Items

• 2021-04-05

  The Most Important Birthday- COVID Edition

  21st Birthday's in my family have always been a staple. We go out, eat dinner, celebrate with drinks, the whole nine yards. Well, that changed with the pandemic. I figured that for my 20th it was fine because I was only turning 20. When I got to my 21st, I was hoping things would change, But restaurants still were closed, bars had strict mandates. What was I to do? Well because of this. I had to spend both my 20th and 21st birthdays in my home, doing nothing but playing video games. This was a birthday I looked forward to my entire life, a birthday that most look forward to, spent playing video games. Completely ruined by a national pandemic. I was devasted, my entire mindset to the day was completely ruined and it was all due to the Pandemic. Mind you, I did have my family with me so that did not change, but the entire tradition that every one of my siblings received was taken away from me. To this day, I am still completely upset about how the Pandemic took my day away from me, but what could I do about it? Everyone was facing the same issues and I know that many birthdays were probably ruined as mine was. This Pandemic has controlled almost every aspect of our lives for the last two years, and it makes you wonder. Will it ever end? Will life ever return to the way it was before the Pandemic? I am not sure when it will go back to normal, but sure am hopeful it does at some point because I do not want anyone to have their birthday celebration stripped away as mine was.
• 
  2021-02-12T15:27:16

  The Year to End High School

  Coronavirus hit the United States during my senior year, and it made things very difficult. No one was really worried about coronavirus at the beginning of 2020, but when March hit people started to realize that coronavirus was more serious. March 12, 2020 was my last day of in-person high school and I had no idea. I did not get to go to the actual last day of in-person high school because I had a respiratory infection at the time. Halfway through the day on March 13, 2020, is when they decided to close all schools in the U.S. for two weeks. All of the kids in my grade thought it was only going to last two weeks and then we would be back in school to finish the year, but that didn’t happen. After the two weeks off, they gave an extra couple of days off to figure out how to change completely to online learning. We ended up finishing the year online and although my classes got easier, my life got so much harder. I am an essential worker that works for a long-term care facility and when I was not doing school or schoolwork, I would be at my job doing as much as I possibly could to keep my residents fed and safe. I had a lot on my plate at the beginning of the pandemic with balancing school and work and trying to figure out how to still have a social life while staying in my house. I also had to be very careful with whatever I did because I needed to protect my parents who are sixty years old and seventy years old and also protect my residents who are mostly sixty or older. Since I was so busy working and doing school nothing hit me until May when the school decided to cancel prom and graduation. This hit me hard because I worked so hard for twelve years to now get nothing. I worked so hard to have all A’s in middle school and high school and be on the honor roll all of those years to not even get to celebrate my achievement. I had one night when I was thinking about all of it and I ended up having an anxiety attack and crying to my sister all night because I was so upset with how I was ending my senior year. I eventually got over it and starting college was such a weird experience it’s been so hard to make friends with people and we haven’t been able to have normal college experiences. Now that it is almost a year after the schools closed there are now two vaccines out and I have been able to receive both rounds of it because of my work, but there are still so many that need to receive the vaccine and we still have a long time before we return to normal.
• 
  2020-03-20

  Journal of the Plague Year

  The Corona Virus aka COVID-19 has drastically affected my life as well as the entire world. COVID-19 first affected my life during my second semester sophomore year of college. The beginning of sophomore year was when we first started hearing about COVID-19. At that time, it wasn’t really a big deal. It was more like a myth in a sense; it was happening everywhere else but here. And then, March came. More and more reports of COVID-19 in the United States were being presented. It was starting to become a serious threat. The day after Saint Patrick’s Day, I was with some friends and we were all hanging out and getting lunch. During our lunch, we received an email saying that we had to move off campus within the next week due to the threat and seriousness of COVID-19. We were all so shocked and upset that our sophomore year was cut short. In the blink of an eye, we had to pack up our entire college lives and leave to go home. All of the memories we were supposed to make were gone. For me, all of my friends were at school so going home was very hard for me. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family but, I also want to be able to see my friends. Once I got home, I had to do the rest of school online and had to be quarantined in my house. Online school was such a new and difficult experience. I had never done online school and neither had the professors, so it was a very difficult transition. Something else that was difficult was being trapped in a house from March until May. I am not the type of person to just stay cooped up in a house. I like to be out doing things and socializing with others but, I couldn’t do that. I was confined to my house with only my family. It was hard finding things to keep us all entertained every day while also trying not to kill each other. We tried puzzles, games, family walks and hikes, movie night, and everything in between. These things worked but only for a short period of time. Being quarantined really does affect your mental health. I also had to celebrate my twentieth birthday in quarantine which was not fun at all, but at least I was with my family which made it better. Then came July. July first was when I was moving into my first house in Pittsburgh for college. I thought that it was going to be such a fun and exciting time. But it was difficult with the whole pandemic going on. It was hard to see my friends, go out to eat, and go to the bars. I was still able to have fun, but it was still difficult to adjust to a new lifestyle. Online school full time was also hard, but I got through it and figured out how to do school efficiently. Come end of October, I got COVID-19. I didn’t realize of shitty COVID-19 was and that I could even get it because I was so young. I had all of the symptoms except loss of taste and smell. I was bed ridden for two weeks; it was awful. After that things were as good as they can be during this time. A week before New Year’s Eve, my entire family tested positive for COVID-19 except me since I had already gotten it. They got really sick and I had to take care of them and grocery shop and run errands for them. That was hard for me to watch them all be so sick. But they got better and became healthy. Yes, I haven’t had this extreme story due to COVID-19 but it did affect my life in ways that I didn’t think it could. I had to change my entire way of living because of this virus.
• 
  2020-03-21

  (HIST30060) Empty Footy Games and Empty Supermarket Shelves

  (HIST30060) As an avid footy fan, it was upsetting and very strange to see the 2020 AFL season starting without being able to attend the game at the MCG, or there be anyone in the seats when watching it on tv. This post reflects this strange moment in AFL history, but also the coinciding rush on supermarkets, particularly toilet paper, leaving lots of shortages and empty supermarket shelves. I still don't understand why seemingly everyone in Victoria and Australia decided they needed to stock up on toilet paper, but it was definitely an aspect of a very strange and stressful period at the start of the pandemic.
• 
  2020-05-10

  Damage Report

  This meme pretty much describes every morning for the past three months. Every single day the news reports some wild new thing. First Kobe dies in a fiery crash, then a plague shuts the world down, toilet paper shortage throughout America, people loose their jobs, I (a teacher) am sent home until further notice, some cop decides to murder a man in daylight while being filmed, causing mass protests, rioting and looting in my city, I was just notified that the budget cuts for education in California may cost me my job. Oh, and somewhere in there was the announcement that murder hornets were in the states now and some huge asteroid is going to barely miss us. I have started sleeping in as long as I can. Mostly so I don't have to face the next thing coming my way. I was crying to my mom recently and she told me to get it together, "Honey, none of this is about you. You know that right? This is happening to us all." I keep asking myself if this is even real?
• 
  2020-05-30

  Beach Time

  This is supposed to represent how some of my relatives from México were supposed to visit us this year (summer vacation). They finally have the ability to visit us and since they live in the city, center of México, we wanted them to visit the beach for the very first time.
• 
  2020-04-07

  Ultimate social distancing

  My 13 year old was having a rough day. He was upset about not being able to see friends, play basketball at the park or ride his bike to Wendy’s. My daughter and I took him on a hike and she captured this moment.