Items

• 2020-03-13

  An unforgettable tale

  I remember it like it was yesterday. I was a junior in high school, walking home with my friends. But prior to this, my government professor was very adamant about this new virus spreading around known as COVID-19. I had no idea what it was or why he was so obsessed with this virus. I didint think much of it until I saw the news that there was going to be no school. Later did I know, my life was going to take a drastic turn. Remote learning was a new concept for me. I didint complain since all I had to do was wake up and walk to my desk and turn my computer on for my first period class. It was the best thing ever. I passed my classes with ease and had no trouble learning or understanding material. This “paradise” was going to end when I would reach college. Learning through remote learning was so difficult. I was initially a biology major, which requires a lot of attention and understanding of the material in order to pass but I couldn’t. Being stuck at home was finally taking a toll on me. I wanted to get out of my house and be free. Walk around without a mask and be social with people. That’s when I realized that I was lacking social skills. It was sophomore year when schools were opening up. I was excited. Arriving at my first class and I was stunned. Seeing so many faces. I was scared. I didint know what to do. I wanted to leave as soon as possible. This “fear” would stretch until senior year of college when I started becoming more comfortable with my peers around me. Using the resources available for me. I can safely say I’m finally growing out of this craze known as COVID-19
• 2020-03-24

  From The Traditional to the Unknown: Moving from In-Person to Online Learning

  Much like other college students in the spring of 2020, I did not know how to react to the news that a virus called COVID-19 had begun infecting major cities, towns, and people. As an avid gamer, it appeared to me as though we started heading down the path of a zombie apocalypse or something similar to that, such as the ones you see in Call of Duty. I can still remember where I was as a sophomore in college when my school decided that it needed to shut down, sending students back to their homes and moving classes to the online world. At the start of what became pandemonium, I was with my friends in one of their dorm rooms, and we watched as the former president of the school, with a panel of other officials, answered questions about the pandemic and how the institution would respond. From my perspective, it seemed that no one knew what to do, and it was disconcerting to see that the leaders of the school were themselves in a state of flux. But who could blame them? In many ways, that spring of 2020 was unchartered waters, where everyone, including our leaders, did not know what to do or how to set forth a concrete plan. The lack of certainty, as I recall, led many students to become unsure of how the school would handle classes, graduation, plans for reimbursement for housing and dining costs, and, most importantly, the health and safety of the students and faculty. From that moment in spring 2020, it seemed that the college landscape would never be the same. With that said, this leads me to the point of my story. When the school decided that all classes would go online for the remainder of the spring 2020 semester and the entirety of the following school year, 2020 - 2021, it seemed entirely new and, in some ways, scary. Never before had I taken online classes, let alone know how to operate a program called Zoom. When I read the newsletter from my school saying that the 2020-2021 academic year would be online, it seemed, from my view, almost pointless to make students do schoolwork at a time when everyone was more concerned about their health and not getting other people sick. From that perspective, I felt angry, confused, and dismayed about how online classes would work. More importantly, I wanted to know how professors would respond to the situation, hopefully having them recognize that they should not assign a traditional amount of school work for a semester course given the extenuating circumstances beyond the classroom and college. I can still recall taking my first online class, and I felt utterly lost. I did not know how to operate Zoom, I did not know how to interact with my professors and classmates by staring into a camera on my computer, and I did not know, at the start, how challenging it would be to feel motivated to do the schoolwork. The latter was a difficult obstacle to overcome as being back at home and not in a classroom made it easier to forgo doing school work for a day, creating a lackadaisical mindset that negated my ability to do my assignments in a timely manner. On top of that, not being able to physically see my professors, either in class or in their office, made it even more difficult to ask questions. As someone who typically raises an abundance of questions, it seemed to me that that was no longer possible. Having to send several emails back and forth and then only have a few minutes to speak with a professor on Zoom after or before class made the process more cumbersome. The transition from the traditional classroom setting to the unknown world of online learning was a significant curve ball created by the pandemic that made the last part of my sophomore year and my entire junior year feel less important. The online medium essentially made the coursework seem less valuable to me. Even though I lived on campus in my junior year, 2021 - 2022, at the height of the pandemic, the educational side of my college experience became impacted to such a degree that I found myself not as engaged about the work or the course material. To that end, I share this story because it is one of many about how the pandemic took a substantial bite out of educational processes from 2020 into 2021. The classroom never felt the same during the pandemic and when I was on campus in 2021. Everywhere was a ghost town. In many ways, having to go from the traditional classroom into the expansive world of online learning was not something I thought I needed to think about as a college student. Of course, no one could have predicted what was going to happen, making the situation during that time all the more difficult to accept. I look back on it now and realize that I did lose a year and a half of my college experience. It is an unfortunate outcome of the pandemic, but I am thankful that no one in my family passed away from the disease, and all of my friends were safe as well. I wish I could relive my sophomore and junior years as a regular college student. However, having gone to college in the midst of the pandemic is historic, and I want to tell other generations about this experience. It will be challenging for future students to know what it was like to go to school at the same time a rampant disease spread across the globe. On the flip side, I think going to college during this time shows resiliency and courage on the part of many people. I hope this story is one that many can relate to as we move forward from these troubling years and continue to grapple with the legacy caused by the pandemic.
• 
  2020-04-17

  “Can You Teach Art Online?”

  “Can You Teach Art Online?”, published on Art in America online, examines the questions artists-instructors are asking amidst a transfer to online learning. Different instructors who teach in various mediums are interviewed and expose difficulties of teaching art virtually as well as the positives and new innovations that have come out of necessity. I found the argument by Carissa Rodriguez, a Harvard professor in the arts, very interesting. She discussed the limitations of platforms like Zoom and how it is difficult to engage others in an artistic subject behind a screen. Rodriguez teaches a screen-based artistic medium and she explains that for her subject matter “the platform seems a notch too self-reflexive, collapsing screenings, critiques, and discussions onto the equalizing plane of her students’ monitors, the same site where they browse social media and binge-watch TV shows”. The article highlights how instructors are using lockdown to explore ways to make art and complete projects without institutional resources. Therefore, questions of shifting models in academia arise.
• 
  2021-09-21

  Ludo and Ben Oral History 09/21/2021

  We completed this interview for our History of Global Pandemics class, which we take at Northeastern University.
• 
  2021-05-17

  Stockdale Paradox: Ten Lessons to deal with COVID-19 Pandemic

  The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed global havoc and has already resulted in millions of deaths. To deal with difficult scenario created by the pandemic, in this paper, inspiration is taken from “Stockdale Paradox” to derive ten lessons. These lessons are precious in the current scenario and discuss in detail the various issues and challenges with solutions. The lessons are useful for anyone in successfully dealing with brutal facts of pandemic and overcome the odds
• 
  2021-01-22

  Slipping and Slipping

  School used to be a place where I would find comfort; a place to escape. Ever since the pandemic started, school has been the root of all of my problems. My mental state has hit an all-time low and I often wonder when I will become the cheery and spirited person again. Learning materials used to come easily to me but now I find it so difficult to retain a small amount of information. Now that I am a junior, I've realized that I only got to experience a year and a half of it. I am afraid that by the time the pandemic gets better I'd leave high school with nothing. As a child, I always envisioned my life to pan out to be like those in shows. That is quite a stretch, isn't it? A selfish part of me wants to be able to go live life like past generations have but that doesn't mean I will go out and risk the safety of others as well myself. The world right now is scary... Fate has a mind of its own and as people of this Earth, we will never know what it will throw at us. With that being said I find that the load of work that teachers hand to us derives my motivation. I knew for a fact that this school year would be hard but I never realized how much of a toll it would take on me. Even though this was enough to discourage me, I tried - believe me - to find something that will spark my drive again. I tried to challenge myself and reward myself to fuel my passion for school but it's proving to be impossible as of lately. Will this ever get better? It's been like hell.
• 2021-01-15

  Describing experiences while learning virtually.

  While learning virtually, there were many good things and some difficult. I was able to wake up just before school started and open my computer. I sat in bed in my pajamas and eating pancakes. But there were always days that my computer didn't turn on or it wouldn't connect to the internet. Even teachers had technical difficulties. Over all it was an experience to remember.
• 
  2020-07-23

  Australian Health Worker quote on difficulties of Mask

  Masks] makes it very hard to hear anything which makes it really hard to be discreet about anything on because you just raise your voice so that you could be heard Quote from Female aged 30, Aged Care Nurse. Image created by the Health Worker Voices project: https://mspgh.unimelb.edu.au/healthworkervoices
• 
  2020-11-06

  Efficient Website Designs for Museums

  With the majority of interpersonal connections being translated into online sources, museums have had the hardest time adapting to an online format without losing their community/audience and assimilating into one of many different information websites. I discovered this article while doing research on the impact of COVID-19 on museums. Part of the difficulty in translating your audience to an online format is simply the appeal of the website itself. Giving museums and their communities tools to progress safely into the future is helping at the source, and things such as website creation is necessary for advancement, and for many museums, survival
• 
  2020-11-03

  Career Virtual Fair

  This email was sent to me to set up an appointment to do a career virtual fair. This email shows who's is going to be at the career fair and who you can set up an appointment to meet with them. It also shows all the set ups you need such as making sure you have proper internet connection, using the right internet function such as Chrome or FireFox and making sure you set up appointments. This goes to show what the new way of trying to get a job during a pandemic is like. To get interviews, you need zoom and you are not able to meet face to face with the employers. It affects the students by not being able to meet face to face with the interviewer.
• 2020-08-10

  A View of the World During and After Covid-19

  No one could have seen Covid-19 coming. Starting off in China, then spreading to other countries, the virus flipped the whole world upside-down. We watched it tear apart every country before us, until it reached the United States and we really began to feel the effects first-hand. Normal life came to a halt. Businesses were forced to close, travel became a risk (if permitted at all), and simple every day tasks became difficult. But the consequences went, and continue to go, much deeper than what we see on the surface. In addition to the tragedy of thousands of lives being lost, many people's livelihood was lost as well. Unable to go to work and unable to provide for themselves and their families, Covid-19 has inflicted many, many hardships upon Americans. Some have lost their jobs, some have lost their businesses, and some have lost their loved ones. In a very short period of time, life completely changed. They say you do not truly appreciate something until it is gone. We do not realize what we have when it is in front of us. This can be taken lightly, in terms of simple things like going in public without a mask. Or, it can be a serious lesson, because you can lose who or what you love in an instant as well. No one could have predicted this, but now we are living it. We should enjoy every moment we have and not take advantage of the time we are given, because you truly never know when it can all change.
• 
  2020-07-18

  Found Poem Lesson

  6 - 12 lesson using the archive to create found poetry.
• 
  2020-06-24

  The best and worst of Coronavirus (Peru)

  I really love reading Somos, and I love this short historias piece reflecting on the best and worst of coronavirus from 100 Peruvians. It's reassuring to read what is helping people stay positive, and at the same time recognize that we're all struggling with a really difficult moment. There's a parent who laments she can't visit her daughter when she got into Stanford, another parent willing to watch the Wizard of Oz as many times as his daughter asks, and others who took the extra time at home to learn new skills like baking a carrot cake or reflecting on their lives and relationships.
• 
  2020-05-12

  Perspective of a First Generation Pakistani American University Student: The benefits of a campus and the difficult transition to the "Virtual Classroom"

  #CSUS #HIST15H