Items

• 
  2020-05

  The Class of Covid(2020-21) [MISSING MEDIA]

  The picture above that I have chosen for the archive was taken around May of 2020 which is a few months after Covid-19 started spreading very quickly around the United States of America. This was the very start of online school and the era of Zoom. For future readers, Zoom was the company that acted very quickly during the start of the pandemic and made virtual meetings the most convenient and efficient for schools, companies, and friends who could not see each other in person. I personally had many online meetings with my friends when our parents would not let us out of the house in fear of the treacherous Covid that we might bring back with us. In the picture, the very last high school class of my career was over Zoom, and I could not hug or see my close friends, classmates, or teachers before graduating. My private school went from kindergarten to 12th grade in high school, so some of these people I have known for more than 8 years, and Covid prevented me and many other students across the nation and the whole world from having that sentimental last day being able to say goodbye to our favorite teachers or seeing some acquaintances before heading off to college. It is just crazy to think that it will be a very long time before another graduating high school class is forced online or in the near future when online class is just a foreign thought that would baffle kids or young adults that hear about it.
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  2021-03-12

  A Wedding... We Hope

  When our friends got engaged at the end of 2019, we were extremely excited for them. Then COVID happened. This week, we received their Save the Date card and are cautiously excited. As the back of the card explains, our friends realize that their wedding plans are contingent on the state of the virus. It is a reminder that even though we are hopefully heading in a positive direction, it doesn’t mean everything is normal yet. Fingers crossed that it will happen and that we will be able to safely attend (may need to leave the kids at home, because I doubt they’ll be vaccinated yet. But let’s be honest, weddings are boring for kids, and after a year of quarantine, a weekend away from them will be a nice change of pace.) *The couple gave me permission to post their Save the Date to the archive, and requested their names, and the date for context, remain public.
• 2021

  Covid rules

  I think that they rules and procedures that we have to follow at school all make good sense, except for one. After break and lunch, we all have to clump up and line up in advisories before we leave to go to class. They dismiss each line one by one. The point of them doing this is so we dont all go at once and get all close to eachother. The problem is, they’re just making everyone clump up, then they basically dismiss us all at the same time so people end up clumping up anyway. And its not even like people go into their advisory lines either, everyone just clumps up and goes at the same time. What I think they should do is just either dismiss everyone at once so they’re is no clumping, or just start dismissing groups of people.
• 
  2020-08-22

  The Shift Due to COVID

  Before news of the coronavirus broke, there was no idea of social distancing. Everyone would lay on top of each other and connect. But, with COVID, there was a dramatic shift and people quickly became scared of each other. I think this video is important because it can offer hope for people that one day we might be able to sit next to each other and talk without any fear.
• 
  2020-08-10

  Corona and Coffee

  I'm a barista at Starbucks coffee company. It's been a disturbing and fascinating few months, to say the least, and like most, I've experienced some significant changes to my work and personal life. Most notably, my job is now my bubble. When the quarantine orders went out in Oregon, Starbucks kept going. I had two weeks of mandatory self-isolation after one of my work crew came into possible contact with COVID early in the pandemic. Otherwise, I've been working more than ever before. Interacting with the public makes me constantly on edge. But the coffee industry seems to have been deemed "essential," and my team and I are kept busy supporting the public's caffeine addiction through the global madness that has been 2020. Because of my hundreds of interactions with strangers daily, I've cut off almost all contact with my friends and family outside of work. The risks of my coming into contact with the virus are high, especially when not all of our customers feel inclined to comply with COVID-19 regulations. I'm happy to have my job and not have experienced the economic uncertainty that so many have dealt with in recent months. Despite the loneliness of feeling removed from my family and friends, this pandemic has brought my work team closer together. We have all experienced the pandemic the same way and become a support system for each other for which I feel lucky.
• 
  2020-03-05

  social media for quarantine

  social media still made some fun out of the quarantine situation from COV-19
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  2020-04-01

  “I don't think that it really has influenced too much..."

  “I don't think that it really has influenced too much because I really feel that to get out of this we are in the hands of the scientists and the minds of science and it seems like especially lately in the United States there is a lot of issues between belief and science feeling like science is just one belief system and religion is another belief system. I don't happen to be really buying into this. This is science and we need vaccinations. We need to have any kind of antivirals or anything that can help us get through this virus.”
• 
  2020-03-30

  Zoom Memes for Self Quaranteens

  A screenshot of a Facebook college meme group called "Zoom Memes for Self Quaranteens". As of 03/30/2020 it has 469,370 members. The group was created on 03/11/2020
• 
  2020-05-10

  Through Chinese Social Media -- 4

  I’m a study-abroad student. Due to the virus, I had to stay at home in New York. I got the update of the virus through Chinese social media, and I think it is really interesting. I’m going to share some posts from Chinese social media about the virus. Those two weeks, China holds an online concert, “Believe in the Future,” steaming on the social media. It is the largest online concert in the Chinese music industry. The concert invited more than hundreds of celebrities to do cloud performance. The goal of the concert is to bring hope and heal the heart. There is no advertising and no copyright, all things free. The following is one recorded part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIeVt0vUpGM
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  2020-05-04

  All of Zoom’s a Stage

  Shakespeare’s quote, “All the World’s a Stage,” has taken on a new meaning in my life and the lives of other theater artists during this pandemic. Due to the social distancing orders, theater as we know it has come to a halt, causing us creatives to become even more creative with adapting how theater is presented during this time. The very core of the theater is performing on stage, which is impossible to do during this time. What do we do when the shows we are working on get cancelled? How do we continue working on our craft when we cannot be together? How do we continue our professional goals when the very thing that makes up our profession cannot happen? So many more questions just like these have arisen in the theatrical community during this time of extreme uncertainty. We cannot perform on an actual stage, so we have to be creative and make the world our stage. Personally, in order to stay sane, I have been trying to keep myself immersed in theater as much as I can within all these restrictions. This keeps me busy and prevents boredom. Ultimately, it distracts me from the depressing thoughts, such as the feeling of being alone, or the fact that the show I was cast in this semester got cancelled. The more I do theater in any way I can, especially when that theater involves other people, the more these thoughts go away. I started by creating a flexible routine for myself. A routine keeps me busy, but keeping it flexible reduces my everyday stress, even just a little bit. I try to start each day by taking a walk and listening to music or a podcast on spotify. A lot of the time, I end up listening to my favorite Broadway show tunes and practice acting through the song as 1 I walk. Honestly, this gets some weird looks from neighbors, but once I stopped caring about what they think, this turned into one of the most freeing parts of my day! After walking and completing my online homework for the day, I usually practice singing. I’ve been trying to focus on songs that I have fun with, rather than specifically picking out audition pieces, which has surprisingly led to me finding some great audition songs in a no-stress way! After singing, I move onto play readings. I have a goal to read a play every other day, which has been great because I’ve found so many new audition monologues without even looking for them! Whenever I can, I try to read these plays with my friends over Zoom. We each pick a character, and then read the plays aloud together. It’s a great way to keep a sense of community with people who are a thousand miles away from me. One of my favorite experiences during this time has been the Zoom reading with my fellow cast members of the play I was in that got cancelled. I was still disappointed that we won’t be able to perform it in person, but it was so nice to be able to perform it, even though it was over Zoom. It was especially wonderful to get to see friendly faces again, and I absolutely loved the sense of community I felt when working with these talented people. I highly recommend getting a group together and performing over Zoom. The act of creating theater in times like this is so comforting and satisfying, and can provide you with a sense of hope. Times like these can be very discouraging, but I hope that my story shows other theater artists that you can still be creative during a time that seems to stall creativity. Take a deep breath, and go forth and create!
• 
  08/06/19

  My friends and I

  It represents a stark contrast in a simpler time when things were normal before the crisis
• 
  2020-03-27

  Social distancing?

  Headline: "Beaches closed after crowds defy social distancing rules"