. Perhaps one consequence of the pandemic will be a larger respect for teachers. I plan to further use social media for my research, along with academic studies, and oral interviews.
• 
  2021-02-24T13:24:52

  A 2020 Senior's Experience

  Link to my Story https://eaglefgcu-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/vdearmas2389_eagle_fgcu_edu/EfbXTEMivQhBlns1iufe0PUBKjsdXqzsQvBkamaxWh4YAg?e=IwR5k3
• 
  2020-03-24

  Covid-19 affected my life on eating habit, sleeping habits, and emotional wellness

  When the pandemic started, it affected my life. Before the pandemic, I attend class on campus from Monday through Friday. I will have to wake up super early around 7 am or 8 am to get ready for class. After class ends, I will rush to my part-time job and begin working. This is what I do every day and I feel like this is what life is supposed to be like. After the pandemic started, I needed to stay home and attend an online course. When attending online courses, it gives me the anxiety of worrying whether I will pass the course or not. It is my first time attending the course online and I’m scared that I might not catch up with my education. I lost my part-time jobs and my parents stopped working due to the pandemic. I started to worry about the family income and planning to get a job. However, it is hard to find jobs during the pandemic and it is too risky for going outside. I started home every day and felt bored to the point I felt emotional numbness. My eating habits and sleeping habits change. I sleep almost the whole day at home and it causes some aches in my head. I often feel like I am lacking energy and easily tire. I also lack the motivation to do anything and think that the world is boring. I sometimes skip breakfast and lunch when I wake up at 4 pm when I sleep too much. These eating habits and sleeping habits are bad for my body. I decided to change a little to fix my health and I will start from sleeping and eating first. I feel like I need to find a goal or something to do in life to keep my motivation.
• 
  2021-01-29

  Letter to future generations - Pandemic experience

  I submitted a letter or my experience of this pandemic. The reason why it’s important is because it tells my experience of the pandemic and describes what affect it had on me. It relates to the pandemic because it tells a story of how I feel during it.
• 
  2021-01-22

  Fish Out of Water

  Since March 2020, my life has taken a complete turn. For my past high school years, I’ve constantly been in the pool playing water polo or swimming. In an odd way, I have built a connection with the water. It’s become a part of my day, a part of my life, and I took it for granted. I thought I would get to feel the adrenaline and the nervous wreak on game days when our season came, but it never did. As someone who was always in the water and active throughout the week, it was a change of scenery when we had to stay home because of the severity of the pandemic in California. Not being able to play my sports represents my high school experience as a junior because everything feels out of place. Most of my days used to revolve around practices and games, and not being able to attend these felt strange. This might be a minor inconvenience, but this little change threw me off guard. I had to find other ways to adapt to the situation and learn how to organize my days so that they could resemble one similar to before everything happened. I’m sure there are also many others who feel very unmotivated during this time of unrest. I, too, fell into a hole where I lost motivation because there was nothing to look forward to and I feared that things would never go back to normal, but I eventually adapted to this new reality because I realized that I could not predict the future. In a way, the lockdown was an opportunity for me to improve myself and take on new hobbies I have always been interested in. I started to cook more and even tried baking!
• 2020

  Learning online

  Learning online is much harder than usual, because it is much easier to not listen. Sure we are learning the same stuff as in school, but all the fun aspects of school disappear during online. That makes me have no motivation to learn. However I also like it because it gives me a bunch of free time to do art and stuff. Overall i like normal school more.
• 
  2020-09-22

  My COVID Experience

  This journal entry was written as a part of the American Studies class at California High School in San Ramon, California. It tells a short story of how life was like for me before we had to go into quarantine due to covid-19.
• 
  2020

  COVID-19 and its Effect on Physical Activity

  Before the outbreak began I was a three season athlete, training for Cross Country and Track. I ran every day and pushed myself on every workout as a distance runner. Then COVID-19 hit and the country went on lockdown. It was the end of my senior year, and I would be missing my final spring tack season. When it first started I tried to continue to train and do track workouts, but it wasn't the same doing them alone. I didn't have my teammates and friends to motivate and push me through the difficult parts of runs. It became extremely hard to train on my own, and I started to feel myself losing fitness. When the spring season was officially canceled I lost all of my motivation to continue. I started running recreationally, and not every day anymore. Before, I was considering trying out for my college team, but with events canceled and the increased difficulty of running alone, I couldn't keep myself in top racing condition. It is now towards the end of my first semester in college, and while I am still running, I still wonder if i will ever find the motivation to train hard and compete again.
• 
  2020-09-06

  How has Covid-19 Effected Children and Adolescents Mental Health

  Personaly I can relate to this because since school closed and I wasn't able to do any of my everyday activities such as seeing my friends and playing sports. Not only is online school hard, but I also find myself less motivated to do things and I feel like I have less energy.
• 
  2020-09-06

  Just like Mom

  In 2020 I was extremely excited to see VP candidate Kamala Harris on the ballot. It was revitalizing to see that in 2020 while all the protest were occurring, racial disparities were brought to light, and the urging to pass social reform in our major cities. When Kamala went on an interview to discuss her early life this picture came across the screen. My mom had an identical pose and hair style she wore as a teenager. This was the first time it really hit home that I could possibly have someone who looks like my mom and other black mothers that looked like mine. That as an African American we had the opportunity to see someone like us hold such a high office was very impactful and motivated me.
• 
  2020-03-19

  Fighting Creative Blocks During Quarentine

  Of course the pandemic hit everyone's motivation and zest for daily life pretty hard, but as an artist whose social circles are mainly comprised of other artists, I noticed an especially hard hit to the creative output of my peers. I've heard before that suffering and despair is supposed to bring out the best artists have to offer, but in reality the inverse is often true- Van Gogh painted the Starry Night while he was getting specialized care in a mental health facility, after all. It's hard to find your spark when it feels like the world is caving in on all sides, but I was determined to find a way to keep myself from falling into a months long creative drought I knew I'd find myself in if I didn't do something about it. I didn't have the energy or desire to touch full sized pieces, but I reasoned with myself that I could stand to go smaller scale to save on both energy and time without sacrificing the feeling of accomplishment that comes with a finished piece, and so the day before every non-essential business in town shut down, I ran to my local Michael's and picked up the cheapest acrylic paints I could find and 3 packs of six 2 inch square canvases. I tried to think of a subject that could easily be captured on such a small surface, but was also sure to spark joy in myself and perhaps others if i chose to share them, and landed on the topic of pets, since they were easily one of the biggest comforts for myself and everyone else I knew during our prolonged stints sitting at home. It was a good move, I think- looking at an an image of an animal for long periods of time never hurts your mood, and sharing photos of the finished paintings with my friends who own the animals pictured brought a boost of serotonin to both parties involved. More than one person suggested I start an etsy page and sell them, but I think I'm content to just let them be a quarantine hobby and act of kindness during a deeply depressing time.
• 
  2010-07-13

  A Journal Entry of the Plague Year

  I wrote a reflection of my experience in quarantine and what I learnt during this difficult time.
• 
  2020-05-16

  Staying Hopeful

  I have learned in this quarantine that is you want to do something and not be lazy, then you must attack it head on and just go for it. The hardest part of accomplishing something is definitely starting. If you can start the thing you want, then you are more motivated to finish it because you have already spent time and effort trying to accomplish the thing you want. Even when I get out of this quarantine, I am going to try to apply this to my daily life. I really wonder when things are going to get back to normal, or if things will go back to normal. This might be the new normal which is a scary thought. I hope this is not the new normal because I had a plan for my future. Well kind of, but this is definitely not what I had planned. I am trying to remember that it is not about what I want for my future or what I think is supposed to happen in my life. It is about God’s plan and what he wants to happen in my life.
• 
  2020-04-28

  "Hope is a Thing with Feathers" Sign, New Orleans, LA

  During the stay-at-home order, many people have decorated their homes or hung signage as a way to connect with other people in the neighborhood. This house is the Marigny neighborhood features the following quote from Emly Dickinson: "Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words- and never stops- at all-"
• 
  2020-03-30

  Good is Still Hopping Around

  There is still creativity and good going around in the darkest of times. Sometimes you just have to use what’s around you and make it yourself. #cshsecon
• 
  2020-05-13

  Finding hope in a pandemic

  A personal account of the pandemic.
• 
  2020-04-30

  Ballon art

  HUM402 This image shows a ballon art message of support from artist Michael James Schneider.
• 
  2020-05-09

  College Student Has to Move Out of the Dorms

  I first heard about Coronavirus during my spring break freshman year of college. I didn't think anything of it and definitely did not predict how the rest of the semester would go. I was talking about it with one my friends from back home in Scottsdale and heard that her university had cancelled in-person classes and was transitioning to online for the rest of the semester. This was extremely shocking to me, and I couldn't even fathom staying home past spring break, let alone the rest of the school year. A couple days later, my college, the University of Arizona, did the same. We had a couple days after spring break with no classes for the university to make the transition to online classes. After that, it was time for online learning. These times were extremely unpredictable, and no one knew what was coming next. No one, especially I, never thought that we would have to move out of the dorms and finish the rest of the semester completely online. That was what came next. I was devastated. I mean, I would be missing out on my first-year college experience that I would never be able to make up. I would lose my complete freedom. I would lose the ability to make new friends. I would lose the ability to spend time with the friends I had already made. I was so upset, and at the same time I had to adapt to this new normal. It was definitely not easy. My friends and I set up a date that we would come back to campus to hang out one last time and move out. This day was so depressing, but we tried to make the most of it. Pictured is us on that day. From left to right, Val, Anna, me, and Kiera. I miss them so much right now. I'm writing this at the end of the semester, just having finished the majority of my finals. And I was right, this semester was definitely not easy. I faced an extreme lack of motivation and depression topped by loads of assignments to complete. But what I can say is that while quarantine is still not over and probably will not be over for a while, I'm proud to have finished the school year remotely. I had to adapt to such a unique situation, and I did. I'm sure this story is similar to many college students out there, but I'm glad I was able to share mine, and I hope to look back on this in the future.
• 
  2020-04-24

  COVID 19 Journal: 04/24/2020

  COVID 19 Journal by Kaitlin Whalen written 04/24/2020
• 
  2020-04-20

  The Struggles of the Dining Room Table

  A college student's experience with taking online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 
  2020-04-26

  My Isolation

  Gennady Khodov provides his reflections on quarantine
• 
  2020-04-26

  Hopeless laziness

  I want to tell you about my expiriense of covid-19 isolation. I'm a little man, 26 age, programmer, introvert, therefore, I endure isolation almost painlessly. At my student times I sat at home during weeks which served as a good preparation for the present situation. I almost don't suffer from a lack of live communication, becouse I have a lot of friends at web, and we can call to eachouthers every day and spend our time by playing computer games. But anyway I have one big problem via covid-19. It is a bigest procrastination. I want to change my job, and thereby need learn a lot of materials, but all this decadent atmosphere making me lost my time and procrastinating. This is horrible. Looks like this pandemic situation indulges to my lazy demons, becouse all people don't do nothing, therefore, I do the same. >_< . Or maybe I justify my laziness in this way. Any way, I know, that all this problems end, and life will return to it's course again. This pandemic don't scared me, but I learned that I must be ready to meet face to face situations, which I can’t influence in any way.
• 
  2020-04-13

  You Do You

  Given the way this virus has inserted itself into our lives, its effects can be felt by almost everyone. In order to stave off the inaction that can easily sneak in and attach itself to me, I have resolved to do two things. Make my bed and take a shower every day. I'm not saying that anyone else has to do them. It's okay to not master a new language or learn the harpsichord. But for me, if I do nothing one day, that soon turns into three or four days of doing nothing. When I see creativity on the web from people all around the globe, I'm inspired. So, I put artwork or drawing and painting tutorials online in the hopes that it might inspire others to be creative. You don't have to create something massive or incredible. Sometimes it's the little things that make a difference to someone else. So, that's the way to do it. Do something. Do you paint? Do you draw? Do you build furniture? Are you a whiz when it comes to growing turnips? Whatever it is, show it to others. Step outside yourself for a minute and maybe be that inspiration for someone else. Or not. There's a lot to be said for just keeping it together and getting up every day. If that's what you got - do that. Just wash your hands.
• 
  2020-04-15

  Towards Tomorrow

  Motivation Reflection text
• 
  2020-04-15

  The Best Thing to Do

  Motivational Text
• 
  2020-03-20

  Bourbon Street looking towards Bienville

  On any given morning Bourbon Street is filled with tourists and delivery trucks making drop offs. On this particular Friday, the first after lockdown, it’s quiet.