Items

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  2020-07

  Covid-19 and my Experience with High School + Religion

  I remember when I received the news that we would be taking 2 weeks off of school due to covid-19. I thought that the world would quarantine, and life would proceed to normal. I was a sophomore in high school and very religious at the time. Soon enough the 2 weeks passed by, but now we had to spend even more time at home. After a month or two, and the grocery store shelves started to empty, that's when I finally realized how much of an impact covid-19 was going to have on my life. I realized that my now temporarily online school was going to remain that way in the foreseeable future. My weekly Sunday church services were canceled as well. School quickly became an unbearable chore for me. My high school was not efficient in the slightest at conducting school online. Their idea of an ‘improved’ online course was simply to assign more work. I had had enough. I decided I was going to be in control of my education, not covid-19. During junior year, I decided to get high school over with and graduate early. It was not easy, but I buckled down and completed two years of school all during my 3rd year of high school. Because I was not attending church or in-person school anymore, I was able to dedicate more time to complete high school early. By the time my church was open again to the public, I had other priorities in my life. I no longer had the time or motivation to keep attending these meetings. Even when I officially graduated high school, I found religion to no longer be an interest of mine. I had become accustomed to life without church. Now that I am almost done with my first year of college as a 17-year-old, I find that covid-19 is not much of a stressor in my life anymore. I am also glad that quarantine allowed me the opportunity to see what my life is like without religion. If it weren't for the pandemic, I’m almost certain I would still go to my church services and dread it every single time. As hard as the pandemic was for me, and as difficult as it was to get through quarantine, I’m grateful that it changed my life in the ways it did. I grew a lot during this time period and it made me grateful for the freedoms I already have every day.
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  2022-04-15

  Pending Doom…

  The pandemic was a very lonely time for us all, some may have felt as though they were pending doom.
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  2021-05-24

  Surviving 2020

  The beginning of 2020 was as any other year with dancing and drinking to wash away the old with the expectations for another beginning. Much to our dismay that we would be carrying on a bad dream simultaneously. A year unafraid, no bias, everything began in Spring with the information on an incredible mutated infection, which caused a lot of causalities, and an uprising dread that detained us in our homes. Startlingly, exactly when I figured things couldn't deteriorate, 2020 threw an inconvenient passing which spiraled into an overall dissent. Holding back to have this nightmare that felt like a dream to be finished, I figured out how to value the smallest things around me.
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  2020-03-17

  Taking my plants home for a month

  On March 17, 2020 I drove to the university campus where I work to retrieve materials from my office and to rescue my plants. The WHO had just declared the pandemic. My university administration had sent an email in the late afternoon saying that the campus buildings would be closing for a month starting at midnight that same day. So I rushed to campus to grab some essentials. It was surreal to enter my office and pack it up when just days before things felt normal but there was a growing sense of dread. I saw this artwork in my office - I keep it to help me remember that hard times can be turned around through a shift in perspective. It cheered me up as I packed up my plants. I posted about it, saying that I was packing up my office for 'a month at home'. I've been working from home and teaching from home for over a year now. Campus remains closed to non-essential activities. My plants have taken over our unused guest room in the ensuing year. When I look at this I am viscerally reminded of that day and how much uncertainty there was - and naiveté about what we were in for.
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  2020-03-18

  "Take My Hand" - A Song Written On March 18th About COVID

  HIST30060 This is a very rough demo of a song I wrote and recorded on the 18th of March 2020, right near the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic. Moreso than anything else, this song expresses my emotions about COVID come March 2020, namely the fear, insecurity, and dread. The first verse draws on the imagery of the empty University campus, and of the two-week quarantine period. The second verse includes a reference to an image I remember seeing from Wuhan, where a dying COVID patient was wheeled out of the hospital to view a final sunrise, as well as the videos from Italy of people in quarantine singing together from their balconies. The chorus is about the paradox of wanting physical contact but being afraid of breaching social distancing. The bridge references St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes and hospitals, drawing on those feelings of hopelessness about the rapidly degrading pandemic situation.