-
2022-05-01
This photograph shows my son drinking fresh orange and pineapple juice at a market in Arequipa, Peru. The juice vendor works behind a plastic sneeze guard, wears a face mask, and disinfects change before returning it to you.
-
2022-05-01
After a game of soccer, that ended when the ball was kicked out of bounds and landed on cactus (rendering the ball flat), I took this picture of a disposable mask left behind on the soccer field.
-
2022-05-01
This is a mask left behind on a cement soccer field in Parque de la Independencia, Urbanización 15 de enero in Arequipa, Peru.
-
2022
As an international student, I have witnessed the spread of covid-19 in both China and the United States. While the virus harms humans in the same way, each country does it differently to humans facing the pandemic.
I was in high school in Boston when the covid first broke out (in December?). At that time, there were only two cases in Boston, so everyone didn't care much about the virus far across the ocean. As a Chinese, I know that coronavirus has caused countless pain in Wuhan, China. Therefore, I wrote a petition to the school to advocate wearing masks at school to avoid infection. However, the absurdity of things is far beyond my imagination. My high school principal sent an email to all international students (most of us are Asians) telling us that masks do not help people stay away from the virus. He also required us not to wear masks in school because it would cause panic among other local students. This implicit discrimination against Asians is a hurt.
In March, I decided to return to China from the US to visit my family. It was a tough decision, not only in the sense of risking my life but in the process. I overcame the flight's cutting off and was cancelled by seven flights to get on the plane home. But when I finally returned to China and was quarantined for 14 days, I discovered the maliciousness toward international students on the Internet. Everyone was repeating the sentence, "you can't serve the motherland, but you can be the first to poison your country flying from thousands of miles away". This exclusion of outsiders is another harm.
These hurt far more than covid did to me.
-
2020-03-13
This story is about how Covid-19 changed my life and many others in a very dramatic way. It was March 13th, 2020 and I was in Garden Valley visiting my grandma. We had already heard news of a "deadly wide spreading virus" infecting and killing many, but we didn't think much of it. My mom got a call from the Elk Grove Unified School District stating that all students in the district will not have to attend school the following days. Well those days became weeks, which became months, which then followed up to be almost 2 years of online school. I had no idea what it was like doing online school and neither did a lot of students at the time. We had no idea what life was going to be like for the next 2 years. Quarantine, wearing masks 24/7, keeping distance from our loved ones. People were dropping like flies from this virus, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and more. The virus mainly affected the elderly and young children, but also people who already suffered from major health conditions. School became a big struggle for me because I wasn't able to learn in person so the work always confused me and my grades stayed low throughout every semester. I was doing somewhat well in my photography class but keeping on track was still a struggle for me.
-
2020-05-25
As a 2020 graduate, my entire graduation experience with all its long-awaited anticipation was completely reimagined and all commencement proceedings were changed because of the pandemic. Seniors across the globe were forced to celebrate their years of hard work through drive-thru graduations, virtual ceremonies, and diplomas delivered via mail.
-
2021-03-31
My pandemic object is a picture of the first movie ticket after the lockdowns of March 2020. Godzilla vs. Kong was meant to release in May 2020, but due to rewrites and the pandemic, it was pushed to November 2020 then to March 2021. Since the Godzilla franchise is my favorite movie franchise, it was only fitting that this was the first movie in theaters in a pandemic world. My dad, brother, and I traveled to the more comfortable Queensgate theater in Richland, Washington on the movie's premiere night. While I found the movie had some pacing issues and missing plot elements, I think that people needed an action-packed, fun monster movie to escape to. Two giant monsters fighting and destroying cities can be easier to deal with because we know it is not real, but they are tangible, we see the monsters. COVID is the opposite, it is real, but also an unseen threat without certain technologies. Godzilla and Kong have human characteristics we can identify with while COVID feels inhuman and impersonal. This is just something that I have noticed.
-
2020-09-02
Online testing during COVID is definitely horrible, especially if you need to write the answers on paper and be monitored only by zoom. For me, I had a pretty important trial exam in August. But on the test day, the sound of house renovation on the floor above is so loud that it is impossible for me to concentrate. Thus, I was forced to hop on a taxi to travel to my parent's friend's home, and since there is no table left for me to write my test, I had to sit and write the test on a piano. Moreover, since I don't have much preparation in summer as I focused mainly on my personal statement, many questions on the test seem unfamiliar. Even worse, when I finally complete the exam in a scratchy manner, the internet connection broke so I couldn't upload my answer for 10 minutes straight! With these circumstances, it is foreseeable that my score come out miserably. After that day, I started hating online testing to guts.
-
2020-03-08
It is important to talk about what happened so you know what not to do in the future.
-
2020-05-18
The attached picture is a part of my story during the pandemic. I work in the semi-conductor industry at a site that makes a large amount of important computer chips that are vital throughout the world. Our site was experiencing the pandemic just like everyone else, parallel to a time when everything we manufactured was in extreme demand due to many people working from home, schools teaching from a distance, cars needing chips, and medical equipment in high demand. It was absolutely critical that our site continued to operate safely and could not shut down. Our site and corporate managers made policies to ensure that only the minimum number of critical employees were on site to limit the chances of COVID-19 transmission, while following state-mandated essential rules during the early pandemic shutdowns. I was given a form to travel with and this sticker, additionally our badges would not let us in the site without specific essential worker access. This sticker is a daily reminder of what a crazy time I was part of, working on our site with minimal people pulling together to enable people to have the technology the needed to keep the world moving, from home...
-
2020-04-24
My fiancé is vegan, so it's hard to find comfort foods that are also vegan and gluten-free. We spent a lot of quarantine days finding and messing around recipes that were gluten-free. We eventually ended up making the recipe, and even though the perogies were a little thick on the dough side (gluten-free dough can annoyingly do this sometimes). Many days were spent with my fiancé that I cherished, even though we never knew when I was going back to work. During this time, I'm sure most people felt like this. I think what was important was the reset we got when the stay-at-home orders were put into place. I think it made everyone realize the things we took for granted and the people that we saw every day.
-
2022-05-01
Mask trash on the football field at parque de la Independencia urb. 15 de enero
-
2020-03-20
Throughout the entire pandemic, I worked in retail (specifically at the "Meijer" grocery store). As essential workers, it was frightening going to work and exposing myself to illness while many others stayed home in quarantine. I went to work and was met with frantic customers panic buying everything and anything they could find - the meat aisles were empty. The bread was gone. There wasn't a roll of toilet paper to be found. Although stock of popular items was low on a national level, we still received questions about when we would be getting more shipment in. It seemed as though people were gearing up for an apocalypse rather than a pandemic. We went around cleaning constantly, wiping and spraying down every surface we could find. Masks were mandated and giant plexi-glass shields were installed in the check-out lanes. It was incredibly difficult to work alongside others who were absolutely terrified - I was worried that I would do something wrong and set them off. Working throughout the pandemic completely wore me out and shed light on who people become when they're scared.
-
2020-03-18
These pieces of media were made during the very start of the pandemic on March 18, 2020. They capture the moment when my family moved to a new house in Chandler, Arizona from Tucson, Arizona. This was the beginning of a completely new life in a different place. From that moment onwards, I had no more connection to the outside world and was locked inside this house for the rest of 2020 and half of 2021. I did not have any form of in-person social interaction and only stayed inside this house. This made 2020 and 2021 a miserable experience.
The photo is of my mom, who is the one that initiated our move here from Tucson, AZ. She did not like Tucson and wanted to move here as quickly to a more urban area like Phoenix and Chandler as soon as possible, but I really wanted to stay in Tucson. Tucson was a place that I developed a deep connection with. Tucson was the place where I attended high school and made many friends. To have those connections ripped from me for the rest of 2020 and basically the rest of my life was a very difficult experience.
The video depicts a ceremony that Hindu families perform every time a family moves to a new residence. The question of whether I should partake in religion is something that I personally struggle with a lot in my life and especially in 2020. My parents forced me to partake in religious festivals and celebrations that I did not enjoy. This is another thing that made 2020 a very miserable experience. Over time, I have turned into an agnostic and a very secular person (something that my parents would probably be very unhappy to know).
-
2020-03-18
On this day, I recall watering my succulent and staring out the window with grave uncertainty of what was to come and utter confusion as to what exactly was happening. The stock market had just crashed andante pumped back up within minutes and the news was flooded with death and infection rates rising as people began clamoring for grocery stores to hoard supplies.
The past two years living through COVID has felt somewhat like the process of the Calvin Cycle that kept my succulent in this photo nice and healthy. Although it is nearly impossible to articulate what life has been like or what was observed over the last two years, one great lesson I gained is the understanding that nothing is forever. It is all temporary. As I watered my plant with sheer emptiness and mentally checked-out due to the shock of the situation at the time, I began thinking about the Calvin Cycle process that my succulent or any plants outside would go through as my species was in dire panic. The world seemed to have stopped and sped up over night, but life itself remained to be what it was. Then the thought occurred to me. All things will pass.
Living through COVID the last two years has seen work-from-home jobs rise to masses. I left one job to work at another and found that this was the worst comfort and behavior our species grew to become adapted to. For once, it has made us disconnected from reality and from each other. By being disconnected, it creates an issue of empathy and connection. The mantra of "connected while away," was shared everywhere when COVID first came about, but two years later, this has become the opposite. An example of this was observing many downplay the deaths of people from the virus, yet become very emotional once it was one of their family members. This could be viewed under a quick search on Google for the Reddit page of "Herman Cain Award." Bringing this page up primarily serves to show that both sides of the COVID discourse became contradictory as both sides were insensitive toward death. Was it due to being separated? I'll allow you to consider this.
Another interesting point observed during COVID was the rise of irrational spending and mass speculation. Alan Greenspan once called the mass speculation a product of "Irrational Exuberance." The premise of this best serves that of investing as it describes the investor enthusiasm which drives asset prices higher than they are worth. However, the same could be viewed through the grocery hoarding of toilet paper or food where people became highly speculative of how long thee lockdowns would be. This was also indicative of the housing bubble 2.0 in which the Federal Reserve opened massive quantitative easing and opened cheap lines of credit for many. The result created more greed as people began hoarding one of the basic needs of our species in housing. How can a species feel righteous commoditizing shelter? The answer is irrational exuberance. Unfortunately, the result of the quantitative easing has created a massive issue where as the time I type this, the 1Q GDP results of the United States is at -1.4% and the inflation rate is at 8.5%. The Irrational Exuberance may be spelling the end of this decade's journey of cheap credit as it appears we are now headed for another Recession the next quarter.
However, despite all of this irrational exuberance and the great stress these past two years have brought, I can no longer complain. I have adopted and accepted the Stoic philosophical belief that we must care for our neighbors as this will all pass. History has proven to be very biased when thinking in retrospect, but I hope my current peers use this to improve the future.
....... also, I never mentioned the protests, presidential change, food shortages in Sri Lanka and Peru, or how we have a dollar shortage crisis that nobody is talking about. All things will pass.
-
2022-04-29
The pandemic was full of many things that turned the world upside down: the loss of jobs, death, and the decline in mental health for many students. I remember when the semester was transferred to fully online, many students like myself celebrated for the extended Spring Break and the ability to attend Zoom classes in pajamas. However, months passed and the daily lack of contact with acquaintances and friends, isolation, and lack of activities turned the days quite mundane quickly. The drastic change in an active lifestyle to such a slow paced one definitely had a negative impact on conditions such as depressive symptoms, health anxiety, and an overall learning curve of the lifestyle. Digging deeper, I know many families whose breadwinner of the family lost their job because many places were letting their staff go due to the lack of demand of labor. When dealing with a global pandemic, death was also a central topic to deal with. Many countries did not have access to medical equipment such as ventilators and thousands of people were dying in my motherland. I personally lost some family members and many people I know have as well. While the pandemic introduced our lives to a dark state, there was a slight silver lining, and that was spending time with the loved ones.
Over the years before the pandemic, I feel like the world moved at an unbearably fast pace. My days consisted of going to class and work, possibly spending some time with friends, doing homework, and sleeping for the most part. As the world started to slow down because of the COVID pandemic, my father was finally able to work from home, my sister had online classes, and my mother didn’t have to rush to pick my sister up from school. Often, our meals during dinner would be inconsistent and spent near the TV as everyone had their own schedules. However, when the pandemic hit, it was advised to not eat at restaurants and take out fast food. Such restrictions led to trying out new recipes and laughing in the kitchen. Little moments such as conversations at the dinner table are still some of my favorite memories.
In addition to cherished time with my family, I was able to finally rediscovered some hobbies that I used to enjoy years ago. Before the pandemic, my life had begun to revolve only around academics and I had forgotten what it felt like to spend the evening painting or trying out a new dance. However, spending months at a time at home forced me to redirect myself to other forms of entertainment when there was no use of travelling to other places. This really helped me define myself as someone who has so many other interests rather than just a student who studied 24/7. I still try to carry these hobbies into my schedule now that the world is slowly coming back to its fast pace.
-
2022-04-29
Give a written account of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected my mental health, religious beliefs and personal relationships.
-
2022-04-29
This is my personal experience living in the time of the COVID-19 Pandemic
-
2022-04-29
The COVID-19 pandemic has been one the hardest things for me to deal with. I suffer from depression and often combat this by spending time with friends and family. Before the pandemic I would often spend my weekends with friends and visit my family after work on half of the weekdays. Throughout the pandemic, until recently it has been rather unacceptable to spend time in close contact with others.
In the being of the pandemic during the first shutdowns and mandates I struggled deeply with having to stay home all the time. I became quite depressed and would often just sleep through my days off. I tried to do virtual hangouts with my friends and family, but it just wasn’t the same. I ended up planning socially distanced hangouts with my friends, often picnics/lunch in the park 6 feet apart. This really helped me because I was able to socialize with them in person.
As the pandemic progressed, and I wasn’t able to see friends nearly as often as before I became more comfortable with being alone. I started to find the things I enjoyed doing on my own. I took time to really work on some of the issues I had been avoiding. I used the time I was forced to be alone in a productive way. Although the pandemic challenged my way of living, I still found a way to grow.
Now that we are starting to get a better handle on the virus, life is slowly starting to return to what it was before. With the release of vaccines I have been able to start seeing my friends and family again. With the lower rate of cases a lot of the business I used to visit are reopening. As we start to return to “normal” I’ve found my new normal and I quite enjoy my alone time, just as much as the time I spend with others.
-
2020-03-13
I can clearly remember when the pandemic began and as it progressed. I was in my senior year of high school. Before we understood the magnitude of what was going on there was a general consensus that it would be over in a few weeks. There is a culture with the media that trends only last a short time and we move on as a society. We all thought this would be another trend. A few months later and many things were still shut down. I finished school online and got my diploma in my car. We wore masks everywhere to stop the spread and everyone kept hand sanitizer on them. I also worked in food service at the time which was considered an essential business. We got extra pay and had extra precautions to follow. A few steps that were put into place were timers to wash hands at least once every 30 minutes. When masks started to be required they were sold out. I made a makeshift mask out of hair ties and a bandana. Soon Covid-19 tests became widely available and that created individual quarantines. People would test every time they came in contact. In the beginning, people were worried about paying their bills. Both of my parents owned small businesses. We had to sell our home to scrape by. As time passed the country made accommodations to open businesses up again. Two years later and we are still majorly affected. Now we are affected by product and labor shortages. Often grocery stores are out of certain products. However many businesses created contactless services such as grocery pick up, and delivery became more widely common.
-
2020-01-02
This photograph was taken right around the time of the announcement that Covid-19 has hit the U.S. This was the last picture to be taken from me before most churches were shut down and were moved to online only. This picture is fairly important because it marks a great shift in the faith I have when it comes to my religion.
Since I wasn't always an online person when it came to church, I found it very hard to focus on all parts of the service when it came to me watching a live feed on the screen. For this reason, I've always had a deep desire to experience events fully in person, or I usually don't feel like I experienced them at all. After this photo was taken, about a month later my home church decided to move services online. Not only did I feel like this was going to weigh on my faith in my religion, but I felt that I wasn't going to be able to be at my best when it came to following God. This was true, I found it hard to find community around Christianity without church and because I felt isolated, my faith in God took a deep dive. At the point of all churches closing in person, I found myself in a state of senseless life. Many days went by when I did not feel like I was following my path in life the right way, but Covid-19 did not leave me with just all the bad experiences in the pandemic, there were some great outcomes that I would never change. Not having an in-person church exposed how I didn't really have a community in my walk with God. When most churches closed it forced me to actually seek out a friend group or community that had similar goals as mine. Not only have I found so many good friends and people that I can call family, but Covid-19 broke the shell that I placed over myself when it came to not socializing with anyone. The pandemic made me grow fast in many different ways and having good support in my life was one of those. The support from friends and family has allowed me to shine a light on the many things that I've struggled with internally in which I've neglected to solve.
-
2022-04-29
At the start of the pandemic, I became hyper-aware of the changes happening around me, specifically regarding religion. Unfortunately, many of the changes I witnessed were regarding death. Death is a concept most often associated religiously, for example, someone's soul or spirit going to some otherworldy peaceful place, or reincarnation. On a personal level, there is a catholic church across the street from my house. I had a front-row seat to the trauma and sadness the pandemic brought forth. In recent years, the church was fairly lonely, with only large crowds during big holidays or religious events. During the pandemic, not once did I see the church unoccupied. Whether for a funeral service, blessed sacrament adoration, prayer, liturgy, or confession. The image of the coffin and funeral service serves the purpose of relating to this specific effect on a personal level. When my family lost a child during the pandemic, I experienced how even my non-religious family members or friends offered to join in prayer with my family. Not only the catholic community, as well as other religious communities sought to spread the importance of prayer to the public during the difficult times. With services becoming more widely accessible such as live-streamed on TV for the public. Overall I realized how the pandemic may have affected the public sphere by connecting more identities together, no matter race, religion, or gender.
-
2022-04-28
It may be neccessary to inform the reader that the following reflection was writing in the spring of 2022, at the end of the ‘pandemic’. The pandemic had began initially with my graduating from high school in the spring of 2020.
Disappointed at not having prom or a real graduation ceremony, I prepared for college and ended up taking a gap year. The lockdown and safety measures enforced by the government and institutions around the country jointly impelled me to take a gap year. It was during this time that I began reflecting on life without social interaction, entertainment and structure.
Perhaps the most apparent realization was coming to terms with the abnormalities wrought by the pandemic such as the lockdown and vaccine rollout/enforcement. The lockdown in particular, was quite pernicious. It prevented myself from going about daily errands and activities. Spiritually, I found comfort in reading scripture to cope with the deficit of worldly pleasure in my life. This was ultimately a good thing because it brought me closer to God.
However, I was distanced socially from my peers and friends darkened my view of life and increased my pessimistic outlook. Man is religious because man was created by God. A lot of people dont find God and thus the suicide rate spiked durning the lockdown, damning many souls to eternal hellfire.
-
2022-04-29
It started for me when I returned from a business trip in Europe in March 2020. I had to fly through Germany to get home. Early in the pandemic a new country got added to the no-fly list. When I got back home, I went to work for a few days and then was told from my manager that Germany just got put on the list that if you have been there, you had to quarantine, so I couldn't come to work even though I had already been there for 3 days. So, I worked from home the rest of the week. The next week was spring break and I had it off anyway. We had plans to go to Disneyland. We decided to go and had a two-day pass. We went to the park Thursday and were resting Friday and planned to use our second pass the next day when we got notified through the Disney App that the next day would be the last day the park would be open. Almost 10 minutes later our church sent an email that services would be cancelled for the foreseeable future. My husband and I decided it was best to go home even though we still had a day at Disney. It was sinking in that this wasn’t just a few days of inconvenience. It was serious and we should head home.
The next few months were hectic, scary, annoying and lonely. My son was in kindergarten and had to miss a lot of first milestones. School at home for a Kindergartner was a joke, but the time we got to spend time together as a family was nice. My work was accommodating and provided everything I needed at home. Two years later I am still working from home. I gained 15 pounds but I am back to what I was when this all started. Things are getting back to normal now, but inflation is insane and the supply chain is a nightmare. I spent some of the evening today searching for formula for my sister-in-law in Utah. A formula shortage. Something as vital as feeding babies is hard to find. Additionally, Russia invaded Ukraine just over a month ago, so even though the pandemic has settled down, the world hasn’t. God bless us.
-
2022-04-29
This text was meant to capture the feelings surrounding my life while pregnant during Covid. It is a bit unstructured, but so was the Covid-19 experience.
-
2020-06-01
In the beginning of the pandemic, I was frightened like many others. My parents are older than most of my friends, both around their late fifties' early sixties. In the area I was living, Ohio, I began seeing many lawn signs of Covid 19 not being real. Like anyone who believes in science I became extremely frustrated. People coughing in line behind me at the grocery store when I was with my dad and talking loudly about how masks were “stupid”. I began feeling personally targeted because of wearing homemade masks from the beginning. I feared how many people I would have to come in contact with at work and how I might affect my parents' health just by living under the same roof. As Covid came into fruition I was a part of one of the lucky companies that gave the option to stay home from work and be paid a minimum. I was grateful.
I began seeing a decline in mental health on social media. People could not take being home without their friends or their families were toxic. That’s understandable and I do not chastise anyone for feeling that way. My frustration stayed as I acclimatized myself to be home for months. I started paying close attention to news about organizations like churches, friend groups etc. gather even though we were in the height of Covid. I thought to myself “Can't it just...wait? Let us be safe first and gather later.” I feel it is unfair for me to make such a statement because I don’t know these strangers' lives at home, but it was hard to not take it personally when I had to shower anytime I went out for groceries or a mandatory meeting at work. Not to mention the constant dousing of sanitizer that my family and others who were fearful of Covid had to do to feel safe.
All this was happening in America in my middle-class neighborhood and social media started showing the disparities between classes. I was lucky that my whole family could afford to stay home but there were many...many families that had to keep working even though they could die. Just to keep a roof over their heads. This especially affected people of color and minorities in our country. There was and still is social unrest. Finally, the disparities that had always been there had been forced to be paid attention to. There was no relief for the frustrations we were experiencing and bottling during this time. About midway through covid I found out my uncle in Colombia died because he had to continue driving a Taxi for work and no vaccinations had been issued. It just felt like there was nothing I could do but panic and wait. Then, one of the most egregious acts of police brutality had occurred. George Floyd had been murdered by a police officer who pinned him down with his knee as he said “I can't breathe” until he no longer could.
America turned upside down. We saw videos of buildings being destroyed, fires, mass protests, shootings, the worst you could imagen. As a collective we had reached our boiling point and the last straw was this murder. My family was against my brother and I protesting because Covid still being at its height. I have protested at the Womens March in D.C and several pro-choice marches in Ohio but the Black Lives Matter movement was something I needed to educate myself on and stand up for. It was a calling for someone in my position of privilege to show up in numbers for people of color that deserve rights just as the rest of us.
I often reflect on how my life could have been so different. My father is Colombian, and my mother is Polish. I look white and have always been raised in a middle-class neighborhood. I have not had to face the same injustices as my father, my family and minority groups in America just based off the color of my skin. Police brutality has always been in existence but when we were all home during Covid with modern day technology and video evidence, we felt that video to the core. We felt the pure rage and frustrations as a society of how we were not being cared for in the way we thought we would have been during this pandemic.
I have never witnessed in my lifetime such united support for one another. Such a strong fight against people in power who are coming after the people we call friends, workers, lovers, and family no matter the color of their skin. In such destruction, pain and chaos I had never felt such beauty in our society. I will never forget the feeling of unity around me I had felt as hundreds of people laid down on the hard pavement during the Black lives Matter protest yelling “I cant breathe.” Finally, we could help the unheard be heard and take a deep breath together.
-
2022-04-28
I wouldn’t consider my experience during the COVID-19 pandemic unique. What my experience was was life-changing. I was a graduate of the class of 2020 which was the first graduating class during the pandemic. What was unique about my situation was that I graduated in December 2019 a semester earlier than I was supposed to. I got a last day of high school, I’ve got a last football game, I got my last class. I think this is different because many people in my graduating class didn’t get these things they left for spring break in March and came back to their freshman year of college.
I’m definitely grateful for the decision that I made to graduate early. Even though I didn’t understand the decision that I was making at the time I got to live more lasts than most people my age.
Going into freshman year of college was difficult without walking across the graduation stage. We are taught that that is the moment where you become an adult and a member of society. It’s the closing of a chapter when you walk across that stage. With all that closing of the chapter I felt like I was just rolling through the motions coming to college. Even though it was just rolling through the motions they were the best motions of my life.
Freshman year I rushed my sorority on zoom. This was the first time A zoom rush has ever been conducted and there were definitely some learning curves associated. I did end up finding my place within that process but I couldn’t be more grateful that it didn’t work out for me. I went through freshman year with the best friends I’ve ever made in my life and I would’ve met them without my decision to come to ASU.
Coming to ASU almost feels like a fluke, I wouldn’t have committed to come here if Covid hadn’t happened. It was the only school that I had a chance to tour therefore the only one that I had enough knowledge about to make the decision to attend. This was the best thing that came out of corona.
-
2020-11
To understand my story, I will give some context as to the nature of my work. I worked at a group home made for 14–17-year-olds unaccompanied minors coming from Central America. When they entered the program, they are put into one of the many houses that we currently have and given a room, education, structure, all the things that make for a normal life. These many houses would interact with each other quite frequently, many times, the best friends of one house were in a different house. Many of the kids were in soccer and other sports, they would go to church, and different places in town on a regular basis.
Once the lockdowns began, our program proceeded in a similar fashion to prevent anyone from getting infected. One of those things included stopping the normal interacting between the houses and confine everyone to their own homes. Besides the obvious social loss, school provided them with access to English almost the entire day; to make friends here, they would learn on their own, to meet a boyfriend or girlfriend, they would work at it every single day. You can’t measure what the pandemic took away from these kids. Each one of them is no doubt less fluent in English unless they had actively worked at it, they missed out on getting to know the culture and embracing it for their future, so many things that we can not measure, but without a doubt were lost.
For some though, the pandemic turned into a very good time for learning and becoming better than they were before. Hours would pass very slowly in the house, and you can only watch and play video games so long before getting bored, so one youth found something that they were very good at. This youth would spend his time crafting all sorts of different things. Eventually, his walls were filled with rosaries, charms, bracelets, animals made of beads, and all sorts of other random crafts I could not name. He had a zest for life even during the pandemic and worked hard to keep learning more and more.
The necklace in the picture is one that he had made for me that I hang on my shrine at home. He was a very religious, and it was that religion that helped him get from his home country and make it to the United States. This is a common story for many of the youths in my program, they take religion seriously and try to continue the traditions they had in their home countries. They could not go to Church during most of the lockdown and found other ways to express their religiosity, this is how the youth in my story expressed his.
-
2022-04-29
Social Drought is a text story about how the pandemic erased all hopes of maintaining an active social life and how I had to find ways to fulfill my need for social interaction.
-
2022-04-29
Over the last two years, being away from people, and having to social distance, I have still taken care of my grandfather. He has Dementia. Now that things are starting to get a little better, and a lot of people have been vaccinated, I have been able to have him come stay the night at my house every Friday. The first couple of times he was confused, but now he seems to instinctively know the routine of it all. He likes getting to spend time with my stepdad and my girlfriend, and walk outside to see the horses. Covid has taken a lot, besides the countless lives. It rapidly increased my grandpa’s progression in memory loss. Most days he can’t quite remember my name or my mom's name. But at least he is happy, he laughs and smiles, and knows that he loves and trusts us. Him not being able to have as much social interaction as he used to has drastically changed his cognitive abilities.
Today is a Friday. He was pretty quiet on the drive from his house to mine. I got him an ice cream cone. No matter where he is cognitively that man will always, always want an ice cream cone. Vanilla to be specific. We used to get ice cream cones from McDonald's when I was little when he would pick me up to spend the night at his house. I wonder how many ice cream cones we have left.
I hate that his memory has been cut short and stripped from him. He had been slowly declining for the last few years before Covid, but once we hit the lockdowns, it was all over. He was good at hiding it for the first 6 months or so, but in the last year and a half it has been very clear.
I miss who he was, I know we all do.
-
2022-04-29
This is an Instagram post by funky.buttlovin. This person received their two extra doses of the COVID vaccine. People taking selfies has been a common trend on social media after having received a COVID vaccine.
-
2022-04-25
This is an Instagram post by informa_mente_italia. It is criticizing the use of the Green Pass in Italy, where vaccination status is checked at certain places. The picture shown is making fun of the people that get the vaccines, and there are many needles to show that they are never ending, due to booster shots. This is a political issue within Europe at the moment because the Green Pass for COVID controls movement of people and what parts of society they are allowed to participate in.
-
2022-04-29
When I found out about the start of lock downs and the fact that a pandemic was even happening, I was at the end of a training rotation at Fort Irwin, CA. My colleagues and I were extremely concerned about the welfare of our families as we had all been screened for symptoms, but there was talk of us not being able to return home until the DOD had figured out exactly how they were going to respond to the “sudden” emergency. I only put sudden in quotes because the government had plenty of warning that this was coming but decided that it wasn’t worth acting on until it had already started happening.
Once home, the adjustment to a new way of life was akin to being dropped in a foreign country that speaks a language you don’t understand and has none of the customs you are familiar with. While families, dependents, and civilians had had warning, albeit minimal, that lock downs were going to be a thing and that masks were now mandatory regardless of where you were going, those who had been away without any media or contact back home, were suddenly thrust into the lifestyle of April, 2020.
From that time to now, not only has vaccination and the reality of the virus become a contentious topic among coworkers, friends, and family, but what side of the issue you place yourself on has led to some of the worst division the nation has seen since the 1960s. Families have been ripped apart and friendships destroyed because the views expressed and sides taken on pandemic related issues, including the 2020 election, have adopted the same level of identity in our lives as our ethnic, racial, or religious backgrounds. Those who would have found common ground in shared religious belief, or shared culture now create new divides on the basis of believing that the vaccine works or not or believing that those who participated in the Jan 6, 2021 Capitol incident were justified or not.
-
2022-04-29
When I was in the second semester of my freshman year at ASU studying Computer Science, we had started hearing word of a virus slowly spreading around the world. Halfway through that semester, it had reached a point where my universities had shut down in-person sessions and ASU had announced initially a 2-week online period, which then quickly ended up being the rest of the semester. For someone who was extremely to get the full college experience, it was very disheartening to have to cut out a decent chunk of our college life. However, with time and acceptance of the current world situation, I was able to quickly adapt and thrive with the new fully-online learning environment.
Although, amidst being able to adapt to the new university online life, it was a very different story when it came to my religion. As Muslims, we are very accustomed to being a close-knit community. It is an obligation to attend a group prayer on Friday afternoons on a weekly basis. This is something I have been attending ever since my parents had taught me this at a young age. However, with the way the virus was spreading and considering how crowded mosques tend to get at Friday prayers, they were forced to close down. This had a major affect on many Muslims as it is a big part of our daily routine. On top of that, when the month of Ramadan had come around, mosques could not stay open for the late-night prayers that everyone was so accustomed to attending on a daily basis. With a little more time and a lot of prayers, this year mosques has opened at full capacity for weekly Friday prayers and nightly prayers at the mosque for the month of Ramadan. From a religious perspective, COVID-19 had taught a lot of us to develop more patience than we were initially used to and have faith in our religion that at the end of the day, whatever happens in this world always has an underlying reason.
-
2022-04-29
This is a news story from the American Medical Association by Timothy M. Smith. Doctors mentioned in this article bring up the importance of diet and how it relates to fighting off COVID-19. According to a 2019 survey, researchers found only 1 in 10 adults meet the daily recommended intake of fruit and vegetables.
There is a racial disparity as well. The researchers also noted that meeting vegetable intake recommendations was highest among those 51 or older. There were also differences in vegetable intake between groups defined by income level and race. While 12.2% of adults in the highest-income households got enough veggies, only 7.7% of those living in middle-income households did. Meanwhile, 6.9% of Black adults met vegetable intake recommendations, compared with 10.1% of white adults.
Other barriers in getting the daily recommended intake have class issues, where some groups are more likely to have access to fresh food than other groups. “Perceived barriers to fruit and vegetable consumption include cost, as well as limited availability and access,” the report notes, adding that “for some persons, such barriers might have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic related to economic and supply chain disruptions that could further limit ability to access healthier foods.”
Dr. Kirley said she hopes the pandemic “will draw attention to this longstanding problem and that we’ll start to see more investment in innovative solutions to promote health through better nutrition.”
With these things in mind, it demonstrates the barriers some people might have in fighting off COVID.
-
2022-04-29
This is a news story from Inside Higher ED by Josh Moody. As schools begin to resume to pre-COVID standards, not all are happy with this change. Those with disabilities worry about the loosening guidelines and how it would affect their health. COVID rates vary across the country, but many colleges are starting to drop protocols. Some disability advocates claim that this is a wrong decision from the colleges doing this, as it is putting people at high risk in more danger.
COVID Safe Campus, a group of high-risk academics and activists with disabilities, recently launched a report card grading college coronavirus policies. The effort, they say, grew out of concerns that high-risk individuals are being left behind as colleges return to pre-pandemic normalcy. Colleges are graded on masking, COVID-19 testing and vaccination policies, and access to remote learning. Of the 90 institutions graded from this organization, majority have received a D or an F, and none earned an A.
-
2022-04-29
In this story I share how life changed for all people. How the pandemic changed lives and how lots of people experienced loss in significant ways. In this contribution I shared a reflection on my experience at the start of the pandemic and how life is post the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.
-
2022-04-29
Covid has had a huge impact on everyone throughout these past two years. Many people lost their lives, jobs, and it has impacted people mental health. Living through covid hasn't been easy for many of us we went from living our day to day life and all of a sudden a virus was infecting the whole world and we were stuck in quarantine. Personally this had a huge impact on my mental health i felt like i was going crazy being stuck all day inside with nothing to do. Not just that i was stuck with all my thoughts and feelings that i was avoiding and now they were all there with me making things harder for me. I would typically have some sort of distraction but at that moment i had none. My motivation for school decreased heavily i wasn't able to learn good through a computer screen although i did like just waking up 5 min before class started. When covid started i was a junior in High school and i thought by the time i was a senior and graduating it would all be done but i was wrong. Its been two years now and it is still a thing. It does suck knowing i missed the last half of my high school years i didn't get to experience all the fun senior activities but the thing i am grateful for is i did have a graduation ceremony which at that point is all i really wanted. Recently things have been slowly going back to "normal" and i feel like many of us have gotten used to this.
-
2022-04-29
This is a news story from The Hill by Mike Lillis. This is about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi combining COVID aid with Ukraine aid into one package. This strategy is intended to help Congress pass the spending needed for Ukraine for the war. Currently, the CDC has said that overall need for aid has diminished as cases keep going down, with more guidelines being removed.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said the prospect that combining the two bills could delay them both is “a real consideration” that will likely influence the ultimate strategy.
-
2022-04-29
The COVID-19 pandemic is largely associated with grief, pain, brokenness, division, and death. While that is true, it can also be associated with peace, quietness, solitude, growth, love, and birth. In my story, I try to strike the balance and prove that it is a paradoxical balance that can be weighed evenly.
-
2022-04-29
The story I have uploaded goes over my own personal feelings with the pandemic. It is important to me because although being in a pandemic is negative, I feel that I have really grown and been shaped into the person I am today because of it.
-
2020-04-03
My neighbors and I have known each other for multiple years, and are good friends. They came from India as immigrants back in 2000 and started a family, eventually moving in right next to us about two years before the pandemic. Once COVID hit, our usual Saturday night bonfires together came to a halt as we wanted to be safe and not spread the potential infection. Instead, they bought an entire fire pit off Amazon, and through the trees each Saturday night we continued our Saturday night bonfires together, just not next to each other. This was honestly a beautiful experience because no matter what we found a way to continue to connect with each other in a safe and timely manner! We still keep in contact to this day and reminisce on our old memories as neighbors.
-
2022-04-29
On the 11th of March 2020, COVID 19 was declared a global pandemic. With such an explosive magnitude and wide reach, the world braced for its impact. Lockdowns were set in place in every country, travel was shut down, and grocery stores were often out of many essential items. Many have lost their jobs or sources of income, Many of us have battled this virus and lost loved ones to it. For better or worse COVID 19 has changed us permanently. The impact of COVID-19 is observed in every sector around the world. It has affected education systems worldwide. After attending classes in person for the majority of my life the transition to being a full-time student online was not a simple adjustment. I encountered feelings of anxiety about my classes and was overwhelmed by having to move back home from the dorms. Thankfully the support from my family was encouraging. Being an online student has taught me more about time management than anything else and procrastination became a close friend. Missing out on class activities and gathering on campus have been discouraging. I felt as though I was missing out on the college experience and felt left out. It's important to remember while I am feeling these emotions so there are many more. Being able to connect with other people and share our experiences have opened up doors to new friendships.
I would be lying if I said I did not have trouble going to sleep at night during these difficult times. Especially when I would constantly hear the news about how the elderly are more vulnerable to exposure to the virus. The thought of losing a family member is terrifying. Before the pandemic, I would often visit my family who lives in Mexico once a year during the summer, but traveling was no longer an option, the risk was too high. As times have passed I am more comfortable traveling and being able to see loved ones. Similar to schools, churches also went online. Before COVID I was really involved with the staff team at my local church. I constantly helped with volunteer activities, I helped in the kid's ministry, and I also helped with the church's coffee bar. With the transition online I lost the sense of community and fellowship. Many of the kids graduated out of the program online and it was difficult not to be able to celebrate in person.
With every transition, I learned that adapting is the best form of survival, I cannot predict the future and I don't know what this year will unfold, but I will do my best to express gratitude for my health, and for my family’s health.
-
2020
This story is how I view the American church's response to the pandemic, both at a local and national level, and how it affected my faith.
-
2020-04-26
Nearly a decade ago, I immigrated to South Africa. At the time of the start of the pandemic, my partner and I had been struggling with our visa papers and it had been 7 years of fighting with Home Affairs. March 2020 saw the closure of Home Affairs, a national state of emergency with nearly a year of stay-at-home orders from the government, curfew, and limited access to the public sphere, and for the first time, a reprieve from the nightmares of the immigration process.
Just like that, in a single memo to the public, Home Affairs resolved all of its bureaucracy, in favour of public safety, and my partner and I were able to stay in the same place together for over 18 months. The longest we'd been able to stay together since immigrating.
In a situation that saw so much upheaval, pain, uncertainty, and widespread panic, I found precious moments of peace and safety. I felt lucky and guilty all at once. Living in a rural forest community in the mountains, with my nearest neighbour over a mile away, stay-at-home orders had little impact on my daily life and I was able to relish time at home with the people who mean the most to me. All the while, stories of social and political dissent and unrest played a continual reminder that not all was right with the world, that my experience was unique and world's apart from the collective pandemic experience. I was made painfully aware that this global phenomenon, one that connected people so thoroughly and completely, was a deeply and fundamentally separate experience for myself.
I have a privileged, unique, and unusual story of joy and peace experiencing the pandemic. As an American in another country, I was able to see first hand what a nation with limited resources could do when it decided to put public health and safety above all else. The pandemic provided me with my very first experience of feeling wholly communally supported, safe, and protected. This is a story I want to share because so many people were deeply traumatised by their government's response to covid and the subsequent fallout of the lack of support, and for them to know that it was no failing on their part for feeling like they were put through a meat grinder. Every single person on this planet deserved to experience the ease and simple joy that I was granted, and in a world with such immense wealth, there is honestly no excuse for why my experience was so unique.
-
2020-03-01
Life during Covid has been anything, but consistent for anyone. However, I would say that for me and for many others, it was a huge wake up call. When all this started, I was still in my second year at Arizona State University, and truthfully was a bit out of shape which was out of character for me being that I grew up playing sports and being active for the vast majority of my life. As sad as it may sounds, this pandemic woke me up in a way I do not think anything else could have. It gave me so much time that I did not have previously, and I had more time to think, more time to realize the bad habits I had accumulated over the past couple years, but most importantly, more time to act and change. With the help of my brother, who also viewed the pandemic as a wakeup call, I managed to become more active again and become healthier in general. During this time, I also came back to my faith in God. For a long time, I had lost my faith and questioned it, but I never actually researched the questions or doubts I had. I finally had time to do so and in doing so, I realized the truth and fullness that can only come from our relationship to the one, true, living God. I became much happier during this time as, not only was I getting back into shape, but I had mended my relationship with God, and I felt a peace that I had not felt in literal years. Ironically enough, I look back very fondly of 2020 and when Covid broke out. Yes, this time was messy, it was chaotic, it was confusing, but for me, it was a time for reflection, growth, and maturity. I know Covid has negatively affected so many people across the world, and I have been blessed to not have been affected that much by it myself or in my immediate family, but this pandemic truly awakened me. This pandemic brought me out of a depressive, lonely, and unhealthy state of living and I am incredibly grateful for the experience I had.
-
2020-05-30
COVID has a double-edged coin valuation for me. 2020 was one of the best years of my life. While that was true for me, the exact opposite was true for so many others around the world.
The photograph that is contributed to this archive is one of me and my fiancé, who got engaged in March of 2020, with our two pets and our brand-new vehicle getting ready to drive cross country in May of 2020. I had been let go from my job due to the pandemic, but my fiancé received a promotion, but that promotion required us to move across the country from Los Angeles to Camden, Arkansas. We had been talking about getting out of LA for years and this seemed like a calling from a higher power that it was the right time. This picture symbolizes the pandemic from my personal perspective because this move was the easier move I’ve ever done because everyone was at home, rather than at the hotels, restaurants, and rest stops that we needed to travel to in order to reach our new home. However, it also gave us a unique perspective to see the country without all of the people in it. When we were driving across Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas it was shocking how little traffic there was and how there seemed to be no one around. When we took a flight to check out prospective homes, there was no one on it! It was very strange to experience the isolation of COVID-19 right at the beginning because when we moved to a new town, no restaurants or events were taking place to try and meet people. It became one of the loneliest years of my life.
When 2021 came around, things got back to normal in Arkansas and life seemed to begin again. I look back at this photo and remember the excitement of something new, but also the loneliness and isolation it brought.
-
2022-09-11
My reflection on the initial shift in social norms in Tampa, Florids
-
2022-04-29
This is a short story detailing my struggles with the Christian church as I returned to the faith during the pandemic.
-
2022-04-28
I was a senior in high school when the pandemic hit. I remember right after spring break we got notice that school was over for the year. I remember that I had just gotten into my dream University and was not sure what the first year was going to look like for me at the time.
Later in August, I was on my way to my new school, classes were a hybrid mix and I was able to stay in a dorm. II remember just how proud I was to be able to experience college even though it looked much different. But that meat that I would see my mom and dog a lot less. My mom is considered high risk so I didn't want to visit too often and risk her getting sick. I remember thinking that I missed them both so much and I had a big fear of losing my dog because he was getting older and I was unable to bring him with me to college. But I had a plan I was going to have my mom and dog move to my new city so we can all be close again.
It was now my sophomore year of college and it was the first semester, the classes were amazing much better than the year before and I was actually for the first time getting to experience college and being in-person full time. By the second semester however I had much harder classes that I did not enjoy very much but I, of course, did my best with them.
A couple of weeks later on January 19th, 2022 I got word that my childhood dog whom I have had since I was in Elementary school was not doing good and he needed to be put down. I took the first bus out and was there about three hours later. Seeing him was so hard, I remembered how he was so much smaller when I got him and now he was old and had many lumps on his body. His face still looked like a puppy because you couldn't see his white hair because he is a white dog. That was one of the hardest days of my life. I think of, Tyson every day but I know he is in a better place now not suffering, and is incredibly happy. I know we will see one another again one day.
After Tyson's death I found out I had COVID and had also given it to my mom and she ended up in the hospital for a week which was incredibly hard on her. I had gotten behind in school and fell into a deep depression. It seemed like everything fell apart in my life during that time and to be honest I’ve never fully recovered from it. I know I will one day I just need to take it one day at a time.
Thanks for reading.
