Items

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  2020-12-08

  Most Memorable Curations

  As I have learned to curate for the Journal of the Plague Year Archive this semester, I have been exposed to the many stories of different types of people during this awful pandemic year of 2020. Of the many items that I have curated, quite a few really stood out to me, and I tried to narrow it down to just one, but I couldn’t, so I chose two. The reason these two items stood out to me, and why many did, was the fact that they were relatable and they were emotional. The first item that really stood out to me was submitted by a woman that talked about why the pandemic terrifies her. She talked about how sad it was to see people not taking this seriously, and how ignorant people were being. She also spoke about the violence, and the rush to buy an insane amount of items from the store to prepare for what felt like an apocalypse. The part that got me was at the end, she discussed how she had been furloughed in her company and she had no source of income, so she had to move into an apartment. You could really tell how scared and stressed she was just by reading it. I could really feel her emotions and it really made me sit back and think about how many innocent people are being put through such hell. The second item that really stood out to me was submitted by a woman whose mother was in a nursing home. There was a picture submitted with the text that showed her mother peeking through her window. Nursing homes are among the many businesses that are very strict and are taking extra precautionary measures, so her mother is not allowed to have any visitors, only through a window. Her mother is 98 years old, and it saddens her to not be able to see her mother, especially not knowing when the next time she will be able to. I can personally relate to this because my grandma lives in a nursing home back in my hometown of Lewiston, ID. It is hard enough to live so far away and not be able to see her, but now I am not even allowed to see her when I visit home. It has been a hard year for my family because my grandma has dementia, and not being able to visit her cuts even deeper. My mother has especially had a rough year, because she has to sit and wait to see her mom, not knowing when that will be.
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  2020-03-08

  Cancelled Season

  I am on the baseball team at the University of San Francisco, and in February of 2020, I was part of the large population of people who thought COVID-19 was not going to affect me. Our season had just started, and we were well prepared to have a great year. But a few weeks into the season, news spread that big college sports conferences were starting to cancel their seasons. We still had hope that ours would be kept alive, but it was not looking good. During Spring Break in early March, we got on the bus for an 8 hour trip to Malibu to play Pepperdine, who was nationally ranked. Everyone was pretty excited for a weekend in Malibu, and the opportunity to play a good team. But four hours into our trip, our bus got turned around: Our season was cancelled. When we finally got back to campus after what seemed like a ten hour drive, we met in the weight room to discuss the news. When we got the confirmation from our head coach, emotions began to kick in. Some were mad, some were devastated. The seniors were left in the dark on whether or not they had just played their last games of their college career. within the next week, everyone was back in their hometown with their families doing school online. Luckily, everyone was granted an extra year of eligibility, and now we are back on campus trying to make it work. I think I speak for everyone when I say that will be an event that we will never forget.