Items

• 
  2021-08

  Five Years Later

  Yesterday during class, I was rummaging through my backpack when I found this Community of Care Kit that I was given in the Fall 2021 semester of my freshman year at Arizona State University. As of now, I am in my last semester at ASU and can't help to feel bittersweet when looking to the past. My last two years of high school and first semester of college were defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, and now the world has seemed to returned to normalcy. I'm glad that I still have this Community of Care Kit as it holds much historical significance in showing what life was like during the pandemic. On a personal level, this kit reminds me of a time that seems so different to what life is like now, and it also holds strong memories of my first year of college. Five years later, I now look at the COVID-19 pandemic and recognize the positives it brought, such as spending more time with my family and growing into young adulthood during this time.
• 2020-04-20

  covid-19

  Early in the pandemic, I pulled out an old journal and figured I'd be using it to pass the time. I never imagined that it would be a lifeline. Some days I filled the pages with little victories learning how to bake bread, catching up with old friends on Zoom, or merely watching sunlight pour through my window in a manner that previously never seemed to occur. Some days the words edged out slowly, more and more slowly. The solitude, the worry, the endless unknown it all crawled onto those pages. That journal has it all: my nightmares, my aspirations, what I've lost, and the small joys I found along the way. It's ragged and soiled, but it reminds me how we held on, how we all did. Even with only ourselves for companionship, we lasted. And that to me is something to remember. Thanks.
• 
  2023-10

  Trip to Canada

  This object says about the pandemic is that the world was able to recover from the pandemic. This is because a lot of countries had shut down their borders and so this picture shows that people were able to travel quickly again. This is important to me because this is the first time that I traveled outside the United States.
• 
  2020-04-16

  Zoom Book Club

  The last time my book club met in person, March 2020, we talked about what we would read next. I noted that I had a few books about pandemics already on my shelves and we should read one of those. Camus' "The Plague", "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" by Katherine Anne Porter, "Journal of the Plague Year" by Daniel Defoe, "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel García Márquez... why did I have so many books about plagues...? We decided on Defoe and I said "Well, maybe we will be meeting by Zoom next time." The group was incredulous (I live in a small rural town in South Dakota) that we wouldn't be able to meet in person in April. If I had read this book in non-plaugue times it certainly would have been good read but it took on a lot of added meaning when I read it at the beginning of the quarantine. Thermometers may change but people never change.
• 
  2020-05-31

  idek

  it’s funny to think how this all started as a joke. i always knew that this was real and it was happening, but no one really took it seriously, no one thought that i could really happen to them. however, over the past months, it has become clear how the virus has affected us, in a way that no one ever really thought it would. the past few months for me have been, for lack of a better word, different. with all the uncertainty and all the time, i find myself questioning it all. it was like waking up from a dream, i second guess myself, wondering if it was all really happening. but then, i look at the movie tickets pinned to my wall, expired; my backpack, sitting in the corner of my room, untouched; and my textbooks lying on my desk, collecting dust. and i realize, yes, this was really happening. i don’t know if anything i have said holds any significance or meaning, or even if it makes and sense. but this is a time of senselessness, so i guess it fits right in.
• 
  2020

  Disney+ Documentary Shows Uselessness of Borders

  Both “Elephants” and “Into the Okavango Delta” follow movement of a herd of Elephants and scientists respectively as they travel about through Botswana, Namibia, Angola, and Zambia. The movement between the countries seemed so effortless that it really got me thinking how useless borders really are.