write a narrative speech about your experiences during this pandemic

Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Covid 19 — My Experience during the COVID-19 Pandemic

My Experience During The Covid-19 Pandemic

• Categories: Covid 19

About this sample

Words: 440 |

Published: Jan 30, 2024

Words: 440 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, physical impact, mental and emotional impact, social impact.

• World Health Organization. (2021). Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard. https://covid19.who.int/
• American Psychiatric Association. (2020). Mental health and COVID-19. https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-blogs/apa-blog/2020/03/mental-health-and-covid-19
• The New York Times. (2020). Coping with Coronavirus Anxiety. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/well/family/coronavirus-anxiety-mental-health.html

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Heisenberg

Verified writer

• Expert in: Nursing & Health

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

3 pages / 1417 words

2 pages / 850 words

1 pages / 438 words

2 pages / 709 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Covid 19

The COVID-19 pandemic, which first emerged in late 2019, has brought about a global crisis that extends far beyond the realms of physical health. Beyond the direct threat to one's physical well-being, the pandemic has unleashed [...]

An unprecedented global crisis of our era, the COVID-19 pandemic, has left an indelible mark on humanity, reshaping the fabric of societies, disrupting economic landscapes, and exacting a heavy toll on human life. As nations [...]

The United Kingdom has long been a popular destination for tourists from around the world, known for its rich history, diverse culture, and stunning landscapes. However, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 had a [...]

The COVID-19 pandemic, a global crisis of unprecedented magnitude, has not only posed threats to physical health but has also had profound implications for mental well-being. This essay, titled "Impact of COVID-19 on Mental [...]

As a Computer Science student who never took Pre-Calculus and Basic Calculus in Senior High School, I never realized that there will be a relevance of Calculus in everyday life for a student. Before the beginning of it uses, [...]

Good morning, today I am going to give a speech on something that is hot in the news at the moment and could potentially harm us, that thing is a coronavirus. There isn’t a huge amount to say about it as it is still being [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• < Previous

Home > History Community Special Collections > Remembering COVID-19 Community Archive > Community Reflections > 21

Community Reflections

My life experience during the covid-19 pandemic.

Melissa Blanco Follow

Document Type

Class Assignment

Publication Date

Affiliation with sacred heart university.

Undergraduate, Class of 2024

My content explains what my life was like during the last seven months of the Covid-19 pandemic and how it affected my life both positively and negatively. It also explains what it was like when I graduated from High School and how I want the future generations to remember the Class of 2020.

Class assignment, Western Civilization (Dr. Marino).

Recommended Citation

Blanco, Melissa, "My Life Experience During the Covid-19 Pandemic" (2020). Community Reflections . 21. https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/covid19-reflections/21

Creative Commons License

Since September 23, 2020

Included in

Higher Education Commons , Virus Diseases Commons

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately, you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS
• Expert Gallery
• Collections
• Disciplines

Author Corner

• SelectedWorks Faculty Guidelines
• DigitalCommons@SHU: Nuts & Bolts, Policies & Procedures
• Sacred Heart University Library

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

COVID-19 Lockdown: My Experience

When the lockdown started, I was ecstatic. My final year of school had finished early, exams were cancelled, the sun was shining. I was happy, and confident I would be OK. After all, how hard could staying at home possibly be? After a while, the reality of the situation started to sink in.

The novelty of being at home wore off and I started to struggle. I suffered from regular panic attacks, frozen on the floor in my room, unable to move or speak. I had nightmares most nights, and struggled to sleep. It was as if I was stuck, trapped in my house and in my own head. I didn't know how to cope.

However, over time, I found ways to deal with the pressure. I realised that lockdown gave me more time to the things I loved, hobbies that had been previously swamped by schoolwork. I started baking, drawing and writing again, and felt free for the first time in months. I had forgotten how good it felt to be creative. I started spending more time with my family. I hadn't realised how much I had missed them.

Almost a month later, I feel so much better. I understand how difficult this must be, but it's important to remember that none of us is alone. No matter how scared, or trapped, or alone you feel, things can only get better.  Take time to revisit the things you love, and remember that all of this will eventually pass. All we can do right now is stay at home, look after ourselves and our loved ones, and look forward to a better future.

View the discussion thread.

Related Stories

Looking back on lockdown days

Art class and self care during the pandemic

We'll Walk Together

A Race to What Finish Line

C 2019 Voices of Youth. All Rights Reserved. 

Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

by Alissa Wilkinson

The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

• The Vox guide to navigating the coronavirus crisis

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We  are  still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

• A syllabus for the end of the world

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus.  Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote  Walk/Adventure!  on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

• What day is it today?

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel  Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of  Retreat  is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s  The Waves  is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

• Vox is starting a book club. Come read with us!

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it. 

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we  don’t do  is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly.  Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

Most Popular

The hottest place on earth is cracking from the stress of extreme heat, india just showed the world how to fight an authoritarian on the rise, take a mental break with the newest vox crossword, cities know how to improve traffic. they keep making the same colossal mistake., this is your kid on smartphones, today, explained.

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

More in Culture

The messy discussion around Caitlin Clark, Chennedy Carter, and the WNBA, explained

Baby Reindeer’s “Martha” is, inevitably, suing Netflix

Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis, explained

Why are we so obsessed with morning routines?

The backlash against children’s YouTuber Ms Rachel, explained

Here are all 50+ sexual misconduct allegations against Kevin Spacey

I know I’m supposed to be investing. How do I start?

The golden age of retail loyalty programs is here

This is your kid on smartphones  Audio

World leaders neglected this crisis. Now genocide looms.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

current events

12 Ideas for Writing Through the Pandemic With The New York Times

A dozen writing projects — including journals, poems, comics and more — for students to try at home.

By Natalie Proulx

The coronavirus has transformed life as we know it. Schools are closed, we’re confined to our homes and the future feels very uncertain. Why write at a time like this?

For one, we are living through history. Future historians may look back on the journals, essays and art that ordinary people are creating now to tell the story of life during the coronavirus.

But writing can also be deeply therapeutic. It can be a way to express our fears, hopes and joys. It can help us make sense of the world and our place in it.

Plus, even though school buildings are shuttered, that doesn’t mean learning has stopped. Writing can help us reflect on what’s happening in our lives and form new ideas.

We want to help inspire your writing about the coronavirus while you learn from home. Below, we offer 12 projects for students, all based on pieces from The New York Times, including personal narrative essays, editorials, comic strips and podcasts. Each project features a Times text and prompts to inspire your writing, as well as related resources from The Learning Network to help you develop your craft. Some also offer opportunities to get your work published in The Times, on The Learning Network or elsewhere.

We know this list isn’t nearly complete. If you have ideas for other pandemic-related writing projects, please suggest them in the comments.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

Seven short essays about life during the pandemic

The boston book festival's at home community writing project invites area residents to describe their experiences during this unprecedented time..

My alarm sounds at 8:15 a.m. I open my eyes and take a deep breath. I wiggle my toes and move my legs. I do this religiously every morning. Today, marks day 74 of staying at home.

My mornings are filled with reading biblical scripture, meditation, breathing in the scents of a hanging eucalyptus branch in the shower, and making tea before I log into my computer to work. After an hour-and-a-half Zoom meeting, I decided to take a long walk to the post office and grab a fresh bouquet of burnt orange ranunculus flowers. I embrace the warm sun beaming on my face. I feel joy. I feel at peace.

I enter my apartment and excessively wash my hands and face. I pour a glass of iced kombucha. I sit at my table and look at the text message on my phone. My coworker writes that she is thinking of me during this difficult time. She must be referring to the Amy Cooper incident. I learn shortly that she is not.

Advertisement

I Google Minneapolis and see his name: George Floyd. And just like that a simple and beautiful day transitions into a day of sorrow.

Nakia Hill, Boston

It was a wobbly, yet solemn little procession: three masked mourners and a canine. Beginning in Kenmore Square, at David and Sue Horner’s condo, it proceeded up Commonwealth Avenue Mall.

S. Sue Horner died on Good Friday, April 10, in the Year of the Virus. Sue did not die of the virus but her parting was hemmed by it: no gatherings to mark the passing of this splendid human being.

David devised a send-off nevertheless. On April 23rd, accompanied by his daughter and son-in-law, he set out for Old South Church. David led, bearing the urn. His daughter came next, holding her phone aloft, speaker on, through which her brother in Illinois played the bagpipes for the length of the procession, its soaring thrum infusing the Mall. Her husband came last with Melon, their golden retriever.

I unlocked the empty church and led the procession into the columbarium. David drew the urn from its velvet cover, revealing a golden vessel inset with incandescent tiles. We lifted the urn into the niche, prayed, recited Psalm 23, and shared some words.

It was far too small for the luminous “Dr. Sue”, but what we could manage in the Year of the Virus.

Nancy S. Taylor, Boston

On April 26, 2020, our household was a bustling home for four people. Our two sons, ages 18 and 22, have a lot of energy. We are among the lucky ones. I can work remotely. Our food and shelter are not at risk.

As I write this a week later, it is much quieter here.

On April 27, our older son, an EMT, transported a COVID-19 patient to the ER. He left home to protect my delicate health and became ill with the virus a week later.

On April 29, my husband’s 95-year-old father had a stroke. My husband left immediately to be with his 90-year-old mother near New York City and is now preparing for his father’s discharge from the hospital. Rehab people will come to the house; going to a facility would be too dangerous.

My husband just called me to describe today’s hospital visit. The doctors had warned that although his father had regained the ability to speak, he could only repeat what was said to him.

“It’s me,” said my husband.

“It’s me,” said my father-in-law.

“I love you,” said my husband.

“I love you,” said my father-in-law.

“Sooooooooo much,” said my father-in-law.

Lucia Thompson, Wayland

Would racism exist if we were blind?

I felt his eyes bore into me as I walked through the grocery store. At first, I thought nothing of it. With the angst in the air attributable to COVID, I understood the anxiety-provoking nature of feeling as though your 6-foot bubble had burst. So, I ignored him and maintained my distance. But he persisted, glaring at my face, squinting to see who I was underneath the mask. This time I looked back, when he yelled, in my mother tongue, for me to go back to my country.

In shock, I just laughed. How could he tell what I was under my mask? Or see anything through the sunglasses he was wearing inside? It baffled me. I laughed at the irony that he would use my own language against me, that he knew enough to guess where I was from in some version of culturally competent racism. I laughed because dealing with the truth behind that comment generated a sadness in me that was too much to handle. If not now, then when will we be together?

So I ask again, would racism exist if we were blind?

Faizah Shareef, Boston

My Family is “Out” There

But I am “in” here. Life is different now “in” Assisted Living since the deadly COVID-19 arrived. Now the staff, employees, and all 100 residents have our temperatures taken daily. Everyone else, including my family, is “out” there. People like the hairdresser are really missed — with long straight hair and masks, we don’t even recognize ourselves.

Since mid-March we are in quarantine “in” our rooms with meals served. Activities are practically non-existent. We can sit on the back patio 6 feet apart, wearing masks, do exercises there, chat, and walk nearby. Nothing inside. Hopefully June will improve.

My family is “out” there — somewhere! Most are working from home (or Montana). Hopefully an August wedding will happen, but unfortunately, I may still be “in” here.

From my window I wave to my son “out” there. Recently, when my daughter visited, I opened the window “in” my second-floor room and could see and hear her perfectly “out” there. Next time she will bring a chair so we can have an “in” and “out” conversation all day, or until we run out of words.

Barbara Anderson, Raynham

My boyfriend Marcial lives in Boston, and I live in New York City. We had been doing the long-distance thing pretty successfully until coronavirus hit. In mid-March, I was furloughed from my temp job, Marcial began working remotely, and New York started shutting down. I went to Boston to stay with Marcial.

We are opposites in many ways, but we share a love of food. The kitchen has been the center of quarantine life —and also quarantine problems.

Marcial and I have gone from eating out and cooking/grocery shopping for each other during our periodic visits to cooking/grocery shopping with each other all the time. We’ve argued over things like the proper way to make rice and what greens to buy for salad. Our habits are deeply rooted in our upbringing and individual cultures (Filipino immigrant and American-born Chinese, hence the strong rice opinions).

On top of the mundane issues, we’ve also dealt with a flooded kitchen (resulting in cockroaches) and a mandoline accident leading to an ER visit. Marcial and I have spent quarantine navigating how to handle the unexpected and how to integrate our lifestyles. We’ve been eating well along the way.

Melissa Lee, Waltham

It’s 3 a.m. and my dog Rikki just gave me a worried look. Up again?

“I can’t sleep,” I say. I flick the light, pick up “Non-Zero Probabilities.” But the words lay pinned to the page like swatted flies. I watch new “Killing Eve” episodes, play old Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats songs. Still night.

We are — what? — 12 agitated weeks into lockdown, and now this. The thing that got me was Chauvin’s sunglasses. Perched nonchalantly on his head, undisturbed, as if he were at a backyard BBQ. Or anywhere other than kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, on his life. And Floyd was a father, as we all now know, having seen his daughter Gianna on Stephen Jackson’s shoulders saying “Daddy changed the world.”

Precious child. I pray, safeguard her.

Rikki has her own bed. But she won’t leave me. A Goddess of Protection. She does that thing dogs do, hovers increasingly closely the more agitated I get. “I’m losing it,” I say. I know. And like those weighted gravity blankets meant to encourage sleep, she drapes her 70 pounds over me, covering my restless heart with safety.

As if daybreak, or a prayer, could bring peace today.

Kirstan Barnett, Watertown

Until June 30, send your essay (200 words or less) about life during COVID-19 via bostonbookfest.org . Some essays will be published on the festival’s blog and some will appear in The Boston Globe.

What Life Was Like for Students in the Pandemic Year

• Share article

In this video, Navajo student Miles Johnson shares how he experienced the stress and anxiety of schools shutting down last year. Miles’ teacher shared his experience and those of her other students in a recent piece for Education Week. In these short essays below, teacher Claire Marie Grogan’s 11th grade students at Oceanside High School on Long Island, N.Y., describe their pandemic experiences. Their writings have been slightly edited for clarity. Read Grogan’s essay .

“Hours Staring at Tiny Boxes on the Screen”

By Kimberly Polacco, 16

I stare at my blank computer screen, trying to find the motivation to turn it on, but my finger flinches every time it hovers near the button. I instead open my curtains. It is raining outside, but it does not matter, I will not be going out there for the rest of the day. The sound of pounding raindrops contributes to my headache enough to make me turn on my computer in hopes that it will give me something to drown out the noise. But as soon as I open it up, I feel the weight of the world crash upon my shoulders.

Each 42-minute period drags on by. I spend hours upon hours staring at tiny boxes on a screen, one of which my exhausted face occupies, and attempt to retain concepts that have been presented to me through this device. By the time I have the freedom of pressing the “leave” button on my last Google Meet of the day, my eyes are heavy and my legs feel like mush from having not left my bed since I woke up.

Tomorrow arrives, except this time here I am inside of a school building, interacting with my first period teacher face to face. We talk about our favorite movies and TV shows to stream as other kids pile into the classroom. With each passing period I accumulate more and more of these tiny meaningless conversations everywhere I go with both teachers and students. They may not seem like much, but to me they are everything because I know that the next time I am expected to report to school, I will be trapped in the bubble of my room counting down the hours until I can sit down in my freshly sanitized wooden desk again.

“My Only Parent Essentially on Her Death Bed”

By Nick Ingargiola, 16

My mom had COVID-19 for ten weeks. She got sick during the first month school buildings were shut. The difficulty of navigating an online classroom was already overwhelming, and when mixed with my only parent essentially on her death bed, it made it unbearable. Focusing on schoolwork was impossible, and watching my mother struggle to lift up her arm broke my heart.

My mom has been through her fair share of diseases from pancreatic cancer to seizures and even as far as a stroke that paralyzed her entire left side. It is safe to say she has been through a lot. The craziest part is you would never know it. She is the strongest and most positive person I’ve ever met. COVID hit her hard. Although I have watched her go through life and death multiple times, I have never seen her so physically and mentally drained.

I initially was overjoyed to complete my school year in the comfort of my own home, but once my mom got sick, I couldn’t handle it. No one knows what it’s like to pretend like everything is OK until they are forced to. I would wake up at 8 after staying up until 5 in the morning pondering the possibility of losing my mother. She was all I had. I was forced to turn my camera on and float in the fake reality of being fine although I wasn’t. The teachers tried to keep the class engaged by obligating the students to participate. This was dreadful. I didn’t want to talk. I had to hide the distress in my voice. If only the teachers understood what I was going through. I was hesitant because I didn’t want everyone to know that the virus that was infecting and killing millions was knocking on my front door.

After my online classes, I was required to finish an immense amount of homework while simultaneously hiding my sadness so that my mom wouldn’t worry about me. She was already going through a lot. There was no reason to add me to her list of worries. I wasn’t even able to give her a hug. All I could do was watch.

“The Way of Staying Sane”

By Lynda Feustel, 16

Entering year two of the pandemic is strange. It barely seems a day since last March, but it also seems like a lifetime. As an only child and introvert, shutting down my world was initially simple and relatively easy. My friends and I had been super busy with the school play, and while I was sad about it being canceled, I was struggling a lot during that show and desperately needed some time off.

As March turned to April, virtual school began, and being alone really set in. I missed my friends and us being together. The isolation felt real with just my parents and me, even as we spent time together. My friends and I began meeting on Facetime every night to watch TV and just be together in some way. We laughed at insane jokes we made and had homework and therapy sessions over Facetime and grew closer through digital and literal walls.

The summer passed with in-person events together, and the virus faded into the background for a little while. We went to the track and the beach and hung out in people’s backyards.

Then school came for us in a more nasty way than usual. In hybrid school we were separated. People had jobs, sports, activities, and quarantines. Teachers piled on work, and the virus grew more present again. The group text put out hundreds of messages a day while the Facetimes came to a grinding halt, and meeting in person as a group became more of a rarity. Being together on video and in person was the way of staying sane.

In a way I am in a similar place to last year, working and looking for some change as we enter the second year of this mess.

“In History Class, Reports of Heightening Cases”

By Vivian Rose, 16

I remember the moment my freshman year English teacher told me about the young writers’ conference at Bread Loaf during my sophomore year. At first, I didn’t want to apply, the deadline had passed, but for some strange reason, the directors of the program extended it another week. It felt like it was meant to be. It was in Vermont in the last week of May when the flowers have awakened and the sun is warm.

I submitted my work, and two weeks later I got an email of my acceptance. I screamed at the top of my lungs in the empty house; everyone was out, so I was left alone to celebrate my small victory. It was rare for them to admit sophomores. Usually they accept submissions only from juniors and seniors.

That was the first week of February 2020. All of a sudden, there was some talk about this strange virus coming from China. We thought nothing of it. Every night, I would fall asleep smiling, knowing that I would be able to go to the exact conference that Robert Frost attended for 42 years.

Then, as if overnight, it seemed the virus had swung its hand and had gripped parts of the country. Every newscast was about the disease. Every day in history, we would look at the reports of heightening cases and joke around that this could never become a threat as big as Dr. Fauci was proposing. Then, March 13th came around--it was the last day before the world seemed to shut down. Just like that, Bread Loaf would vanish from my grasp.

“One Day Every Day Won’t Be As Terrible”

By Nick Wollweber, 17

COVID created personal problems for everyone, some more serious than others, but everyone had a struggle.

As the COVID lock-down took hold, the main thing weighing on my mind was my oldest brother, Joe, who passed away in January 2019 unexpectedly in his sleep. Losing my brother was a complete gut punch and reality check for me at 14 and 15 years old. 2019 was a year of struggle, darkness, sadness, frustration. I didn’t want to learn after my brother had passed, but I had to in order to move forward and find my new normal.

Routine and always having things to do and places to go is what let me cope in the year after Joe died. Then COVID came and gave me the option to let up and let down my guard. I struggled with not wanting to take care of personal hygiene. That was the beginning of an underlying mental problem where I wouldn’t do things that were necessary for everyday life.

My “coping routine” that got me through every day and week the year before was gone. COVID wasn’t beneficial to me, but it did bring out the true nature of my mental struggles and put a name to it. Since COVID, I have been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. I began taking antidepressants and going to therapy a lot more.

COVID made me realize that I’m not happy with who I am and that I needed to change. I’m still not happy with who I am. I struggle every day, but I am working towards a goal that one day every day won’t be as terrible.

Coverage of social and emotional learning is supported in part by a grant from the NoVo Foundation, at www.novofoundation.org . Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage. A version of this article appeared in the March 31, 2021 edition of Education Week as What Life Was Like for Students in the Pandemic Year

Sign Up for The Savvy Principal

Edweek top school jobs.

Sign Up & Sign In

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Tell us about your experiences during the Covid pandemic

Whether you’ve suffered in the past year or been lucky enough to escape the worst of it, we would like to hear your stories about the pandemic

The pandemic has been a difficult, dramatic time for so many of us, for so many different reasons. We have lost loved ones, had our families torn apart, struggled financially and emotionally. Some of us have been stressed by overwork; others by sudden unemployment. We have had to shield from the outside world – or been reluctantly obliged to mix with it.

If you have a story to share we would love to hear from you. You might be a doctor working flat out in A&E, a student who was locked down at university, a key worker forced to serve the public with inadequate PPE, a single mother who had to go months without childcare, a son who couldn’t visit his dying father in the care home … or even one of the lucky ones who has come out of the past year feeling stronger and more optimistic about life.

For a special feature, we’re aiming to put readers in touch with each other, to talk about their experiences and insights.

Share your experiences

You can get in touch by filling in the form below. Your responses are secure as the form is encrypted and only the Guardian has access to your contributions. One of our journalists will be in contact before we publish, so please do leave contact details.

If you’re having trouble using the form, click here . Read terms of service here .

• Coronavirus

Most viewed

8 Lessons We Can Learn From the COVID-19 Pandemic

BY KATHY KATELLA May 14, 2021

Note: Information in this article was accurate at the time of original publication. Because information about COVID-19 changes rapidly, we encourage you to visit the websites of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), and your state and local government for the latest information.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed life as we know it—and it may have changed us individually as well, from our morning routines to our life goals and priorities. Many say the world has changed forever. But this coming year, if the vaccines drive down infections and variants are kept at bay, life could return to some form of normal. At that point, what will we glean from the past year? Are there silver linings or lessons learned?

“Humanity's memory is short, and what is not ever-present fades quickly,” says Manisha Juthani, MD , a Yale Medicine infectious diseases specialist. The bubonic plague, for example, ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages—resurfacing again and again—but once it was under control, people started to forget about it, she says. “So, I would say one major lesson from a public health or infectious disease perspective is that it’s important to remember and recognize our history. This is a period we must remember.”

We asked our Yale Medicine experts to weigh in on what they think are lessons worth remembering, including those that might help us survive a future virus or nurture a resilience that could help with life in general.

Lesson 1: Masks are useful tools

What happened: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) relaxed its masking guidance for those who have been fully vaccinated. But when the pandemic began, it necessitated a global effort to ensure that everyone practiced behaviors to keep themselves healthy and safe—and keep others healthy as well. This included the widespread wearing of masks indoors and outside.

What we’ve learned: Not everyone practiced preventive measures such as mask wearing, maintaining a 6-foot distance, and washing hands frequently. But, Dr. Juthani says, “I do think many people have learned a whole lot about respiratory pathogens and viruses, and how they spread from one person to another, and that sort of old-school common sense—you know, if you don’t feel well—whether it’s COVID-19 or not—you don’t go to the party. You stay home.”

Masks are a case in point. They are a key COVID-19 prevention strategy because they provide a barrier that can keep respiratory droplets from spreading. Mask-wearing became more common across East Asia after the 2003 SARS outbreak in that part of the world. “There are many East Asian cultures where the practice is still that if you have a cold or a runny nose, you put on a mask,” Dr. Juthani says.

She hopes attitudes in the U.S. will shift in that direction after COVID-19. “I have heard from a number of people who are amazed that we've had no flu this year—and they know masks are one of the reasons,” she says. “They’ve told me, ‘When the winter comes around, if I'm going out to the grocery store, I may just put on a mask.’”

Lesson 2: Telehealth might become the new normal

What happened: Doctors and patients who have used telehealth (technology that allows them to conduct medical care remotely), found it can work well for certain appointments, ranging from cardiology check-ups to therapy for a mental health condition. Many patients who needed a medical test have also discovered it may be possible to substitute a home version.

What we’ve learned: While there are still problems for which you need to see a doctor in person, the pandemic introduced a new urgency to what had been a gradual switchover to platforms like Zoom for remote patient visits. 

More doctors also encouraged patients to track their blood pressure at home , and to use at-home equipment for such purposes as diagnosing sleep apnea and even testing for colon cancer . Doctors also can fine-tune cochlear implants remotely .

“It happened very quickly,” says Sharon Stoll, DO, a neurologist. One group that has benefitted is patients who live far away, sometimes in other parts of the country—or even the world, she says. “I always like to see my patients at least twice a year. Now, we can see each other in person once a year, and if issues come up, we can schedule a telehealth visit in-between,” Dr. Stoll says. “This way I may hear about an issue before it becomes a problem, because my patients have easier access to me, and I have easier access to them.”

Meanwhile, insurers are becoming more likely to cover telehealth, Dr. Stoll adds. “That is a silver lining that will hopefully continue.”

Lesson 3: Vaccines are powerful tools

What happened: Given the recent positive results from vaccine trials, once again vaccines are proving to be powerful for preventing disease.

What we’ve learned: Vaccines really are worth getting, says Dr. Stoll, who had COVID-19 and experienced lingering symptoms, including chronic headaches . “I have lots of conversations—and sometimes arguments—with people about vaccines,” she says. Some don’t like the idea of side effects. “I had vaccine side effects and I’ve had COVID-19 side effects, and I say nothing compares to the actual illness. Unfortunately, I speak from experience.”

Dr. Juthani hopes the COVID-19 vaccine spotlight will motivate people to keep up with all of their vaccines, including childhood and adult vaccines for such diseases as measles , chicken pox, shingles , and other viruses. She says people have told her they got the flu vaccine this year after skipping it in previous years. (The CDC has reported distributing an exceptionally high number of doses this past season.)  

But, she cautions that a vaccine is not a magic bullet—and points out that scientists can’t always produce one that works. “As advanced as science is, there have been multiple failed efforts to develop a vaccine against the HIV virus,” she says. “This time, we were lucky that we were able build on the strengths that we've learned from many other vaccine development strategies to develop multiple vaccines for COVID-19 .” 

Lesson 4: Everyone is not treated equally, especially in a pandemic

What happened: COVID-19 magnified disparities that have long been an issue for a variety of people.

What we’ve learned: Racial and ethnic minority groups especially have had disproportionately higher rates of hospitalization for COVID-19 than non-Hispanic white people in every age group, and many other groups faced higher levels of risk or stress. These groups ranged from working mothers who also have primary responsibility for children, to people who have essential jobs, to those who live in rural areas where there is less access to health care.

“One thing that has been recognized is that when people were told to work from home, you needed to have a job that you could do in your house on a computer,” says Dr. Juthani. “Many people who were well off were able do that, but they still needed to have food, which requires grocery store workers and truck drivers. Nursing home residents still needed certified nursing assistants coming to work every day to care for them and to bathe them.”  

As far as racial inequities, Dr. Juthani cites President Biden’s appointment of Yale Medicine’s Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, MHS , as inaugural chair of a federal COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force. “Hopefully the new focus is a first step,” Dr. Juthani says.

Lesson 5: We need to take mental health seriously

What happened: There was a rise in reported mental health problems that have been described as “a second pandemic,” highlighting mental health as an issue that needs to be addressed.

What we’ve learned: Arman Fesharaki-Zadeh, MD, PhD , a behavioral neurologist and neuropsychiatrist, believes the number of mental health disorders that were on the rise before the pandemic is surging as people grapple with such matters as juggling work and childcare, job loss, isolation, and losing a loved one to COVID-19.

The CDC reports that the percentage of adults who reported symptoms of anxiety of depression in the past 7 days increased from 36.4 to 41.5 % from August 2020 to February 2021. Other reports show that having COVID-19 may contribute, too, with its lingering or long COVID symptoms, which can include “foggy mind,” anxiety , depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder .

 “We’re seeing these problems in our clinical setting very, very often,” Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh says. “By virtue of necessity, we can no longer ignore this. We're seeing these folks, and we have to take them seriously.”

Lesson 6: We have the capacity for resilience

What happened: While everyone’s situation is different­­ (and some people have experienced tremendous difficulties), many have seen that it’s possible to be resilient in a crisis.

What we’ve learned: People have practiced self-care in a multitude of ways during the pandemic as they were forced to adjust to new work schedules, change their gym routines, and cut back on socializing. Many started seeking out new strategies to counter the stress.

“I absolutely believe in the concept of resilience, because we have this effective reservoir inherent in all of us—be it the product of evolution, or our ancestors going through catastrophes, including wars, famines, and plagues,” Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh says. “I think inherently, we have the means to deal with crisis. The fact that you and I are speaking right now is the result of our ancestors surviving hardship. I think resilience is part of our psyche. It's part of our DNA, essentially.”

Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh believes that even small changes are highly effective tools for creating resilience. The changes he suggests may sound like the same old advice: exercise more, eat healthy food, cut back on alcohol, start a meditation practice, keep up with friends and family. “But this is evidence-based advice—there has been research behind every one of these measures,” he says.

But we have to also be practical, he notes. “If you feel overwhelmed by doing too many things, you can set a modest goal with one new habit—it could be getting organized around your sleep. Once you’ve succeeded, move on to another one. Then you’re building momentum.”

Lesson 7: Community is essential—and technology is too

What happened: People who were part of a community during the pandemic realized the importance of human connection, and those who didn’t have that kind of support realized they need it.

What we’ve learned: Many of us have become aware of how much we need other people—many have managed to maintain their social connections, even if they had to use technology to keep in touch, Dr. Juthani says. “There's no doubt that it's not enough, but even that type of community has helped people.”

Even people who aren’t necessarily friends or family are important. Dr. Juthani recalled how she encouraged her mail carrier to sign up for the vaccine, soon learning that the woman’s mother and husband hadn’t gotten it either. “They are all vaccinated now,” Dr. Juthani says. “So, even by word of mouth, community is a way to make things happen.”

It’s important to note that some people are naturally introverted and may have enjoyed having more solitude when they were forced to stay at home—and they should feel comfortable with that, Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh says. “I think one has to keep temperamental tendencies like this in mind.”

But loneliness has been found to suppress the immune system and be a precursor to some diseases, he adds. “Even for introverted folks, the smallest circle is preferable to no circle at all,” he says.

Lesson 8: Sometimes you need a dose of humility

What happened: Scientists and nonscientists alike learned that a virus can be more powerful than they are. This was evident in the way knowledge about the virus changed over time in the past year as scientific investigation of it evolved.

What we’ve learned: “As infectious disease doctors, we were resident experts at the beginning of the pandemic because we understand pathogens in general, and based on what we’ve seen in the past, we might say there are certain things that are likely to be true,” Dr. Juthani says. “But we’ve seen that we have to take these pathogens seriously. We know that COVID-19 is not the flu. All these strokes and clots, and the loss of smell and taste that have gone on for months are things that we could have never known or predicted. So, you have to have respect for the unknown and respect science, but also try to give scientists the benefit of the doubt,” she says.

“We have been doing the best we can with the knowledge we have, in the time that we have it,” Dr. Juthani says. “I think most of us have had to have the humility to sometimes say, ‘I don't know. We're learning as we go.’"

Information provided in Yale Medicine articles is for general informational purposes only. No content in the articles should ever be used as a substitute for medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician. Always seek the individual advice of your health care provider with any questions you have regarding a medical condition.

More news from Yale Medicine

A personal narrative of my COVID experience

One of the Experts by Experience supporting the Prevention and Early Detection Theme of ARC EoE, the University of Hertfordshire shares her reflections and experiences of life during COVID 19. Her personal narrative shines a light on the value of community and the importance of hearing individual voices from these communities to guide what, how and why we do research.

I am an Expert by Experience supporting the Prevention and Early Detection Theme of ARC EoE and the University of Hertfordshire. I live with my parents who are in their mid – late 70s in a rural Village of around 1000 people.

Before COVID my life really revolved around my Expert by Experience work and involvement in Church and community activities so mostly all outdoors and with people.  I used public transport to get around.  When COVID struck, like most people, my diary cleared within a few days and my life moved indoors and on to my laptop and phone.

There was initially extreme anxiety amongst my community groups about how to identify the vulnerable, a great desire to help, and a lot of pressure to do something.  This was very difficult as we were in a pandemic and we were very concerned about spreading infection.  It felt very powerless.

Before COVID I ran a popular weekly craft group which also provided a lot of social support.  Fortunately, one of the Group members set up a local craft group on Facebook immediately on lockdown and a lot of members joined.  Those not online I have continued to contact via phone, text and email regularly so we keep connected until we can meet again. 

Then the authorities banded together and the Church went online and continued the Food Banks which was all great.  I contacted some of the local groups to see how we could work together and  started mapping my community in terms of what resources were available to support people as I felt a coordinated community response was the best approach to pool our resources and identify potential gaps.  For me generally though it felt like a disconnect between the authorities and residents.  I felt that we were all worried about the same thing, the vulnerable and people falling through the gaps but somehow, we were not able to join up in much of a practical way. 

I also found there was also a big confusion over who the vulnerable were.  Some people did not see themselves as vulnerable while others not seen as vulnerable clearly were. Even though my parents are in their 70s, it was very difficult to know whether they were eligible for supermarket priority slots (not that we could get any anyway and we soon gave up trying).  This caused a lot of tension and arguments when the food started to run down as to how to get supplies as no one wanted anyone to go out.  A friend whose only method of communication was the phone ran out of phone credit early on and I spent the rest of lockdown concerned about them until I could go and knock on the door again once restrictions had lifted.

Fortunately, quite early on, our local supermarket began home delivery by email order and card and a local business set up a fruit and veg stall on one of the local farms. This helped greatly in the early days of lockdown as getting fresh supplies was very difficult.  Some people I know felt this gave them more independence rather than relying on others to get food for them.  Our local shop was also very supportive of our community and local pharmacies did home deliveries of prescriptions.

After much stress and feeling powerless being told to stay at home and also wanting to stay safe and not spread infection, I finally found the best way to support my community was from my laptop and phone, sharing official info from the Government website and our Councils, local Library resources, Neighbourhood Watch, local Surgery Patient Participation Group, Local Resilience Forum and Third Sector contacts and other trusted sources via our community Facebook page, email and phone.  I was able to quickly pass on public health info as well as info on local supplies as resources and information emerged.  I also printed official COVID posters for the local notice boards as nothing was appearing on the council boards due to the situation.

From the beginning of lockdown I started to use social media more for public information but found the COVID information very useful but the volume of it was becoming overwhelming and decided to also post things to help motivate, inspire and lift spirits particularly in the depths of lockdown such as daily photos of flowers from the garden, a Virtual History tour using our village photo archive and an armchair quiz. These have been very popular and I found it a good way of checking in with people I knew as they responded to posts. It was also useful to help get lost items of post redelivered and get lost cats back home.

Before lockdown I was getting increasingly anxious about the situation and was very happy once we were in lockdown as I felt safe.  After some time, I was worried that it felt too safe and I was then anxious about going out as most days I stayed in.  The outside environment felt very unsafe as germs could be anywhere, on surfaces, in the air and it felt that nowhere was safe.  When I did go out into the Village I have known all my life, it felt very strange, quite disorientating and even crossing the road seemed daunting. When it was mentioned that lockdown was going to end then I became very anxious and this has only increased over the weeks.  I still hardly go out.  I always wear a mask when I am near or with people even though I know nothing about whether masks are effective or necessary and it is probably starting to look a little odd, I feel safer with one on.

Throughout lockdown I was terrified I had COVID as I was quite unwell for some time early on with digestive symptoms not listed by the Government but which were reported in the media.  It was difficult to tell if they were COVID or stress related and I was not sure what to do. I had telephone consultations with GPs and found these excellent. I would like this option to continue.

I have found a lot of official advice to be confusing particularly now that restrictions are lifting and am not sure who I can meet as the situation is changing rapidly.  There is a lot of pressure from friends who are bored, fed up and want to meet up.  Some friends have been asking to meet up for weeks but I don’t want to go out as I am not sure if it is safe. It feels now that they might think I am avoiding them when really, I am afraid. Some friends have been shielding and are highly anxious, afraid and are not sure how to begin to take those first steps outside.

I look at the terrible things which are happening as reported in the media and feel even more afraid of going out.  Not knowing what to expect when going out, how I am supposed to behave, how other people are going to behave, what shops, banks, etc are open, opening times and especially whether toilets are open makes it difficult to even think about going out to Town centres and whether it is actually worth it.  I used to get public transport but cannot imagine doing this now which also makes it very difficult. 

Despite being highly anxious about technology which made it difficult to try or use Zoom at the beginning of lockdown, I am so glad that I persevered with all the problems of anxiety and unstable internet connection etc as it has meant that I have been able to continue with a small amount of work, some community activities, access webinars, creative sessions and undertake online Spot the Signs Suicide training.  Zoom has opened up so many opportunities and now I am afraid of having to go back into buildings for any reason and want the online world to continue. It also cuts out all the problems, the stress and tiredness of travelling on public transport as it enables me to manage my health much better.  I think it makes things more accessible for those who are disabled, managing health conditions or who have caring responsibilities.

I think people are going to need a lot of support: getting acclimatized to going out again and knowing what to expect and how to behave when outside. Help and support adjusting to unemployment, new work environments, working from home etc. Support with bereavement, loss and change. 

Being indoors every day during lockdown caused a lot of tension in the house as everyone was anxious about the situation and doing anything was so difficult.  Constant hand washing, checking for symptoms, checking for information on the news, talking and thinking about COVID.  We had lots of arguments over food and going out for supplies.

COVID has been quite traumatising, watching the horror of the situation unfold on a global and local scale.  Doing anything at all in the early days was so challenging and it felt like it was all I thought about.  There has been such a lot of loss that I think it will take a long time for the full impact to be felt and dealt with.  Fearing for the lives of friends who have been ill with COVID and not being able to see them felt very powerless and am not sure how to grieve the loss of a family member when we were not able to attend their direct funeral early on in lockdown. 

It has been difficult to plan the future when everything is so uncertain and there seems no end to it. The foundations of our lives have been and continue to be affected; our surroundings. employment, housing, the food we eat, money and resources, transport, education and skills, families, friends and communities have all been affected. All of these practical everyday concerns are connected to mental health problems and will be greater and need addressing.  Our community food bank definitely saw a big increase in demand.

At the beginning it seemed that we were all in it together and that there were probably few people who were not thinking about COVID. Then it became apparent that there were great divides, between generations, income groups etc that were all differently affected and that some had not been affected at all whilst others had lost so much. For me it shone a spotlight on all the problems in our society such as poverty which were greatly exacerbated by the situation. 

Technology poverty was also greatly apparent.  One day everything was outdoors and people, the next day everything went online and the whole world just vanished.  Councils, Churches, shops, services all shut their doors and put their services online.  My great concern throughout was for those not online and I feel that more needs to be done now to support people to get more connected in as many preferred ways as possible.  Teaching people how to text, setting up email accounts, teaching skills around accessing online resources and services, video conference technology, as well as connection through neighbours, local groups, services, etc

Community became more important than ever .  We need to strengthen the links and foster greater connections between neighbours, community groups, third sector, businesses, faith groups, services etc.

Keeping what has been useful; the use of video conference technology for meetings enables people who generally use public transport/or are unable or find it difficult to leave home to participate in involvement or research work e.g. disabilities, health conditions, carer commitments etc.  Explore the use of technology for online training resources for the public on all forms of healthcare, caring, support groups might be useful to continue.

Prevention and early detection in health and social care

Research in patient and public involvement

We have a research theme dedicated to finding out the best ways to involve patients, service users, carers and members of the public in research.

• Current Issue
• Journal Archive
• Current Call

Search form

Coronavirus: My Experience During the Pandemic

Anastasiya Kandratsenka George Washington High School, Class of 2021

At this point in time there shouldn't be a single person who doesn't know about the coronavirus, or as they call it, COVID-19. The coronavirus is a virus that originated in China, reached the U.S. and eventually spread all over the world by January of 2020. The common symptoms of the virus include shortness of breath, chills, sore throat, headache, loss of taste and smell, runny nose, vomiting and nausea. As it has been established, it might take up to 14 days for the symptoms to show. On top of that, the virus is also highly contagious putting all age groups at risk. The elderly and individuals with chronic diseases such as pneumonia or heart disease are in the top risk as the virus attacks the immune system. 

The virus first appeared on the news and media platforms in the month of January of this year. The United States and many other countries all over the globe saw no reason to panic as it seemed that the virus presented no possible threat. Throughout the next upcoming months, the virus began to spread very quickly, alerting health officials not only in the U.S., but all over the world. As people started digging into the origin of the virus, it became clear that it originated in China. Based on everything scientists have looked at, the virus came from a bat that later infected other animals, making it way to humans. As it goes for the United States, the numbers started rising quickly, resulting in the cancellation of sports events, concerts, large gatherings and then later on schools. 

As it goes personally for me, my school was shut down on March 13th. The original plan was to put us on a two weeks leave, returning on March 30th but, as the virus spread rapidly and things began escalating out of control very quickly, President Trump announced a state of emergency and the whole country was put on quarantine until April 30th. At that point, schools were officially shut down for the rest of the school year. Distanced learning was introduced, online classes were established, a new norm was put in place. As for the School District of Philadelphia distanced learning and online classes began on May 4th. From that point on I would have classes four times a week, from 8AM till 3PM. Virtual learning was something that I never had to experience and encounter before. It was all new and different for me, just as it was for millions of students all over the United States. We were forced to transfer from physically attending school, interacting with our peers and teachers, participating in fun school events and just being in a classroom setting, to just looking at each other through a computer screen in a number of days. That is something that we all could have never seen coming, it was all so sudden and new. 

My experience with distanced learning was not very great. I get distracted very easily and   find it hard to concentrate, especially when it comes to school. In a classroom I was able to give my full attention to what was being taught, I was all there. However, when we had the online classes, I could not focus and listen to what my teachers were trying to get across. I got distracted very easily, missing out on important information that was being presented. My entire family which consists of five members, were all home during the quarantine. I have two little siblings who are very loud and demanding, so I’m sure it can be imagined how hard it was for me to concentrate on school and do what was asked of me when I had these two running around the house. On top of school, I also had to find a job and work 35 hours a week to support my family during the pandemic. My mother lost her job for the time being and my father was only able to work from home. As we have a big family, the income of my father was not enough. I made it my duty to help out and support our family as much as I could: I got a job at a local supermarket and worked there as a cashier for over two months. 

While I worked at the supermarket, I was exposed to dozens of people every day and with all the protection that was implemented to protect the customers and the workers, I was lucky enough to not get the virus. As I say that, my grandparents who do not even live in the U.S. were not so lucky. They got the virus and spent over a month isolated, in a hospital bed, with no one by their side. Our only way of communicating was through the phone and if lucky, we got to talk once a week. Speaking for my family, that was the worst and scariest part of the whole situation. Luckily for us, they were both able to recover completely. 

As the pandemic is somewhat under control, the spread of the virus has slowed down. We’re now living in the new norm. We no longer view things the same, the way we did before. Large gatherings and activities that require large groups to come together are now unimaginable! Distanced learning is what we know, not to mention the importance of social distancing and having to wear masks anywhere and everywhere we go. This is the new norm now and who knows when and if ever we’ll be able go back to what we knew before. This whole experience has made me realize that we, as humans, tend to take things for granted and don’t value what we have until it is taken away from us. 

Articles in this Volume

[tid]: dedication, [tid]: new tools for a new house: transformations for justice and peace in and beyond covid-19, [tid]: black lives matter, intersectionality, and lgbtq rights now, [tid]: the voice of asian american youth: what goes untold, [tid]: beyond words: reimagining education through art and activism, [tid]: voice(s) of a black man, [tid]: embodied learning and community resilience, [tid]: re-imagining professional learning in a time of social isolation: storytelling as a tool for healing and professional growth, [tid]: reckoning: what does it mean to look forward and back together as critical educators, [tid]: leader to leaders: an indigenous school leader’s advice through storytelling about grief and covid-19, [tid]: finding hope, healing and liberation beyond covid-19 within a context of captivity and carcerality, [tid]: flux leadership: leading for justice and peace in & beyond covid-19, [tid]: flux leadership: insights from the (virtual) field, [tid]: hard pivot: compulsory crisis leadership emerges from a space of doubt, [tid]: and how are the children, [tid]: real talk: teaching and leading while bipoc, [tid]: systems of emotional support for educators in crisis, [tid]: listening leadership: the student voices project, [tid]: global engagement, perspective-sharing, & future-seeing in & beyond a global crisis, [tid]: teaching and leadership during covid-19: lessons from lived experiences, [tid]: crisis leadership in independent schools - styles & literacies, [tid]: rituals, routines and relationships: high school athletes and coaches in flux, [tid]: superintendent back-to-school welcome 2020, [tid]: mitigating summer learning loss in philadelphia during covid-19: humble attempts from the field, [tid]: untitled, [tid]: the revolution will not be on linkedin: student activism and neoliberalism, [tid]: why radical self-care cannot wait: strategies for black women leaders now, [tid]: from emergency response to critical transformation: online learning in a time of flux, [tid]: illness methodology for and beyond the covid era, [tid]: surviving black girl magic, the work, and the dissertation, [tid]: cancelled: the old student experience, [tid]: lessons from liberia: integrating theatre for development and youth development in uncertain times, [tid]: designing a more accessible future: learning from covid-19, [tid]: the construct of standards-based education, [tid]: teachers leading teachers to prepare for back to school during covid, [tid]: using empathy to cross the sea of humanity, [tid]: (un)doing college, community, and relationships in the time of coronavirus, [tid]: have we learned nothing, [tid]: choosing growth amidst chaos, [tid]: living freire in pandemic….participatory action research and democratizing knowledge at knowledgedemocracy.org, [tid]: philly students speak: voices of learning in pandemics, [tid]: the power of will: a letter to my descendant, [tid]: photo essays with students, [tid]: unity during a global pandemic: how the fight for racial justice made us unite against two diseases, [tid]: educational changes caused by the pandemic and other related social issues, [tid]: online learning during difficult times, [tid]: fighting crisis: a student perspective, [tid]: the destruction of soil rooted with culture, [tid]: a demand for change, [tid]: education through experience in and beyond the pandemics, [tid]: the pandemic diaries, [tid]: all for one and 4 for $4, [tid]: tiktok activism, [tid]: why digital learning may be the best option for next year, [tid]: my 2020 teen experience, [tid]: living between two pandemics, [tid]: journaling during isolation: the gold standard of coronavirus, [tid]: sailing through uncertainty, [tid]: what i wish my teachers knew, [tid]: youthing in pandemic while black, [tid]: the pain inflicted by indifference, [tid]: education during the pandemic, [tid]: the good, the bad, and the year 2020, [tid]: racism fueled pandemic, [tid]: coronavirus: my experience during the pandemic, [tid]: the desensitization of a doomed generation, [tid]: a philadelphia war-zone, [tid]: the attack of the covid monster, [tid]: back-to-school: covid-19 edition, [tid]: the unexpected war, [tid]: learning outside of the classroom, [tid]: why we should learn about college financial aid in school: a student perspective, [tid]: flying the plane as we go: building the future through a haze, [tid]: my covid experience in the age of technology, [tid]: we, i, and they, [tid]: learning your a, b, cs during a pandemic, [tid]: quarantine: a musical, [tid]: what it’s like being a high school student in 2020, [tid]: everything happens for a reason, [tid]: blacks live matter – a sobering and empowering reality among my peers, [tid]: the mental health of a junior during covid-19 outbreaks, [tid]: a year of change, [tid]: covid-19 and school, [tid]: the virtues and vices of virtual learning, [tid]: college decisions and the year 2020: a virtual rollercoaster, [tid]: quarantine thoughts, [tid]: quarantine through generation z, [tid]: attending online school during a pandemic.

Report accessibility issues and request help

Copyright 2024 The University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education's Online Urban Education Journal

Resources for

• Prospective Students
• Current Students
• Admin Resources

Search form

Essays reveal experiences during pandemic, unrest.

Field study students share their thoughts 

Members of Advanced Field Study, a select group of Social Ecology students who are chosen from a pool of applicants to participate in a year-long field study experience and course, had their internships and traditional college experience cut short this year. During our final quarter of the year together, during which we met weekly for two hours via Zoom, we discussed their reactions as the world fell apart around them. First came the pandemic and social distancing, then came the death of George Floyd and the response of the Black Lives Matter movement, both of which were imprinted on the lives of these students. This year was anything but dull, instead full of raw emotion and painful realizations of the fragility of the human condition and the extent to which we need one another. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for our students to chronicle their experiences — the good and the bad, the lessons learned, and ways in which they were forever changed by the events of the past four months. I invited all of my students to write an essay describing the ways in which these times had impacted their learning and their lives during or after their time at UCI. These are their voices. — Jessica Borelli , associate professor of psychological science

Becoming Socially Distant Through Technology: The Tech Contagion

The current state of affairs put the world on pause, but this pause gave me time to reflect on troubling matters. Time that so many others like me probably also desperately needed to heal without even knowing it. Sometimes it takes one’s world falling apart for the most beautiful mosaic to be built up from the broken pieces of wreckage. 

As the school year was coming to a close and summer was edging around the corner, I began reflecting on how people will spend their summer breaks if the country remains in its current state throughout the sunny season. Aside from living in the sunny beach state of California where people love their vitamin D and social festivities, I think some of the most damaging effects Covid-19 will have on us all has more to do with social distancing policies than with any inconveniences we now face due to the added precautions, despite how devastating it may feel that Disneyland is closed to all the local annual passholders or that the beaches may not be filled with sun-kissed California girls this summer. During this unprecedented time, I don’t think we should allow the rare opportunity we now have to be able to watch in real time how the effects of social distancing can impact our mental health. Before the pandemic, many of us were already engaging in a form of social distancing. Perhaps not the exact same way we are now practicing, but the technology that we have developed over recent years has led to a dramatic decline in our social contact and skills in general. 

The debate over whether we should remain quarantined during this time is not an argument I am trying to pursue. Instead, I am trying to encourage us to view this event as a unique time to study how social distancing can affect people’s mental health over a long period of time and with dramatic results due to the magnitude of the current issue. Although Covid-19 is new and unfamiliar to everyone, the isolation and separation we now face is not. For many, this type of behavior has already been a lifestyle choice for a long time. However, the current situation we all now face has allowed us to gain a more personal insight on how that experience feels due to the current circumstances. Mental illness continues to remain a prevalent problem throughout the world and for that reason could be considered a pandemic of a sort in and of itself long before the Covid-19 outbreak. 

One parallel that can be made between our current restrictions and mental illness reminds me in particular of hikikomori culture. Hikikomori is a phenomenon that originated in Japan but that has since spread internationally, now prevalent in many parts of the world, including the United States. Hikikomori is not a mental disorder but rather can appear as a symptom of a disorder. People engaging in hikikomori remain confined in their houses and often their rooms for an extended period of time, often over the course of many years. This action of voluntary confinement is an extreme form of withdrawal from society and self-isolation. Hikikomori affects a large percent of people in Japan yearly and the problem continues to become more widespread with increasing occurrences being reported around the world each year. While we know this problem has continued to increase, the exact number of people practicing hikikomori is unknown because there is a large amount of stigma surrounding the phenomenon that inhibits people from seeking help. This phenomenon cannot be written off as culturally defined because it is spreading to many parts of the world. With the technology we now have, and mental health issues on the rise and expected to increase even more so after feeling the effects of the current pandemic, I think we will definitely see a rise in the number of people engaging in this social isolation, especially with the increase in legitimate fears we now face that appear to justify the previously considered irrational fears many have associated with social gatherings. We now have the perfect sample of people to provide answers about how this form of isolation can affect people over time. 

Likewise, with the advancements we have made to technology not only is it now possible to survive without ever leaving the confines of your own home, but it also makes it possible for us to “fulfill” many of our social interaction needs. It’s very unfortunate, but in addition to the success we have gained through our advancements we have also experienced a great loss. With new technology, I am afraid that we no longer engage with others the way we once did. Although some may say the advancements are for the best, I wonder, at what cost? It is now commonplace to see a phone on the table during a business meeting or first date. Even worse is how many will feel inclined to check their phone during important or meaningful interactions they are having with people face to face. While our technology has become smarter, we have become dumber when it comes to social etiquette. As we all now constantly carry a mini computer with us everywhere we go, we have in essence replaced our best friends. We push others away subconsciously as we reach for our phones during conversations. We no longer remember phone numbers because we have them all saved in our phones. We find comfort in looking down at our phones during those moments of free time we have in public places before our meetings begin. These same moments were once the perfect time to make friends, filled with interactive banter. We now prefer to stare at other people on our phones for hours on end, and often live a sedentary lifestyle instead of going out and interacting with others ourselves. 

These are just a few among many issues the advances to technology led to long ago. We have forgotten how to practice proper tech-etiquette and we have been inadvertently practicing social distancing long before it was ever required. Now is a perfect time for us to look at the society we have become and how we incurred a different kind of pandemic long before the one we currently face. With time, as the social distancing regulations begin to lift, people may possibly begin to appreciate life and connecting with others more than they did before as a result of the unique experience we have shared in together while apart.

Maybe the world needed a time-out to remember how to appreciate what it had but forgot to experience. Life is to be lived through experience, not to be used as a pastime to observe and compare oneself with others. I’ll leave you with a simple reminder: never forget to take care and love more because in a world where life is often unpredictable and ever changing, one cannot risk taking time or loved ones for granted. With that, I bid you farewell, fellow comrades, like all else, this too shall pass, now go live your best life!

Privilege in a Pandemic 

Covid-19 has impacted millions of Americans who have been out of work for weeks, thus creating a financial burden. Without a job and the certainty of knowing when one will return to work, paying rent and utilities has been a problem for many. With unemployment on the rise, relying on unemployment benefits has become a necessity for millions of people. According to the Washington Post , unemployment rose to 14.7% in April which is considered to be the worst since the Great Depression. 

Those who are not worried about the financial aspect or the thought never crossed their minds have privilege. Merriam Webster defines privilege as “a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor.” Privilege can have a negative connotation. What you choose to do with your privilege is what matters. Talking about privilege can bring discomfort, but the discomfort it brings can also carry the benefit of drawing awareness to one’s privilege, which can lead the person to take steps to help others. 

I am a first-generation college student who recently transferred to a four-year university. When schools began to close, and students had to leave their on-campus housing, many lost their jobs.I was able to stay on campus because I live in an apartment. I am fortunate to still have a job, although the hours are minimal. My parents help pay for school expenses, including housing, tuition, and food. I do not have to worry about paying rent or how to pay for food because my parents are financially stable to help me. However, there are millions of college students who are not financially stable or do not have the support system I have. Here, I have the privilege and, thus, I am the one who can offer help to others. I may not have millions in funding, but volunteering for centers who need help is where I am able to help. Those who live in California can volunteer through Californians For All  or at food banks, shelter facilities, making calls to seniors, etc. 

I was not aware of my privilege during these times until I started reading more articles about how millions of people cannot afford to pay their rent, and landlords are starting to send notices of violations. Rather than feel guilty and be passive about it, I chose to put my privilege into a sense of purpose: Donating to nonprofits helping those affected by COVID-19, continuing to support local businesses, and supporting businesses who are donating profits to those affected by COVID-19.

My World is Burning 

As I write this, my friends are double checking our medical supplies and making plans to buy water and snacks to pass out at the next protest we are attending. We write down the number for the local bailout fund on our arms and pray that we’re lucky enough not to have to use it should things get ugly. We are part of a pivotal event, the kind of movement that will forever have a place in history. Yet, during this revolution, I have papers to write and grades to worry about, as I’m in the midst of finals. 

My professors have offered empty platitudes. They condemn the violence and acknowledge the stress and pain that so many of us are feeling, especially the additional weight that this carries for students of color. I appreciate their show of solidarity, but it feels meaningless when it is accompanied by requests to complete research reports and finalize presentations. Our world is on fire. Literally. On my social media feeds, I scroll through image after image of burning buildings and police cars in flames. How can I be asked to focus on school when my community is under siege? When police are continuing to murder black people, adding additional names to the ever growing list of their victims. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. George Floyd. David Mcatee. And, now, Rayshard Brooks. 

It already felt like the world was being asked of us when the pandemic started and classes continued. High academic expectations were maintained even when students now faced the challenges of being locked down, often trapped in small spaces with family or roommates. Now we are faced with another public health crisis in the form of police violence and once again it seems like educational faculty are turning a blind eye to the impact that this has on the students. I cannot study for exams when I am busy brushing up on my basic first-aid training, taking notes on the best techniques to stop heavy bleeding and treat chemical burns because at the end of the day, if these protests turn south, I will be entering a warzone. Even when things remain peaceful, there is an ugliness that bubbles just below the surface. When beginning the trek home, I have had armed members of the National Guard follow me and my friends. While kneeling in silence, I have watched police officers cock their weapons and laugh, pointing out targets in the crowd. I have been emailing my professors asking for extensions, trying to explain that if something is turned in late, it could be the result of me being detained or injured. I don’t want to be penalized for trying to do what I wholeheartedly believe is right. 

I have spent my life studying and will continue to study these institutions that have been so instrumental in the oppression and marginalization of black and indigenous communities. Yet, now that I have the opportunity to be on the frontlines actively fighting for the change our country so desperately needs, I feel that this study is more of a hindrance than a help to the cause. Writing papers and reading books can only take me so far and I implore that professors everywhere recognize that requesting their students split their time and energy between finals and justice is an impossible ask.

Opportunity to Serve

Since the start of the most drastic change of our lives, I have had the privilege of helping feed more than 200 different families in the Santa Ana area and even some neighboring cities. It has been an immense pleasure seeing the sheer joy and happiness of families as they come to pick up their box of food from our site, as well as a $50 gift card to Northgate, a grocery store in Santa Ana. Along with donating food and helping feed families, the team at the office, including myself, have dedicated this time to offering psychosocial and mental health check-ups for the families we serve. 

Every day I go into the office I start my day by gathering files of our families we served between the months of January, February, and March and calling them to check on how they are doing financially, mentally, and how they have been affected by COVID-19. As a side project, I have been putting together Excel spreadsheets of all these families’ struggles and finding a way to turn their situation into a success story to share with our board at PY-OCBF and to the community partners who make all of our efforts possible. One of the things that has really touched me while working with these families is how much of an impact this nonprofit organization truly has on family’s lives. I have spoken with many families who I just call to check up on and it turns into an hour call sharing about how much of a change they have seen in their child who went through our program. Further, they go on to discuss that because of our program, their children have a different perspective on the drugs they were using before and the group of friends they were hanging out with. Of course, the situation is different right now as everyone is being told to stay at home; however, there are those handful of kids who still go out without asking for permission, increasing the likelihood they might contract this disease and pass it to the rest of the family. We are working diligently to provide support for these parents and offering advice to talk to their kids in order to have a serious conversation with their kids so that they feel heard and validated. 

Although the novel Coronavirus has impacted the lives of millions of people not just on a national level, but on a global level, I feel that in my current position, it has opened doors for me that would have otherwise not presented themselves. Fortunately, I have been offered a full-time position at the Project Youth Orange County Bar Foundation post-graduation that I have committed to already. This invitation came to me because the organization received a huge grant for COVID-19 relief to offer to their staff and since I was already part-time, they thought I would be a good fit to join the team once mid-June comes around. I was very excited and pleased to be recognized for the work I have done at the office in front of all staff. I am immensely grateful for this opportunity. I will work even harder to provide for the community and to continue changing the lives of adolescents, who have steered off the path of success. I will use my time as a full-time employee to polish my resume, not forgetting that the main purpose of my moving to Irvine was to become a scholar and continue the education that my parents couldn’t attain. I will still be looking for ways to get internships with other fields within criminology. One specific interest that I have had since being an intern and a part-time employee in this organization is the work of the Orange County Coroner’s Office. I don’t exactly know what enticed me to find it appealing as many would say that it is an awful job in nature since it relates to death and seeing people in their worst state possible. However, I feel that the only way for me to truly know if I want to pursue such a career in forensic science will be to just dive into it and see where it takes me. 

I can, without a doubt, say that the Coronavirus has impacted me in a way unlike many others, and for that I am extremely grateful. As I continue working, I can also state that many people are becoming more and more hopeful as time progresses. With people now beginning to say Stage Two of this stay-at-home order is about to allow retailers and other companies to begin doing curbside delivery, many families can now see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Let’s Do Better

This time of the year is meant to be a time of celebration; however, it has been difficult to feel proud or excited for many of us when it has become a time of collective mourning and sorrow, especially for the Black community. There has been an endless amount of pain, rage, and helplessness that has been felt throughout our nation because of the growing list of Black lives we have lost to violence and brutality.

To honor the lives that we have lost, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Oscar Grant, Michael Brown, Trayon Martin, and all of the other Black lives that have been taken away, may they Rest in Power.

Throughout my college experience, I have become more exposed to the various identities and the upbringings of others, which led to my own self-reflection on my own privileged and marginalized identities. I identify as Colombian, German, and Mexican; however navigating life as a mixed race, I have never been able to identify or have one culture more salient than the other. I am visibly white-passing and do not hold any strong ties with any of my ethnic identities, which used to bring me feelings of guilt and frustration, for I would question whether or not I could be an advocate for certain communities, and whether or not I could claim the identity of a woman of color. In the process of understanding my positionality, I began to wonder what space I belonged in, where I could speak up, and where I should take a step back for others to speak. I found myself in a constant theme of questioning what is my narrative and slowly began to realize that I could not base it off lone identities and that I have had the privilege to move through life without my identities defining who I am. Those initial feelings of guilt and confusion transformed into growth, acceptance, and empowerment.

This journey has driven me to educate myself more about the social inequalities and injustices that people face and to focus on what I can do for those around me. It has motivated me to be more culturally responsive and competent, so that I am able to best advocate for those around me. Through the various roles I have worked in, I have been able to listen to a variety of communities’ narratives and experiences, which has allowed me to extend my empathy to these communities while also pushing me to continue educating myself on how I can best serve and empower them. By immersing myself amongst different communities, I have been given the honor of hearing others’ stories and experiences, which has inspired me to commit myself to support and empower others.

I share my story of navigating through my privileged and marginalized identities in hopes that it encourages others to explore their own identities. This journey is not an easy one, and it is an ongoing learning process that will come with various mistakes. I have learned that with facing our privileges comes feelings of guilt, discomfort, and at times, complacency. It is very easy to become ignorant when we are not affected by different issues, but I challenge those who read this to embrace the discomfort. With these emotions, I have found it important to reflect on the source of discomfort and guilt, for although they are a part of the process, in taking the steps to become more aware of the systemic inequalities around us, understanding the source of discomfort can better inform us on how we perpetuate these systemic inequalities. If we choose to embrace ignorance, we refuse to acknowledge the systems that impact marginalized communities and refuse to honestly and openly hear cries for help. If we choose our own comfort over the lives of those being affected every day, we can never truly honor, serve, or support these communities.

I challenge any non-Black person, including myself, to stop remaining complacent when injustices are committed. We need to consistently recognize and acknowledge how the Black community is disproportionately affected in every injustice experienced and call out anti-Blackness in every role, community, and space we share. We need to keep ourselves and others accountable when we make mistakes or fall back into patterns of complacency or ignorance. We need to continue educating ourselves instead of relying on the emotional labor of the Black community to continuously educate us on the history of their oppressions. We need to collectively uplift and empower one another to heal and rise against injustice. We need to remember that allyship ends when action ends.

To the Black community, you are strong. You deserve to be here. The recent events are emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausting, and the need for rest to take care of your mental, physical, and emotional well-being are at an all time high. If you are able, take the time to regain your energy, feel every emotion, and remind yourself of the power you have inside of you. You are not alone.

The Virus That Makes You Forget

Following Jan. 1 of 2020 many of my classmates and I continued to like, share, and forward the same meme. The meme included any image but held the same phrase: I can see 2020. For many of us, 2020 was a beacon of hope. For the Class of 2020, this meant walking on stage in front of our families. Graduation meant becoming an adult, finding a job, or going to graduate school. No matter what we were doing in our post-grad life, we were the new rising stars ready to take on the world with a positive outlook no matter what the future held. We felt that we had a deal with the universe that we were about to be noticed for our hard work, our hardships, and our perseverance.

Then March 17 of 2020 came to pass with California Gov. Newman ordering us to stay at home, which we all did. However, little did we all know that the world we once had open to us would only be forgotten when we closed our front doors.

Life became immediately uncertain and for many of us, that meant graduation and our post-graduation plans including housing, careers, education, food, and basic standards of living were revoked! We became the forgotten — a place from which many of us had attempted to rise by attending university. The goals that we were told we could set and the plans that we were allowed to make — these were crushed before our eyes.

Eighty days before graduation, in the first several weeks of quarantine, I fell extremely ill; both unfortunately and luckily, I was isolated. All of my roommates had moved out of the student apartments leaving me with limited resources, unable to go to the stores to pick up medicine or food, and with insufficient health coverage to afford a doctor until my throat was too swollen to drink water. For nearly three weeks, I was stuck in bed, I was unable to apply to job deadlines, reach out to family, and have contact with the outside world. I was forgotten.

Forty-five days before graduation, I had clawed my way out of illness and was catching up on an honors thesis about media depictions of sexual exploitation within the American political system, when I was relayed the news that democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was accused of sexual assault. However, when reporting this news to close friends who had been devastated and upset by similar claims against past politicians, they all were too tired and numb from the quarantine to care. Just as I had written hours before reading the initial story, history was repeating, and it was not only I who COVID-19 had forgotten, but now survivors of violence.

After this revelation, I realize the silencing factor that COVID-19 has. Not only does it have the power to terminate the voices of our older generations, but it has the power to silence and make us forget the voices of every generation. Maybe this is why social media usage has gone up, why we see people creating new social media accounts, posting more, attempting to reach out to long lost friends. We do not want to be silenced, moreover, we cannot be silenced. Silence means that we have been forgotten and being forgotten is where injustice and uncertainty occurs. By using social media, pressing like on a post, or even sending a hate message, means that someone cares and is watching what you are doing. If there is no interaction, I am stuck in the land of indifference.

This is a place that I, and many others, now reside, captured and uncertain. In 2020, my plan was to graduate Cum Laude, dean's honor list, with three honors programs, three majors, and with research and job experience that stretched over six years. I would then go into my first year of graduate school, attempting a dual Juris Doctorate. I would be spending my time experimenting with new concepts, new experiences, and new relationships. My life would then be spent giving a microphone to survivors of domestic violence and sex crimes. However, now the plan is wiped clean, instead I sit still bound to graduate in 30 days with no home to stay, no place to work, and no future education to come back to. I would say I am overly qualified, but pandemic makes me lost in a series of names and masked faces.

Welcome to My Cage: The Pandemic and PTSD

When I read the campuswide email notifying students of the World Health Organization’s declaration of the coronavirus pandemic, I was sitting on my couch practicing a research presentation I was going to give a few hours later. For a few minutes, I sat there motionless, trying to digest the meaning of the words as though they were from a language other than my own, familiar sounds strung together in way that was wholly unintelligible to me. I tried but failed to make sense of how this could affect my life. After the initial shock had worn off, I mobilized quickly, snapping into an autopilot mode of being I knew all too well. I began making mental checklists, sharing the email with my friends and family, half of my brain wondering if I should make a trip to the grocery store to stockpile supplies and the other half wondering how I was supposed take final exams in the midst of so much uncertainty. The most chilling realization was knowing I had to wait powerlessly as the fate of the world unfolded, frozen with anxiety as I figured out my place in it all.

These feelings of powerlessness and isolation are familiar bedfellows for me. Early October of 2015, shortly after beginning my first year at UCI, I was diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Despite having had years of psychological treatment for my condition, including Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Retraining, the flashbacks, paranoia, and nightmares still emerge unwarranted. People have referred to the pandemic as a collective trauma. For me, the pandemic has not only been a collective trauma, it has also been the reemergence of a personal trauma. The news of the pandemic and the implications it has for daily life triggered a reemergence of symptoms that were ultimately ignited by the overwhelming sense of helplessness that lies in waiting, as I suddenly find myself navigating yet another situation beyond my control. Food security, safety, and my sense of self have all been shaken by COVID-19.

The first few weeks after UCI transitioned into remote learning and the governor issued the stay-at-home order, I hardly got any sleep. My body was cycling through hypervigilance and derealization, and my sleep was interrupted by intrusive nightmares oscillating between flashbacks and frightening snippets from current events. Any coping methods I had developed through hard-won efforts over the past few years — leaving my apartment for a change of scenery, hanging out with friends, going to the gym — were suddenly made inaccessible to me due to the stay-at-home orders, closures of non-essential businesses, and many of my friends breaking their campus leases to move back to their family homes. So for me, learning to cope during COVID-19 quarantine means learning to function with my re-emerging PTSD symptoms and without my go-to tools. I must navigate my illness in a rapidly evolving world, one where some of my internalized fears, such as running out of food and living in an unsafe world, are made progressively more external by the minute and broadcasted on every news platform; fears that I could no longer escape, being confined in the tight constraints of my studio apartment’s walls. I cannot shake the devastating effects of sacrifice that I experience as all sense of control has been stripped away from me.

However, amidst my mental anguish, I have realized something important—experiencing these same PTSD symptoms during a global pandemic feels markedly different than it did years ago. Part of it might be the passage of time and the growth in my mindset, but there is something else that feels very different. Currently, there is widespread solidarity and support for all of us facing the chaos of COVID-19, whether they are on the frontlines of the fight against the illness or they are self-isolating due to new rules, restrictions, and risks. This was in stark contrast to what it was like to have a mental disorder. The unity we all experience as a result of COVID-19 is one I could not have predicted. I am not the only student heartbroken over a cancelled graduation, I am not the only student who is struggling to adapt to remote learning, and I am not the only person in this world who has to make sacrifices.

Between observations I’ve made on social media and conversations with my friends and classmates, this time we are all enduring great pain and stress as we attempt to adapt to life’s challenges. As a Peer Assistant for an Education class, I have heard from many students of their heartache over the remote learning model, how difficult it is to study in a non-academic environment, and how unmotivated they have become this quarter. This is definitely something I can relate to; as of late, it has been exceptionally difficult to find motivation and put forth the effort for even simple activities as a lack of energy compounds the issue and hinders basic needs. However, the willingness of people to open up about their distress during the pandemic is unlike the self-imposed social isolation of many people who experience mental illness regularly. Something this pandemic has taught me is that I want to live in a world where mental illness receives more support and isn’t so taboo and controversial. Why is it that we are able to talk about our pain, stress, and mental illness now, but aren’t able to talk about it outside of a global pandemic? People should be able to talk about these hardships and ask for help, much like during these circumstances.

It has been nearly three months since the coronavirus crisis was declared a pandemic. I still have many bad days that I endure where my symptoms can be overwhelming. But somehow, during my good days — and some days, merely good moments — I can appreciate the resilience I have acquired over the years and the common ground I share with others who live through similar circumstances. For veterans of trauma and mental illness, this isn’t the first time we are experiencing pain in an extreme and disastrous way. This is, however, the first time we are experiencing it with the rest of the world. This strange new feeling of solidarity as I read and hear about the experiences of other people provides some small comfort as I fight my way out of bed each day. As we fight to survive this pandemic, I hope to hold onto this feeling of togetherness and acceptance of pain, so that it will always be okay for people to share their struggles. We don’t know what the world will look like days, months, or years from now, but I hope that we can cultivate such a culture to make life much easier for people coping with mental illness.

A Somatic Pandemonium in Quarantine

I remember hearing that our brains create the color magenta all on their own. 

When I was younger I used to run out of my third-grade class because my teacher was allergic to the mold and sometimes would vomit in the trash can. My dad used to tell me that I used to always have to have something in my hands, later translating itself into the form of a hair tie around my wrist.

Sometimes, I think about the girl who used to walk on her tippy toes. medial and lateral nerves never planted, never grounded. We were the same in this way. My ability to be firmly planted anywhere was also withered. 

Was it from all the times I panicked? Or from the time I ran away and I blistered the soles of my feet 'til they were black from the summer pavement? Emetophobia. 

I felt it in the shower, dressing itself from the crown of my head down to the soles of my feet, noting the feeling onto my white board in an attempt to solidify it’s permanence.

As I breathed in the chemical blue transpiring from the Expo marker, everything was more defined. I laid down and when I looked up at the starlet lamp I had finally felt centered. Still. No longer fleeting. The grooves in the lamps glass forming a spiral of what felt to me like an artificial landscape of transcendental sparks. 

She’s back now, magenta, though I never knew she left or even ever was. Somehow still subconsciously always known. I had been searching for her in the tremors.

I can see her now in the daphnes, the golden rays from the sun reflecting off of the bark on the trees and the red light that glowed brighter, suddenly the town around me was warmer. A melting of hues and sharpened saturation that was apparent and reminded of the smell of oranges.

I threw up all of the carrots I ate just before. The trauma that my body kept as a memory of things that may or may not go wrong and the times that I couldn't keep my legs from running. Revelations bring memories bringing anxieties from fear and panic released from my body as if to say “NO LONGER!” 

I close my eyes now and my mind's eye is, too, more vivid than ever before. My inner eyelids lit up with orange undertones no longer a solid black, neurons firing, fire. Not the kind that burns you but the kind that can light up a dull space. Like the wick of a tea-lit candle. Magenta doesn’t exist. It is perception. A construct made of light waves, blue and red.

Demolition. Reconstruction. I walk down the street into this new world wearing my new mask, somatic senses tingling and I think to myself “Houston, I think we’ve just hit equilibrium.”

How COVID-19 Changed My Senior Year

During the last two weeks of Winter quarter, I watched the emails pour in. Spring quarter would be online, facilities were closing, and everyone was recommended to return home to their families, if possible. I resolved to myself that I would not move back home; I wanted to stay in my apartment, near my boyfriend, near my friends, and in the one place I had my own space. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic worsened, things continued to change quickly. Soon I learned my roommate/best friend would be cancelling her lease and moving back up to Northern California. We had made plans for my final quarter at UCI, as I would be graduating in June while she had another year, but all of the sudden, that dream was gone. In one whirlwind of a day, we tried to cram in as much of our plans as we could before she left the next day for good. There are still so many things – like hiking, going to museums, and showing her around my hometown – we never got to cross off our list.

Then, my boyfriend decided he would also be moving home, three hours away. Most of my sorority sisters were moving home, too. I realized if I stayed at school, I would be completely alone. My mom had been encouraging me to move home anyway, but I was reluctant to return to a house I wasn’t completely comfortable in. As the pandemic became more serious, gentle encouragement quickly turned into demands. I had to cancel my lease and move home.

I moved back in with my parents at the end of Spring Break; I never got to say goodbye to most of my friends, many of whom I’ll likely never see again – as long as the virus doesn’t change things, I’m supposed to move to New York over the summer to begin a PhD program in Criminal Justice. Just like that, my time at UCI had come to a close. No lasts to savor; instead I had piles of things to regret. In place of a final quarter filled with memorable lasts, such as the senior banquet or my sorority’s senior preference night, I’m left with a laundry list of things I missed out on. I didn’t get to look around the campus one last time like I had planned; I never got to take my graduation pictures in front of the UC Irvine sign. Commencement had already been cancelled. The lights had turned off in the theatre before the movie was over. I never got to find out how the movie ended.

Transitioning to a remote learning system wasn’t too bad, but I found that some professors weren’t adjusting their courses to the difficulties many students were facing. It turned out to be difficult to stay motivated, especially for classes that are pre-recorded and don’t have any face-to-face interaction. It’s hard to make myself care; I’m in my last few weeks ever at UCI, but it feels like I’m already in summer. School isn’t real, my classes aren’t real. I still put in the effort, but I feel like I’m not getting much out of my classes.

The things I had been looking forward to this quarter are gone; there will be no Undergraduate Research Symposium, where I was supposed to present two projects. My amazing internship with the US Postal Inspection Service is over prematurely and I never got to properly say goodbye to anyone I met there. I won’t receive recognition for the various awards and honors I worked so hard to achieve.

And I’m one of the lucky ones! I feel guilty for feeling bad about my situation, when I know there are others who have it much, much worse. I am like that quintessential spoiled child, complaining while there are essential workers working tirelessly, people with health concerns constantly fearing for their safety, and people dying every day. Yet knowing that doesn't help me from feeling I was robbed of my senior experience, something I worked very hard to achieve. I know it’s not nearly as important as what many others are going through. But nevertheless, this is my situation. I was supposed to be enjoying this final quarter with my friends and preparing to move on, not be stuck at home, grappling with my mental health and hiding out in my room to get some alone time from a family I don’t always get along with. And while I know it’s more difficult out there for many others, it’s still difficult for me.

The thing that stresses me out most is the uncertainty. Uncertainty for the future – how long will this pandemic last? How many more people have to suffer before things go back to “normal” – whatever that is? How long until I can see my friends and family again? And what does this mean for my academic future? Who knows what will happen between now and then? All that’s left to do is wait and hope that everything will work out for the best.

Looking back over my last few months at UCI, I wish I knew at the time that I was experiencing my lasts; it feels like I took so much for granted. If there is one thing this has all made me realize, it’s that nothing is certain. Everything we expect, everything we take for granted – none of it is a given. Hold on to what you have while you have it, and take the time to appreciate the wonderful things in life, because you never know when it will be gone.

Physical Distancing

Thirty days have never felt so long. April has been the longest month of the year. I have been through more in these past three months than in the past three years. The COVID-19 outbreak has had a huge impact on both physical and social well-being of a lot of Americans, including me. Stress has been governing the lives of so many civilians, in particular students and workers. In addition to causing a lack of motivation in my life, quarantine has also brought a wave of anxiety.

My life changed the moment the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and the government announced social distancing. My busy daily schedule, running from class to class and meeting to meeting, morphed into identical days, consisting of hour after hour behind a cold computer monitor. Human interaction and touch improve trust, reduce fear and increases physical well-being. Imagine the effects of removing the human touch and interaction from midst of society. Humans are profoundly social creatures. I cannot function without interacting and connecting with other people. Even daily acquaintances have an impact on me that is only noticeable once removed. As a result, the COVID-19 outbreak has had an extreme impact on me beyond direct symptoms and consequences of contracting the virus itself.

It was not until later that month, when out of sheer boredom I was scrolling through my call logs and I realized that I had called my grandmother more than ever. This made me realize that quarantine had created some positive impacts on my social interactions as well. This period of time has created an opportunity to check up on and connect with family and peers more often than we were able to. Even though we might be connecting solely through a screen, we are not missing out on being socially connected. Quarantine has taught me to value and prioritize social connection, and to recognize that we can find this type of connection not only through in-person gatherings, but also through deep heart to heart connections. Right now, my weekly Zoom meetings with my long-time friends are the most important events in my week. In fact, I have taken advantage of the opportunity to reconnect with many of my old friends and have actually had more meaningful conversations with them than before the isolation.

This situation is far from ideal. From my perspective, touch and in-person interaction is essential; however, we must overcome all difficulties that life throws at us with the best we are provided with. Therefore, perhaps we should take this time to re-align our motives by engaging in things that are of importance to us. I learned how to dig deep and find appreciation for all the small talks, gatherings, and face-to-face interactions. I have also realized that friendships are not only built on the foundation of physical presence but rather on meaningful conversations you get to have, even if they are through a cold computer monitor. My realization came from having more time on my hands and noticing the shift in conversations I was having with those around me. After all, maybe this isolation isn’t “social distancing”, but rather “physical distancing” until we meet again.

Follow us on social media

One Year Into The COVID-19 Pandemic, Six Stories That Inspire Hope

March 11 marks  one year since COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic . While the past year has been  tremendously challenging , there have been remarkable stories of human resilience, ingenuity, and creativity.

On this grim anniversary, we wanted to bring you stories from around the world that inspire. The following six stories are not billion-dollar projects, but the tales of everyday entrepreneurship and innovation happening on a small scale with a big impact. The World Bank Group is continuing to support the poorest countries as they look to a build a sustainable, resilient, and inclusive recovery.

1. Lao PDR: Unlocking the Full Potential of Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprise

The village of Phailom is situated about an hour’s drive outside the capital, Vientiane. In recent years village’s network of talented woodworking artisans have become renowned suppliers of souvenirs to tourists wishing to remember their visit to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. 

Among these artisans is Vorachith Keoxayayong, who has been continuing this village’s long tradition of wood sculpture since he was a child.  

His art is not just a hobby, however. His company, Vorachith Wood Carving, employees 23 people – providing meaningful and sustainable employment in his community.  Small enterprises, like his, as well as medium-sized enterprises account for more than 80 percent of employment and some 94 percent of all registered firms in Lao PDR, according to the  Lao Statistics  Bureau. 

With the onset of COVID-19 and decreased tourism, the artisans of Phailom — like other small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Lao PDR — have been hit hard. 

The pandemic has created new challenges for these enterprises, many of which were already struggling for other reasons.  Despite their highly-refined skills and popularity with tourists, Mr. Vorachith and other entrepreneurs behind SMEs across the country struggle to access credit, and this limits their ability to expand operations and grow their employee base. 

The situation has started to change, however. The World Bank Group’s  SME Access to Finance Project  has unlocked formal funding that was once out of reach for many of these firms. 

“In the past, expanding was tough as we had to take out informal loans with very high interest rates. I feel much more at ease borrowing money from a bank,” explained Mr. Vorachith. 

While their economic recovery will be a long process, the World Bank and the Lao government are building on the success of the SME Access to Finance project, forging pathways to help small companies weather the effects of the pandemic and get their firms back on solid financial ground as travel restrictions are gradually lifted.

Read more .

2. Costa Rica: Women Firefighters on the Frontlines of Resilient Recovery 

As Costa Rica – like countries the world over – looks to mount a sustainable, resilient recovery after COVID-19, the country’s brigadistas will be on the frontlines.

These female firefighters are gaining increasing recognition for fighting stereotypes just as effectively as they fight the country’s pervasive forest fires.  Protecting the country's forests is a central to Costa Rica's efforts to promote sustainability and tackle climate change.

“There is always that myth or macho thought that a woman cannot grab a machete, a back pump, a leaf blower, that she can't go up a big hill,” says one brigadista, Ana Luz Diaz.

Women in Costa Rica play key roles in conservation and the sustainability of forests and farmland. But they – as is the case in many countries – face gender stereotypes and disproportionately burdensome caregiving responsibilities. These factors can limit their ability to play bigger roles in green activities and projects.

However, efforts are underway to address these disparities, and better recognize the unique ways that men and women contribute to efforts related to the environment, forestry, and climate action.

“I want to be someone, to be seen, not be invisible. I want both men and women to see each other and the support that we too can give,” said another brigadista, Melissa Aviles.

In 2019, Costa Rica, with funding from the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), a World Bank Group program, developed a Gender Action Plan (GAP) that supports the country’s efforts to reduce emissions stemming from forest degradation and deforestation.

The GAP will play a central role in shaping Costa Rica’s recovery into one that is not just sustainable and resilient, but inclusive as well, and the country is sharing its experience and knowledge with others so that they may benefit as well.

3. Pakistan: Prioritizing Patients by Phone

Pakistan’s rural population, like so many people around the world, struggles to find affordable access to health services.  Journeys into populated cities to seek care are costly – especially when multiple trips are required. And when the pandemic struck these problems were magnified.

But what if healthcare could be made more accessible? What if routine services could be conducted by phone?

That’s where Pakistani entrepreneur Maliha Khalid enters the story.  She and her team run Doctory, a hotline service that helps patients avoid the multiple referrals often required for treatment by connecting people to the right doctor immediately.  The innovative company, alongside six others, beat out 2,400 other applicants to win the World Bank Group’s  SDGs & Her  competition last year.

When the pandemic reached Pakistan, the Doctory team sprang into action, launching Pakistan’s National COVID-19 Helpline, connecting people across the country to fast, high-quality care – saving them countless amounts of time and money.

4. Kenya: Creating Sustainable Jobs for Youth

When the Kenyan government implemented lockdown measures to help contain the spread of COVID-19, the economic side effects were felt especially by poor communities.

Finding opportunity in crisis, the government created the National Hygiene Program – known colloquially as Kazi Mtaani (loosely translated as “jobs in our hood”) – which finds meaningful employment for the most vulnerable, especially youth, in jobs that improve their environments.

These programs include bush clearance, fumigation, disinfection, street cleaning, garbage collection, and drainage clearance.  

Byron Mashu, a resident of the Kibera settlement, express his gratitude for the program, saying that it allowed youth to “fend for our families and settle our bills, but it is also ensuring that young people are less idle as they are engaged at work during the day which has significantly minimized crime rates in our area”.  

The program was kickstarted through World Bank Group’s Kenya Informal Settlements Improvement Project, which has seen jobs created across 27 settlements in eight counties across the country.  

Don Dante, a youth leader in the Mukuru Kwa Njenga settlement, told the Bank that as a result of the program, “We have seen the reduction of petty crimes and dependency on other people and our environs are clean”.

Given the project’s success and popularity, the Kenyan government is working to expand it using its own financing – extending jobs to 283,210 workers across 47 counties.

5. Greece: Supporting Small Food Producers and Supplying the Vulnerable

Melina Taprantzi arguably has more experience with economic crises than most.

The Greek entrepreneur lived through the Greek Financial crisis, witnessing suffering and rising poverty. From those experiences she decided to dedicate her work towards addressing social needs.  

Her business, Wise Greece, connects small-scale food producers with those in need by providing a six kilogram box of basic food and supplies. Melina won the SDGs and Her competition in 2020.

When COVID-19 entered the scene, Wise Greece didn’t sit idly by.  Instead, they moved quickly to partner with multinational companies to provide these boxes not just to those in need, but also to the elderly and vulnerable who can’t leave their homes.

Since 2013, the company has contributed some 50 tons of food supplies.  During the pandemic alone, it has made at least 6 tons available to vulnerable communities.

6. Chad: Kickstarting Sanitizer Production

With the pandemic sparking unprecedented demand for sanitizing products, supply chains around the world were hammered.

“People waited in line sometimes for hours to procure the alcohol-based sanitizer,” reported the World Bank’s Edmond Dingamhoudou in Chad’s capital, N’Djamena. “Some went so far as to cross the border to stock up in Kousseri, a Cameroonian city some 20 kilometers from N’Djamena on the opposite bank of the Logone River.”

With these critical supplies difficult to find, officials and scientists came together in record time. A laboratory constructed with support of the International Development Assocation was repurposed for the quick and effective manufacturing of gel hand sanitizer – launching Chad’s first ever local production of the product.

As of mid-April 2020, the facility was able to produce approximately 900 liters of hand sanitizer per day, with 20 to 25 technicians overseeing production, quality control, and packaging.

• The World Bank Group’s Response to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) Pandemic
• Infographic: World Bank Group COVID-19 Crisis Response
• World Bank Group COVID-19 Crisis Response Approach Paper

This site uses cookies to optimize functionality and give you the best possible experience. If you continue to navigate this website beyond this page, cookies will be placed on your browser. To learn more about cookies, click here .

Writing and Responding to Trauma in a Time of Pandemic

This module give writers tools to compose personal healing narratives, to frame their personal inquiries within a larger research context, and to position themselves within the larger community response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through this public teaching initiative, we ask “How can we transform the trauma we experience in the current COVID-19 pandemic into a reflective moment that inspires resilience?”

Living through the current pandemic is not only about the medical and financial fall-out of COV-SARS-2 and COVID-19 illness, but also about the lasting trauma that has been felt by individuals as they, their families, and communities struggle during this historical time. Storytelling is a means of healing from trauma. This module give writers tools to compose personal healing narratives, to frame their personal inquiries within a larger research context, and to position themselves within the larger community response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, we draw upon research on trauma theory, research on expressive writing and healing, and research on responding to writing. Through this public teaching initiative, we ask “ How can we transform the trauma we experience in the current COVID-19 pandemic into a reflective moment that inspires resilience ?”

• any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness,  dissociation , confusion, or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long-lasting negative effect on a person’s attitudes, behavior, and other aspects of functioning. Traumatic events include those caused by human behavior (e.g., rape, war, industrial accidents) as well as by nature (e.g., earthquakes) and often challenge an individual’s view of the world as a just, safe, and predictable place.
•  Any serious physical injury, such as a widespread burn or a blow to the head. —traumatic adj.

All the modules in this series are based on the following four principles of trauma-informed care and teaching:

Connectedness–valuing of relationships

Protection–ensuring safety and trustworthiness

Respect–promoting choice and collaboration

Hope–Resilience and Change

(Adapted from Hummer, Crosland, & Dollard, 2009)

Writing and Responding to Trauma in a Time of Pandemic includes the following components:

• The  personal entry point  with personal written and oral healing narratives
• The  inquiry entry point  for writers who want to pursue self-generated research inquiries related to Covid-19
• The  community entry point , which supports writers as they position themselves within larger community responses to Covid-19
• A comprehensive online bibliography on trauma, writing, and response

This module was created as part of Northeastern University’s College of Social Science and Humanities Pandemic Public Teaching Initiative. The Pandemic Teaching Initiative, which is supported by the CSSH Office of the Dean, the Northeastern Humanities Center, the Ethics Institute, the SPPUA and the NULab, seeks to create a library of publicly accessible modules that explore topics related to pandemics and their disruptions and impacts.

All of the prompts will generate material that will be shareable, if participants wish, during an open, online event series.

We have attempted to limit traumatic content in the main text of this module, but the examples used in the following modules may be disturbing for some individuals. Examples include sexual violence, racism, COVID-19 illness, and death.

This session offers an overview of expressive writing and storytelling as a means of healing. This session follows four steps:

• Identify the basic research supporting expressive writing
• Identify narrative strategies and discuss examples of types of healing narratives to help you better understand the narrative techniques and strategies you will learn.
• Complete informal writing prompts that offer you the opportunity to begin applying these strategies to your own writing.
• Use informal writing prompts to build towards a full-length healing narrative and recognize elements of effective feedback.
• Reading: Chip Scanlan, “What is Narrative, Anyway?,” Poynter

This session offers an overview of expressive writing, which is writing that pairs emotions with events and action with reflection.  It also offers some of the research into writing about trauma as a means of healing, as well as examples of published written and oral healing narratives. This basic grounding in the literature of expressive writing and healing will support the specific narrative entry points for writers that appear in subsequent modules.

Expressive writing is a specific type of narrative writing that combines experiences with reflection and insight. Often, we’re more familiar with straight journaling or chronicling events in a diary, but it is the interplay between emotions and events and the ability to distinguish feelings from the past and the present in expressive writing that distinguishes it.

Expressive Writing

• Does more than simply record events
• Does more than simply vent feelings
• Includes action  and  reflection
• Includes descriptive and/or figurative language

As defined by Louise DeSalvo,  Writing as a Way of Healing ,  2000, Chapter 2.

• Video: The Expressive Writing Method
• Video: What Does Expressive Writing Look Like
• Reading: Oliver Glassa, Mark Dreusickea, John Evansa, Elizabeth Becharda, and Ruth Q. Wolever, “Expressive Writing to Improve Resilience to Trauma: A clinical Feasibility Trial,” Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice
• Reading: James W. Pennebaker, “Expressive Writing in Psychological Science,” Perspectives on  Psychological Science
• Reading: Kimberly Mack, “Johnny Rotten, My Mom, and Me,”  Longreads
• Reading: Tracy Strauss, “Writing Trauma: Notes of Transcendence,” The Ploughshares Blog 
• Reading: Ann Wallace, “A Life Less Terrifying: The Revisionary Lens of Illness,” Intima
• Podcast: My Brain Explosion
• Questions to Consider:
• Once you’ve read the essays and articles and watched the two videos that accompany this session, think about how expressive writing is different from other types of writing you may have done (journaling, expository writing, etc.) What do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges of this type of writing?

In this session, you will learn about three specific types of wounded body/healing narratives as classified by Louise DeSalvo: the chaos narrative, the restitution narrative, and the quest narrative.  The suggested readings offer elements of these types of  healing narratives. In addition, the Strauss piece offers a useful frame for how to pair emotion with reflection/insight in expressive writing, which you will be able to apply to your own writing in the next session.

• Reading: Alison Rosalie Brookes, “Love and Death in the time of Quarantine,” Health Story Collaborative
• Reading: Nina Collins, “Graduations,” Intima
• Reading: Tracy Strauss, “Writing Trauma: Notes of Transcendence, #4—The Situation and the Story,” The Ploughshares Blog
• Reading: Jennifer Stitt, “Will COVID-19 Strengthen our Bonds?,” Guernica
• Reading: Adina Talve-Goodman, “I Must Have Been That Man,” Bellevue Literary Review
• Reading:  Jesmyn Ward, “On Witness and Respair: A Personal Tragedy Followed By a Pandemic,” Vanity Fair
• Types of Healing Narratives/Wounded Body Narratives   Tip : Often, healing narratives have elements of more than one of these frameworks—for example, particular passages in a quest narrative may take on the immediacy and visceral feel of a chaos narrative. You will likely identify elements from more than one of these frameworks in the published essays in this session.
• Once you’ve looked at the chart above and the accompanying essays, think about which types of healing narratives (chaos, restitution, and quest) you would characterize them. Which essay or essays resonate the most with you, and what narrative elements/strategies account for that–can you point to specific moments in the text?

In this session, you can apply what you’ve learned about different types of healing narratives and from the sample published essays to formative writing activities.  Please choose as many of these short, informal writing exercises as you would like, keeping in mind the fundamentals of expressive writing, i.e., linking emotions with events. Start with 15 minutes on a prompt and see how far you get.

Activities :

• As Ann Wallace asks in “ A Life Less Terrifying,” write a journal entry  about a time when you were denied some kind of essential or fundamental human need—love, compassion, respect, dignity, shelter, the possibilities are many.  If you’d like, you can focus this within the context of COVID-19 and your experiences living through it.
• Thinking about a time you were denied a fundamental need, now try  writing a letter  to someone as a means of telling this story. Think about the differences in your story that arise when you address this towards an intended reader.
• Draw a map of a meaningful  landscape from your COVID-19 experience (e.g., where you’ve spent the most time) including as many details as possible. Think about 2-3 specific memories/events that have taken place in that space, and make a list of as many sensory details as possible–what sounds, smells, touch, images, etc. do you associate with this place and these memories? Use this sensory list to start writing about your experiences during COVID-19.
• What family story or generational tale do you wish had a different ending? What would it look like? Alternatively, what COVID-19 story would you re-write if you could?

 Looking for additional short prompts specific to COVID-19? Check out  The Pandemic Project,  directed by James Pennebaker.

Optional revision activity:

Have a response to a writing prompt you want to deepen? Consider using Strauss’s   Situation and Story essay  for the following activity: Make a two-column chart where you identify the actions/plot points in your narrative (the situation) and a column where you reflect on the emotions of the event (the story). This will help highlight places where the pairing of emotions with events and action with reflection could be developed.

We’ve discussed the different kinds of wounded body narratives classifications (the chaos narrative, the restitution narrative, and the quest narrative), and have read a variety of healing narratives that deal with trauma, loss, illness, etc. To draft your own healing narrative, take these three frameworks and the formative writing you’ve done in Session 1.3 surrounding this denial of a fundamental need as a foundation for a longer essay where you explore a seminal event or trauma in your own life. If you would like to focus this writing on events related to COVID-19 you may, but you are not limited to that. As you write, think about the qualities of healing narratives DeSalvo mentions, and the characteristics/criteria for successful healing narratives included in this session. Above all, healing narratives pair emotions/feelings with events.

Once you’ve drafted your healing narrative using the prompt above, we recommend getting feedback on it so you can continue to deepen and order the draft.

Getting feedback on your healing narrative:

You might find that you want to share your narrative with someone you trust or even present your narrative in a public forum. Before you share your work, however, you want to think about the feedback you may receive. If you simply ask a friend to give you feedback on your narrative, they may give you bad advice. For example, they may only tell you about grammatical errors or, worse yet, debate the content of your narrative.

Because most readers are not familiar with healing narratives, it’s useful to give them some guidance on how to respond to your writing.  Two tips are helpful here:

1. Content-based response.   Based on the research and work of Louise DeSalvo, ask readers to focus on the following characteristics of effective healing narratives.

Elements of a Healing Narrative

• Renders our experience concretely, authentically, explicitly, and with a richness of detail
• Links feelings to events, including feelings from the past versus feelings in the present
• Is a balanced narrative that uses negative words but also includes the positive and that continues to evolve
• Reveals the insights we’ve achieved from painful experiences
• Tells a complete, complex, coherent story that can stand alone and can take multiple forms

Louise DeSalvo,  Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Stories Transforms Our Lives , pgs. 57-61

2. Intensity of response.  Rather than having readers give you  critical response   or  diagnosis ,   readers might offer  supportive response  to help you build on what you are already doing well.

While individuals find it therapeutic to write stories or narratives about their personal experiences related to COVID-19, other individuals find it helpful to learn more about the disease and its implications. Inquiry-based writing is a powerful way of harnessing the potential of research to answer the questions that most interest you.

This session will offer participants who want to process the implications of the pandemic through research. Activities in this session guide writers through the research process. These activities help writers refine the skills necessary to bring self-generated research inquiries into the public sphere, whether for education, awareness, or call to action. This session follows four steps:

• Identify what inquiry is and types of inquiry-based writing.
• Generate and evaluate inquiry questions.
• Find and evaluate scholarly and popular sources on COVID-19.
• Translate health/science information accurately and responsibly into an essay, report, or presentation.
• Reading: “The Color of Coronavirus: Covid-19 Deaths by Race and Ethnicity in the U.S.,” Apm Research Lab Staff
• Reading: Michael Ollove and Christine Vestal, “COVID-19 Is Crushing Black Communities. Some States Are Paying Attention,” PEW

Like the first session on personal/narrative writing, inquiry-based writing starts with your values, your experiences, and your goals and interests, and that is what you will focus on in this module. This session will cover the basic considerations of inquiry-based writing, before we move into generating questions and drafting your own research inquires.

Inquiry  is the process of asking questions to solve a problem. In education, inquiry-based learning is a way for students to generate research questions for further study and, thus, model the work of professional researchers. In this way, teachers become guides for students, rather than assigning research topics.

Inquiry-based writing  instruction has been shown to provide more meaningful learning for students and keep students engaged. In inquiry-based writing, students   can draw on personal connections in their writing and research (Eodice, Geller & Lerner, 2019; Geller, Eodice, & Lerner, 2016). When combined with clear expectations for writing and the opportunity for supportive feedback from a peer, such activities lead to deeper learning and personal development (Anderson et al., 2016).

Inquiry-based writing can be a potentially positive way to address trauma because it gets writers to focus on action. It is a way to build resilience.

• Reading: Louise Aronson, “Story as Evidence, Evidence as Story,” A Piece of My Mind
• Reading: “Responsible Science: Ensuring the Integrity of the Research Process,” National Library of Medicine
• Reading: Carl Zimmer, “How You Should Read Coronavirus Studies, or Any Science Paper,” The New York Times

Inquiry-based research is driven by the ongoing relationship between asking questions, seeking information, and refining the questions based on what you find. In this session, you will find resources and activities to help you frame your questions. From there, you can work on activities related to data gathering and data analysis.

Inquiry-based research typically includes four phases: (1) orientation, (2) conceptualization, (3) investigation, and (4) conclusion. Discussion happens throughout the process

Session 2.2: Phase 1: Orientation 

1. Orientation. Inquiry-based research starts with orienting yourself toward a topic. In other words, you want to find a topic to write about.

Orientation questions:

Using some of the COVID-19 healing narratives you composed in Module 1, or using your personal experiences living through the pandemic thus far, consider if there are potential research topics you can extract from these personal narratives.

• What are some COVID-19 topics that interest you?
• Why are you interested in those topics?
• Why are they relevant to your personal and/or professional experiences?
• What is your ultimate goal? Do you want to write an op-ed, give a public talk, write a research article, or something else?

At this early stage in the research process, we ask about your ultimate goal. That’s because no professional researcher waits until the end to think about writing. In fact, what we want to write often shapes how we go about conducting research, including how much research we do and what kinds of sources we use. For example, if we want to write an op-ed, we might only need 5-8 good sources. On the other hand, if we want to write a research article, we might need 20 or more sources.

Discussion : Often it is helpful at the beginning of a project to discuss your ideas with someone else. Talking to someone else can help you identify what really interests you. You can even brainstorm new ideas with a friend.

After orienting yourself to a topic, take a step back. When working on trauma-informed inquiry, we recommend some introspection before proceeding with your research. Professional researchers call the process of examining our own values, goals, and beliefs in relation to our research and teaching “ reflexivity .”

Besides being helpful in understanding your values, goals, and beliefs in relation to your research, self-reflexive exercises can also help you think about the impact of your search on readers.

Self-reflexive questions:

• Why do I find this topic personally interesting?
• How does my identity impact my research interest and the ways I might answer my research questions?
• What potential harm might I do to myself by conducting this research? Are there triggers that I should consider before starting?
• What do I hope will come of my research? What will I do if I do not get the response that I hope for?
• Who might be helped by my research? Who might be harmed by my research?

Who do I want to read my research? Why them? What do I hope will be their reaction?

Session 2.2: Phase 2: Conceptualization

Conceptualization . Conceptualization is a complicated way of saying “asking questions” and generating some ideas (or hypotheses) about what you might find through your research. The trick to making inquiry-based research “good” is in asking good questions.  A good research question is personally meaningful, accessible, and answerable.

Asking questions activities

Using the research topics you generated in  (1) Orientation ,  begin to generate some research questions.

When you begin to generate research questions, don’t worry about good grammar or logic. Instead, try to think of as many questions as you can. Here are some to get you started:

• What topic is it that you want to learn?
• What is known about this topic?
• Who does this topic affect?
• What are some of the issues of conflict surrounding this topic?
• What are some aspects of your topic that are unknown right now?
• What might be some outcomes or uses of your inquiry?
• Using the fake news/fact-checking sites and the resources on how to find scholarly sources, briefly, how is the topic being discussed in popular and academic circles right now?

After you generate a list of potential research questions, ask yourself:

• How passionate do I feel about this topic? Who am I accountable to in doing this research? Am I doing this research for myself or someone else?
• Can I narrow my topic by age, time, geography, or some other way?  What keywords are central to my research? For example, can I change generic words like “people” to specific words like “infants” or “senior citizens”?
• What sources might I be interested in reviewing to answer my question? What do I expect to find?

With the questions above as a frame, write a brief paragraph in which you narrow the focus and specify your inquiry issue/topic.

Session 2.2: Phase 3: Investigation

(3)  Investigation . Now that you have a working research question, it’s time to start finding research. Adding research to your writing is a way to provide more context for your discussion and build your ethos as a writer. And it’s a great way to learn. “Sources” can include everything from newspapers and online forums to peer-reviewed scientific articles. Academic research, such as scientific articles, are published in “journals,” such as  The New England Journal of Medicine

Collecting Sources

While a Google search will certainly generate a lot of information, it may not be the best information to answer your research question. Google searches take you to all kinds of websites, ranging from reputable research sources to idiosyncratic blogs. Google Scholar is a bit better but can often produce results that are difficult to filter and sort.  Professional researchers use academic databases to locate “peer-reviewed” research.

The Northeastern University librarians have put together a video series on how to find academic sources. For example,  in this series, they discuss how to use a search engine called Scholar OneSearch to find academic research articles. In this series, they explain  how to improve your search strategies  and find ebooks. 

Beyond academic sources, government sources are really valuable in finding public health information (Note: government websites always end in .gov). In fact, many professional researchers regularly use websites like the Centers for Disease Control website to find information about disease rates. In addition to federal websites, states often have local information available on their websites. For example,  this website has Massachusetts-specific information

Before the COVID19 pandemic, many academic articles were behind a “firewall,” meaning you had to pay to get access to the article. However, many academic journals have now provided free access to COVID-19 research in an attempt to help the public learn more about the disease.

Analyzing sources . How do you know whether a source is reliable or not? In general,  academic sources are better than non-academic sources when you are conducting research.  Professional researchers evaluate the quality of sources by looking at a few key markers:

• Type of source
• Author expertise
• Publication date
• Publication venue
• Research quality

The Northeastern library has excellent guides on how to  evaluate sources, including data and statistics

Fake News and Fact-Checking Covid Sites

You can find a lot of incorrect information on COVID-19 on the internet. Below are some resources to help assess your sources.

Facts in the Time of Covid-19

Fake or Real? How to Self-Check the News and Get the Facts

False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical “News” Sources

How To Avoid Misinformation About Covid-19

Poynter International Covid-19 Fact Checking Site

 WHO Covid-19 Myth Busters

Investigation activities:

Now that you have collected some sources on your topic, it’s time to review them critically before writing up your research. What kinds of sources has your search yielded? What information is provided in those sources? What information do you still need?

For each source, ask the following questions:

• What is this source–for example, a blog, scientific study, op-ed, or government report? Is it relevant? What genre is it? Is this source based on opinion or facts?
• Who is the author? What expertise do they possess?
• When was the article published? Does it contain timely information?
• Where was the source published? Is that a reputable journal or impartial news source? If it is a scholarly source, does the journal have an impact factor–that is, an indicator that other researchers cite research from the journal? Has the article been cited? Was it peer reviewed?
• How was the research conducted? Where was the research conducted?

After reflecting on the results of your research and what that research has yielded, you may decide to go back and do some more research. Try finding new sources if you cannot answer the questions above. Also, it’s not uncommon to find gaps in your research at this stage. You may need to go do more research, if you haven’t found exactly what you need to answer your research question.

• Question to Consider:

At this point in a research project, it’s very helpful to talk to someone about your research. By explaining what you are researching and what you have found, you are synthesizing your research findings into chunks of information. That chunking will help you both process what you have learned and help you consider what else you might want to know.

Session 2.2: Phase 4: Conclusion 

(4)  Conclusion . After you have found and analyzed sources to answer your research question, you need to figure out what to say. Professional researchers sometimes call this a “story,” and many professional researchers talk about the “story” of their research. A good research project reads like a story–there is a question, a search for answers, and …. ANSWERS!

So, how do you tell a good story with all the information you have found?

One way is to use a storyboard. There is no one right way to make a storyboard. It can be as simple as bullet points, a traditional outline, or a series of images. A storyboard or outline also helps you figure out where you need research in your story. After all, no one wants to read a series of research summaries. Readers want a presentation, essay, or report that is punctuated with research findings.

Once you figure out where you want to add research in your presentation, essay, or report, you need to decide how you will use that research. There are three main ways that writers include research: summary, paraphrase, and direct quotation.

How to Summarize

Summarizing involves a specific process of converting what you have read into a much shorter version. The process can generally be handled in four steps:

• Identify the main claim and write it in your own words. Often, you will find it easiest to write this if you read the abstract, introduction, and conclusion of an article. The main claim is usually most developed in these sections. If someone were to ask you, “What is this about?” this statement would be your answer.
• Explain the main arguments that support this claim. You can omit aspects that are not central to supporting the claim, such as specific details or examples.
• Include necessary context. Sometimes a small amount of context, such as the circumstances of the research, can be helpful to understanding the claim or conclusions.
• Avoid personal opinion or interpretation of the original. This point holds true for students working on summary assignments for school but may be “bent” in professional writing, depending on the purpose and audience. (Irish, 2015, p. 209-210)

Make sure that if you are summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting someone else’s ideas or words that you  cite your source . Usually a citation includes an in-text reference and an entry in a References page. The Northeastern University guide to citing sources is a good resource for learning the different ways of using sources.

Conclusion activities:

Now that you have found good sources that help you answer your research question, it’s useful to take a step back before writing up your findings. At this moment, you are “close” to your work, which means that you may not see gaps or strengths in your research process. Talking to a friend can help you get some perspective. The following questions can also help you self-assess your work:

• What are the main themes, ideas, or findings that I find most compelling from my research?
• What assertions can I support with the sources I have found? Do multiple sources support those assertions?
• Have I answered my research question? If not, do I need to change my original research question?
• How do I feel about this research? Have I learned something? How has that new knowledge changed me?
• What might happen based on my research? What might be a positive effect? A negative effect?

In this session, you will take the results of your initial inquiry activities and research analysis from the first two sessions and produce a piece of accessible research writing.

Now that you know how to ask a research question, conduct research, and analyze your findings such that you can make a storyboard or outline, it’s time to finish drafting your presentation, report, or essay.

While many writers compose narratives chronologically, research writers tend to compose their texts in chunks. They might write a short introduction to frame the main idea of their report or presentation, but then move to the center of the report or presentation to work on a key idea. By using a storyboard or outline, you can easily move around in your report or essay to different sections and not lose the overall coherence of your work. This nonlinear composing process also helps with fatigue when working with complex research.

Getting feedback on your inquiry-based writing:

While inquiry-based writing can take many forms, there are some key elements in all research writing. So, while you may or may not have a friend who can evaluate the technical content of your inquiry-based writing, you can still have a friend give you some feedback on the following:

• What is the research question?
• Why is that an interesting research question? If you can’t tell, offer some suggestions.
• What data did the writer collect to answer that question(s)?
• Do you feel that the writer has enough data to answer their research question? Why or why not? Do you feel that the researcher has the right kind of data to answer their research question? Why or why not?
• What is the biggest surprise in the findings? What seems to be the most important finding?
• What remains unclear to you after reading the draft?

Session overview : Now that you have a firm grounding in your self-generated research projects, the community entry point activities that follow in this module help you position yourselves within larger community responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Community-based  prompts are for writers who want to advocate for a particular position and work with members of their own communities. These activities also provide a foundation for the skills, such as interviewing.

In this session, we offer participants two ways of using writing for community-based projects: op-eds and oral histories. Op-ed advice is targeted for participants who want to take their self-generated research inquiries and use their findings as means to advocate for particular positions, interventions, or recommendations. Oral history advice is for participants who want a more intimate way of using writing to advocate for community awareness by capturing the stories of community members. Activities in this session guide writers through the writing process for both of these activities. This session follows three steps:

• Identify common types of community-based writing.
• Generate op-ed pitches and trauma-informed interview questions to support public-facing narratives and oral histories.
• Draft an op-ed or  transcribe an oral history interview.
• Reading: Tasha Golden, “Where Your Writing Can Go: Storytelling as Advocacy,” The Ploughshares Blog

Community-based writing values the perspectives of individuals outside the academy. That means, community members’ ideas guide the research and final product. For example, op-eds are often meant to give voice to individuals who are not professional journalists but who may have particular expertise in a topic or lived experiences that offer readers valuable perspectives. Other community-based writing projects, such as oral history projects, are meant to document people in specific locations at specific times in history.

In this session, you will gain exposure to these common types of community-based writing, including strategies for developing your ideas as well as reading published examples.

• Reading: Reann Gibson, “Communities of Color Hit Hardest by Heat Waves,” The Boston Globe
• Reading: David Lat, “Op-Ed: People ask me if I’ve recovered from COVID-19. That’s not an Easy Question to Answer,” Los Angeles Times
• Sabrina Strings, “It’s Not Obesity. It’s Slavery,” The New York Times
• Reading: “Writing OpEds That Make A Difference,” Indivisible
• Reading: Kristine Maloney, “Op-ed Writing Tips to Consider During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Inside Higher Ed
• The Op-Ed Project, “Op-Ed Writing Tips and Tricks”
• Reading: “Covid-19 Oral History Plague,” Journal of the Plague Year
• Reading: Jo Healey, “Reporting on Coronavirus: Handling Sensitive Remote Interviews,” Dart Center
• Reading: Jina Moore, “Covering Trauma, A Training Guide”
• Reading: Jina Moore, “Five Ideas on Meaningful Consent in Trauma Journalism”
• Video: Trauma-Informed Interviewing: Techniques from a Clinician’s Toolkit

In this session, you will apply the strategies from the previous section to your own writing process, clarifying your stance and audience through drafting a pitch for op-ed projects and generating interview questions for oral histories and similar narrative projects.

Use the following questions to help draft your brief pitch and begin framing your draft:

Preparing for the Op-Ed

1. Why write an op-ed? Clarify your purpose:

a. Inform (make aware of)

b. Educate (going a little deeper)

c. Persuade

e. Advocate/offer call to action

2. Basic questions to draft a pitch:

a. What’s your issue? What is the “hook” or current event that frames this piece?

b. Why right now?

c. What’s your unique perspective/recommendation within this issue? What is the counter view to this?

d. Why should  you  be the one to write it? (credentials, relevant life experiences, etc.)

e. Where should you pitch it? (local or national publication)

3. The argument: How are you making your case?

a. Anecdotal evidence–the personal, contextual details that engage the reader (potentially from Module 1)

b. Research–the evidence to support your recommendation or position (from Module 2)

c. Testimony–the words of others to help you make your case (from oral histories)

4. The writing:

a. Be as concise as possible (typically around 750 words)

b. Use active voice

c. Avoid clichés

d. Use specific examples

e. Have a consistent voice

f. Know your audience

Preparing to interview community members for oral histories 

1. What are the goals and purpose for collecting these oral histories? 

a. “To provide a historic record of what has happened and its multiple impact on individuals and within communities.

b. To share the results of these findings with professionals who make humanitarian interventions in the aftermath, and to record the success and failures of those programs if resources permit.

c. To support those who give testimony in creating narratives that through their very expressivity and creativity can help rebuild communities and reconstruct identity in the wake of the catastrophe.” (Albarelli et al., 2020, p. 13)

2. Define the frame of the project:

a. Place. Currently, most interviews should be conducted remotely.

b. Time. You must decide if you will interview someone while an event is happening, immediately after an event, or after some period of time has passed since the event.

c. People. The people you interview are called “narrators.”

d. Technology. Decide what  technology you will use to conduct the interview.

e. Legal issues. Read the claim rights, if you are using professional software for interviewing.

3. Select the focus of the interviews:

a. Will you focus on a specific moment in time or an expanse of time?

b. Will you use the same questions for each narrator, same themes but varied questions, or freeform format?

c. How long will you interview a narrator?

d. Will you be seeking a second interview?

e. Will you give narrators the opportunity to listen to their interviews?

4. Develop a plan for listening and publishing interviews

a. How will you listen for accuracy of meaning?

b. How will you address awkward passages or inaudible passages in the interviews? Will you remove filler words like “uh” and “um” from the transcripts?

c. Will you trace themes across interviews and provide an analysis or build compelling profiles of individual narrators?

d. Will you select the most interesting quotes or allow the interview to be published in its entirety?

e. What will you do about interviews that did not go well?

f. How will you understand the way your perspectives might shape how you interpret the interview?

g. How might the interviews be used for unintended purposes? How might you safeguard against that happening?

5. Develop a plan for storing the interview files

a. Who owns the rights to the interviews?

b. Where can the audio or video files be stored safely so as to ensure the confidentiality of you and the narrators?

c. If you need to access the audio or video files in the future, can you do that easily?

d. If you plan on destroying unused material, how can you ensure that the information has actually been destroyed or erased?

Interviewing Community Members: Interviewing Tips

Interviewing community members who have undergone traumatic experiences requires patience, empathy, and resilience.  Interviewing requires that we become witnesses to events. When those events are catastrophic or traumatic events, then we are emotionally and physically implicated in those events. Moreover, because of the difficult nature of interviewing community members who have undergone traumatic experiences, it is critical to set-out the framework for your interview before you begin asking questions.

When contacting potential community members: 

• Explain the purpose of the interview and ensure that you explain the interview is voluntary. You may never coerce someone into an interview.
• Explain how the interview will happen–for example, do you plan on recording the interview? Respect narrators wishes if they do not want to be recorded or videotaped. All narrators may stop an interview at any time, if they wish.
• Explain who you are. (See self-reflexivity in Module 2)
• Explain how the interview material will be used. Will the interview be made public or kept private?
• Explain how you will ensure the safety and privacy of participants being interviewed. Will narrators’ real names be used or will they be given pseudonyms?
• Confirm the day, time, length, and format of the interview in advance.
• Explain any compensation or other benefits from the interview.
• Provide your contact information.

Good oral history interviewers (Adapted from Aras et al., p. 15):

• Rely on respectful language and acknowledge the pain that narrators may have suffered. Acknowledge grief but do not use phrases like, “I know how you feel.” Such phrases can seem like trivializing other people’s pain.
• Use warm-up questions to make narrators feel comfortable at the beginning of the interview. A warm-up question, such as asking narrators for their preferred names and pronouns, shows narrators that you are willing to allow them to shape the interview content.
• Allow narrators to answer questions in the ways that feel most comfortable to them. Open-ended questions–questions with no right or wrong answers–are best.
• Base questions on what narrators have already said. This allows interviewers to continue the conversation across multiple questions. For example, ask about a similar incident or ask narrators for their assessment of an event. You can also prompt additional information simply by asking, “Could you tell me more?”
• Allow narrators time if they need to cry or take a break.
• Summarize and confirm what narrators have said through a technique called “sayback.” When using sayback, the interviewer says something like, “So, as I hear you saying……” This technique allows the narrator to correct a faulty misinterpretation on the part of the interviewer.
• Allow narrators to describe events, expectations, and emotions in their own terms. Do not correct narrators.
• Use objects and texts, such as dairies, to help prompt insights from narrators. If you wish to use such materials, you should always invite participants  before  the interview to bring such items to the interview.
• At the end of an interview, a good interviewer also thanks narrators and asks them for any information that they might wish to share. If an interviewer is worried about a narrator, they might follow-up with a call to check on them.

Listening to Trauma

In the 1960s, the CUNY system developed a program called SEEK to expand university admissions. Notice in this  interview with Marvina White how the interviewer listens and respects Marvina’s recounting of trauma. And in this  inquiry-based article , notice how Sean Molloy, the interviewer, retains that same respect.

Important characteristics of an interviewer are:

• Attention : “This is primarily conveyed through questions that often include a phrase or thought of the narrator at the beginning, and often an atmosphere of silence that is filled with expectation and interest.”
• Connection : “The ability to create an environment of neutral and supportive listening in which any experience, no matter how graphic or harrowing, can be conveyed and absorbed, without resulting in creating excess emotion within the fieldwork situation.”

Constructive listening and interpretation : “The activity of listening, usually silently, must be punctuated by the activity of intelligent questions which crystallize the connections made, most importantly, by the narrator but also by an attentive oral historian who can reflect additional connections and encourage the process of interpretation.” (Albarelli et al., 2020, p. 26-27)

• At this point, you will want to draft some interview questions and ask a friend to help you think through possible answers. Often you will find that you have too many questions! For an oral history, it is better to let narrators spend time working through a story or a few stories, rather than briefly answering a number of questions.
• Interviewing Activity:  Using the interview tips, identify two people whom you would like to interview. Interview each person for 30-45 minutes.

In this session, you will expand your op-ed pitch or your interview questions and compose a full draft of your community project. This is where the personal narrative exploration you did in Session 1, the research and analysis you worked on in Session 2, and the scaffolded activities you did in the first two sessions of Session 3 come together to support a community-based COVID-19 project.

Op-ed:  Using the writing tips and strategies in Session 3.2, write an approximately 750-word op-ed that includes a news hook for your reader, a clear position and counter position, and specific anecdotal and research-based evidence to both engage the reader and support that position. Remember that you are likely writing about a community issue for a public audience, so accessible, clear language and attention to your specific intended audience–local newspaper? National media outlet?–are important. Individual publications most often offer specific submission guidance on whether they want pitched ideas or full drafts, but in either case, it is best to have a full draft prepared in case an editor responds with interest.

Oral history:  After the interview, listen to the interview again and try to transcribe the audio as accurately as possible. If you do not have time to transcribe the entire interview, try transcribing pieces of the interview that you find most compelling.  If you find the audio too fuzzy at times, you can add ellipses to the interview transcript to note that the audio was inaudible. For example, “I called my mother at the nursing home to see …[inaudible]… The nurse told me that my mom had been transferred to another room.”

Getting feedback on your community-based writing

Op-ed : Before you send your op-ed out for possible publication, you will likely want some feedback. Consider your intended audience. Remember that you can write for local community outlets as well as more general publications, and see how your writing resonates with an intended reader or readers. Some feedback that may be helpful include questions like these: Are the argument and counter argument clear and easy for readers to pinpoint? Does the reader feel connected to the topic through anecdotal experiences? Is the argument supported with facts? Is the scope of the research and content working, or do your readers need more details to arrive at your point with you?

Oral history : While it is always most ethical to allow narrators to review interview transcripts before those transcripts are made public, you need to set expectations. Interviews are not polished speeches. What makes an interview powerful is the rhythm of everyday language, the persona of the speaker, and the bond with the interviewer. So, while it is fine to allow narrators to correct factually incorrect information and revisit passages that need further elaboration, you want to avoid revising the interview transcript into a speech. You also will want to allow narrators to delete any information they feel puts them at risk. Sensitive comments that are made based on trauma are fine; comments that jeopardize the well-being of narrators or others named in the interview are not.

Writing and Responding to Trauma in a Time of Pandemic Bibliography

Associate Professor of English

Mya Poe’s research focuses on writing assessment and writing development with particular attention to equity and fairness. She is the co-author of Learning to Communicate in Science and Engineering (CCCC Advancement of Knowledge Award, 2012), c…

Laurie Edwards

Teaching professor and online pedagogy coordinator in english.

Laurie Edwards primarily teaches Advanced Writing for the Health Professions and Writing to Heal, with particular interest in online/hybrid pedagogy, diversity and inclusion in the writing classroom, and narrative medicine. She is a nonfiction writer…

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings
• My Bibliography
• Collections
• Citation manager

Save citation to file

Email citation, add to collections.

• Create a new collection
• Add to an existing collection

Add to My Bibliography

Your saved search, create a file for external citation management software, your rss feed.

• Search in PubMed
• Search in NLM Catalog
• Add to Search

Experiencing the Pandemic: Narrative Reflection about Two Coronavirus Outbreaks

Affiliation.

• 1 Institute of Psychology, University of Klagenfurt.
• PMID: 32744108
• DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2020.1800277

This is a narrative reflection about my experience of the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreaks across countries between January and early March 2020. My recalled memories showed the shifting and contingent thoughts and emotions. Contextual factors such as my ethnic identity and local anti-coronavirus policies also constructed my perceptions of the pandemic. While my story is unfinished as the coronavirus outbreak is still happening, the narratives provide a novel perspective to understand public health practices in a global context. As the health knowledge construction is infused with identity and personal meanings, this reflection also shows that people from a racial group may face unfair treatment in a pandemic. My narratives suggest the need for a more globally synchronized health communication in pandemics.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

• Use of Rapid Online Surveys to Assess People's Perceptions During Infectious Disease Outbreaks: A Cross-sectional Survey on COVID-19. Geldsetzer P. Geldsetzer P. J Med Internet Res. 2020 Apr 2;22(4):e18790. doi: 10.2196/18790. J Med Internet Res. 2020. PMID: 32240094 Free PMC article.
• Understanding coronavirus disease (COVID-19) risk perceptions among the public to enhance risk communication efforts: a practical approach for outbreaks, Finland, February 2020. Lohiniva AL, Sane J, Sibenberg K, Puumalainen T, Salminen M. Lohiniva AL, et al. Euro Surveill. 2020 Apr;25(13):2000317. doi: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.13.2000317. Euro Surveill. 2020. PMID: 32265008 Free PMC article.
• Global Telemedicine Implementation and Integration Within Health Systems to Fight the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Call to Action. Ohannessian R, Duong TA, Odone A. Ohannessian R, et al. JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2020 Apr 2;6(2):e18810. doi: 10.2196/18810. JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2020. PMID: 32238336 Free PMC article.
• Dynamic adaptation to COVID-19 in a Singapore paediatric emergency department. Tan RMR, Ong GY, Chong SL, Ganapathy S, Tyebally A, Lee KP. Tan RMR, et al. Emerg Med J. 2020 May;37(5):252-254. doi: 10.1136/emermed-2020-209634. Epub 2020 Apr 22. Emerg Med J. 2020. PMID: 32321705 Review.
• COVID-19 and Global Health Security: Overview of the Global Health Security Alliance, COVID-19 Response, African Countries' Approaches, and Ethics. Yimer B, Ashebir W, Wolde A, Teshome M. Yimer B, et al. Disaster Med Public Health Prep. 2022 Apr;16(2):426-430. doi: 10.1017/dmp.2020.360. Epub 2020 Oct 2. Disaster Med Public Health Prep. 2022. PMID: 33004106 Free PMC article. Review.
• Torn between two worlds: COVID, it's your fault. Lewis L, Tadi P, Veldsman A, Jhagroo J, Harrington C, McFaul M. Lewis L, et al. Int J Intercult Relat. 2022 Jul;89:100-110. doi: 10.1016/j.ijintrel.2022.06.003. Epub 2022 Jun 18. Int J Intercult Relat. 2022. PMID: 35755424 Free PMC article.
• Social Media as Online Shelter: Psychological Relief in COVID-19 Pandemic Diaries. Feng R, Feng Y, Ivanov A. Feng R, et al. Front Psychol. 2022 May 30;13:882264. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.882264. eCollection 2022. Front Psychol. 2022. PMID: 35712174 Free PMC article.
• Face mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic: comparing perceptions in China and three European countries. Zhao X, Knobel P. Zhao X, et al. Transl Behav Med. 2021 Jun 17;11(6):1199-1204. doi: 10.1093/tbm/ibab043. Transl Behav Med. 2021. PMID: 33963866 Free PMC article.
• Search in MeSH

LinkOut - more resources

Full text sources.

• Taylor & Francis
• MedlinePlus Health Information

Research Materials

• NCI CPTC Antibody Characterization Program
• Citation Manager

NCBI Literature Resources

MeSH PMC Bookshelf Disclaimer

The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited.

One Student's Perspective on Life During a Pandemic

• Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
• Ethics Resources
• Ethics Spotlight
• COVID-19: Ethics, Health and Moving Forward

The pandemic and resulting shelter-in-place restrictions are affecting everyone in different ways. Tiana Nguyen, shares both the pros and cons of her experience as a student at Santa Clara University.

person sitting at table with open laptop, notebook and pen

Tiana Nguyen ‘21 is a Hackworth Fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. She is majoring in Computer Science, and is the vice president of Santa Clara University’s Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) chapter .

The world has slowed down, but stress has begun to ramp up.

In the beginning of quarantine, as the world slowed down, I could finally take some time to relax, watch some shows, learn to be a better cook and baker, and be more active in my extracurriculars. I have a lot of things to be thankful for. I especially appreciate that I’m able to live in a comfortable house and have gotten the opportunity to spend more time with my family. This has actually been the first time in years in which we’re all able to even eat meals together every single day. Even when my brother and I were young, my parents would be at work and sometimes come home late, so we didn’t always eat meals together. In the beginning of the quarantine I remember my family talking about how nice it was to finally have meals together, and my brother joking, “it only took a pandemic to bring us all together,” which I laughed about at the time (but it’s the truth).

Soon enough, we’ll all be back to going to different places and we’ll be separated once again. So I’m thankful for my living situation right now. As for my friends, even though we’re apart, I do still feel like I can be in touch with them through video chat—maybe sometimes even more in touch than before. I think a lot of people just have a little more time for others right now.

Although there are still a lot of things to be thankful for, stress has slowly taken over, and work has been overwhelming. I’ve always been a person who usually enjoys going to classes, taking on more work than I have to, and being active in general. But lately I’ve felt swamped with the amount of work given, to the point that my days have blurred into online assignments, Zoom classes, and countless meetings, with a touch of baking sweets and aimless searching on Youtube.

The pass/no pass option for classes continues to stare at me, but I look past it every time to use this quarter as an opportunity to boost my grades. I've tried to make sense of this type of overwhelming feeling that I’ve never really felt before. Is it because I’m working harder and putting in more effort into my schoolwork with all the spare time I now have? Is it because I’m not having as much interaction with other people as I do at school? Or is it because my classes this quarter are just supposed to be this much harder? I honestly don’t know; it might not even be any of those. What I do know though, is that I have to continue work and push through this feeling.

This quarter I have two synchronous and two asynchronous classes, which each have pros and cons. Originally, I thought I wanted all my classes to be synchronous, since that everyday interaction with my professor and classmates is valuable to me. However, as I experienced these asynchronous classes, I’ve realized that it can be nice to watch a lecture on my own time because it even allows me to pause the video to give me extra time for taking notes. This has made me pay more attention during lectures and take note of small details that I might have missed otherwise. Furthermore, I do realize that synchronous classes can also be a burden for those abroad who have to wake up in the middle of the night just to attend a class. I feel that it’s especially unfortunate when professors want students to attend but don’t make attendance mandatory for this reason; I find that most abroad students attend anyway, driven by the worry they’ll be missing out on something.

I do still find synchronous classes amazing though, especially for discussion-based courses. I feel in touch with other students from my classes whom I wouldn’t otherwise talk to or regularly reach out to. Since Santa Clara University is a small school, it is especially easy to interact with one another during classes on Zoom, and I even sometimes find it less intimidating to participate during class through Zoom than in person. I’m honestly not the type to participate in class, but this quarter I found myself participating in some classes more than usual. The breakout rooms also create more interaction, since we’re assigned to random classmates, instead of whomever we’re sitting closest to in an in-person class—though I admit breakout rooms can sometimes be awkward.

Something that I find beneficial in both synchronous and asynchronous classes is that professors post a lecture recording that I can always refer to whenever I want. I found this especially helpful when I studied for my midterms this quarter; it’s nice to have a recording to look back upon in case I missed something during a lecture.

Overall, life during these times is substantially different from anything most of us have ever experienced, and at times it can be extremely overwhelming and stressful—especially in terms of school for me. Online classes don’t provide the same environment and interactions as in-person classes and are by far not as enjoyable. But at the end of the day, I know that in every circumstance there is always something to be thankful for, and I’m appreciative for my situation right now. While the world has slowed down and my stress has ramped up, I’m slowly beginning to adjust to it.

• Get Our Daily Email
• Ways To Support Us
• About InspireMore
• Advertise With Us
• Website Terms
• Privacy Policy
• Advertising Terms
• Causes That Matter

Wake up with a Smile

9 valuable lessons we’ve learned during the pandemic.

Share this:

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

We’re not going to lie: It’s been a little hard to find the silver lining at times this past year.

With so much stress, loss, and pain at the forefront of our minds, it sometimes feels like we’re in a constant waiting game, counting down the minutes until our “normal” lives are back. But after a year like this, there’s no going back to normal because we’ve all been changed forever in one way or another. We’ve lived 12 years in the past 12 months, and we’ve grown in the process – and that is a silver lining to be proud of!

So we decided the best way to acknowledge and appreciate the growth we’ve experienced is by taking a second to reflect on this past year and find the positives that were woven through each day.

To see the good that has come from these hard times, we adopted a lens of learning and growing, and it empowered us to do just that! Here are nine important lessons we’ve learned in the midst of COVID-19.

1. Family is nonnegotiable.

For many of us, this year brought with it quality family time that we never expected and, honestly, might never have had otherwise. It’s reminded us just how much family matters. And I don’t just mean blood relatives, I mean chosen family, too. 

We were encouraged to take a step out of the craziness of our former lives and deeply invest in those relationships again, whether it was face-to-face or not.

We’ve had the opportunity to not just catch up on life, but to also spend priceless time with our loved ones, asking personal questions, being there for the important moments, leaning on each other for support, and growing together. As a result, we remembered just how much we need each other! 

2. Prioritize health and wellness .

When the pandemic first began, the world started paying attention to health, wellness, and hygiene like never before. We realized just how effective our handwashing wasn’t , how much we shouldn’t be touching our faces, and the beauty of both modern and natural medicine. These are all crucial practices and levels of care that will hopefully stick with us in the future.

Not only that, but without the usual benefits of daily activity, in-person workouts, and restaurant dining, a microscope was placed on just how willing we were to maintain our wellness all on our own.

With the pandemic came a myriad of free cooking and workout classes on social media and a realization that, particularly when we’re stuck inside, our bodies really do need nutrients and activity to survive. 

3. We can get by on less. Much less.

The road to discovering how little we need was paved with uncertainty. With the overwhelming job loss that came with the pandemic, people had to learn how to pinch pennies, clip coupons, and trim excess like never before. 

Even for those who kept their jobs, without indoor dining, salons, gyms, and a wealth of other standard social activities, saving money actually became easier to do. Even though we’ll all be lining the doors when things are back to normal, we realized in the process that we actually can live on a lot less and still be content.

4. Build that nest egg.

In addition to pinching those pennies, we learned the endless value of having a rainy day fund – or more appropriately, an emergency fund. An emergency fund is one that is set aside for the most essential of needs, including rent, medical expenses, childcare, and food. 

As we’ve all heard over and over again, these are unprecedented times. The nature of unprecedented times is that we don’t see them coming, so we don’t plan for them.

If this year has taught us anything, it’s the importance of setting aside a little extra money and leaving it there until the day comes when we might need it. 

5. Slow down.

We’ve realized that not only is it OK to slow down, but it’s actually essential. 

When the pandemic hit, it was as if the whole world was running on overdrive and then, all at once, it crashed. We allowed it to get this way because we have a tendency to align our worth with our busyness. But luckily, this past year has shown us just how unbalanced that meter is. 

There are a few key points to remember moving forward. First of all, self-care is not self-indulgent; it’s one way that we keep ourselves healthy, both physically and mentally. Second, slowing down is what helps us truly live in the present and find contentment in our circumstances. 

6. We should be talking about mental health.

One of the best silver linings of this year is that we learned just how valuable mental health is. Studies show that ever since the pandemic hit, close to 40 percent of Americans now suffer from anxiety and depression. The causes are endless: financial stress, difficult home lives, boredom, loss, fear, and, perhaps the heaviest of all, loneliness. 

These universal mental health issues truly are a “second wave” of this global crisis, and the greatest benefit has been the light shed on their gravity.

People are being more vocal than ever about the importance of honesty and vulnerability when it comes to our mental health, just like we would a physical ailment. By doing so, we can get the love and support we need. 

7. Our thoughts on people have changed.

The more closed off we’ve had to become socially and the more we’ve noticed the deep need around us, the more we’ve realized whom we consider to be truly essential.

In our own lives, we’ve learned which friends we want close to us in times of trouble – and maybe even some relationships we’ve been needing freedom from. 

In our communities, we’ve finally realized the overwhelming value of our essential workers: in health care, education, food service, and the most underappreciated segments of our workforce. May we never forget how brave and resilient they have been for all of us these past 12 months. 

8. Becoming comfortable with uncertainty.

“The one thing that’s certain about this current crisis is the massive amount of uncertainty,” Paul Knopp, U.S. Chair and CEO of KPMG LLP, told Accounting Today . “In order to succeed, you must execute on the activities and behaviors that are within your control.”

We have definitely learned flexibility this year. From working and schooling from home, to rerouting our careers, to finding new ways to stay connected, to moving back in with our parents, our flexibility has been award-winning and record-breaking. 

A benefit of this growing pain is that it’s made us more comfortable with uncertainty. There’s so much about the future that we can’t possibly know or predict right now, so ultimately all we can do is be OK with it – and choose to find the wonder and joy in our present circumstances. 

9. We are deeply resilient.

We are capable of so much more than we ever knew. This year has been rife with chaos, unrest, injustice, loss, and pain – but we’ve survived. We’re still standing. Even in the darkest time, we’ve been able to look outside ourselves and pull through for those in need in remarkable ways. It’s helped us realize the stuff we’re made of . 

More than that, we’ve done it together. We’ve all been in isolation together, and we’ve survived together. It’s reminded us that at the end of the day, we are all just human beings, and we need each other.

And now we know with certainty that we can handle anything!

After the levels of stress we’ve lived through this past year, the best we can do is make sure it wasn’t for nothing. We can search for the good, continue to grow, and allow our circumstances to change us for the better. Only then will we continue to come out on the other side stronger, more resilient, more compassionate, and more hopeful than ever!

Share this story to remind others how much they’ve grown this year.

Want to be happier in just 5 minutes a day? Sign up for Morning Smile and join over 455,000+ people who start each day with good news.

Recommended posts

Read more like this, more popular posts, brighten the world and spread hope.

• Submit Your Story
• Shop our Merchandise
• Make Me Smile
• InspireMore in the Press
• Join Our Team
• Membership Portal Access
• Membership Support
• Editorial Standards

Columbia College | Columbia University in the City of New York

• Current Issue
• Past Issues

“What Has Your Pandemic Experience Been Like?”

Fourteen alumni tell us how COVID-19 has shaped their lives.

I n March, when we were considering CCT’s Summer 2020 issue, we knew that we wanted to address the shockwave that had upended and overtaken all of our lives. The COVID-19 pandemic was — is — that rare event that affects everyone with ties to the College. Even as this introduction is written, its vast, global story continues to evolve, expanding and deepening in ways that resist easy comprehension.

Against this backdrop, we knew we could tell a more personal story, create a record of how the coronavirus and its many ripple effects had been experienced by our community. And so, in April and early May, we asked 14 alumni to offer a keyhole into their daily lives: What did their new routines look like? How had work changed? What had been challenging, and where were they finding their joys?

The responses were varied, shaped by age, profession, location and all the personal variables that distinguish one life from the next. And what began as a kind of time capsule became, slowly, so much more. The reflections enlarged our view beyond the walls that had all too literally been hemming us in. They invited us to exercise our empathies, take comfort in shared experiences and — with so many of us social-distanced into solitude or small groups — feel the warmth of connection.

It will be a long time before we can fully reckon with all that’s happened and is happening during this pandemic. But we are going through it together, and we hope that our contribution can help.

— The Editors

Editor-at-large, iHeartMEDIA; chief content officer at Nineteen Twenty Media

“T hough I was an English lit major at Columbia, these days I find myself immersed in the sciences, living out Einstein’s definition of insanity on the regular: watching the news, then instantly regretting it; begging/bribing/browbeating my kids to sit for home-schooling, only to surrender an hour later; channeling Alice Waters for breakfast, Chester Cheetah by lunch. Our days here at Casa Goldman (me, two grade-schoolers, one eye- rolling husband) are — wait, what day is it, again? We ditched the skim for half-and-half. We subscribed to Hulu. We pray to the broadband gods to keep our signal strong. We are, as the kids say, hashtag blessed.

“As a writer, I wrestle with a strange new tension: I have never felt more creative and yet so hard-pressed to eke out the time and focus to write. But I’ve still managed to bank a win or two. I launched a podcast called Hazmat Hotel , in which I interview interesting people about how coronavirus has upended their professions. (Hit me up if you’d like to be a guest.) I finished my one-woman show about Jim Comey. I am knee-deep in a new screenplay. In the past eight weeks, one of my boys has discovered Seinfeld, the other ‘Shark Week,’ so that Hulu subscription is basically paying for itself now. The news from Casa G is that we are all OK, hanging in and enormously grateful, thank you for asking.”

Policy analyst, NYC Mayor’s Office of Policy and Planning; volunteer coordinator, Bowman for Congress

“I work for the Office of the Mayor in New York City full-time and coordinate volunteers on Jamaal Bowman’s congressional campaign in NY-16 part-time. With local government on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis and, as I write, the June 23 primary less than two months away, I am busier than I have ever been.

“I try my best to work out a few times a week and use Friday evenings to catch up on TV shows and work on crafts. I rediscovered my pottery tools when quarantine began and ordered polymer clay and embroidery floss to make earrings. A friend recommended that I order a weaving loom to make tapestries and rugs — it just arrived, so I am going to try that this week. My roommate’s mom might drop off an old sewing machine so I can try my hand at that, too.

“Work can be a bit overwhelming, so using my hands to make things for myself, family and friends is a welcome reprieve from corona madness.”

COURTESY AMARI HAMMONDS ‘09

Associate deputy solicitor general, Office of the Solicitor General in the California Department of Justice

“W hat if I had to go about my life not knowing the next time it’d be OK to touch another person? I’m single and I live alone, so this has become an abiding question in the weeks, now months, since March 16, when the Bay Area announced its first-in-the-nation shelter-in-place order.

“I’ve learned that isolation makes the memory of my last human contact more indelible — a Kid ’n Play-inspired kickstep as my friend Colin left what would be our last Sunday pancakes together. We now connect through FaceTime meals; from afar, he’s taught me how to make a poached egg. But I’ve also learned that regardless of health orders, video calls won’t cut it. I’m grateful to have cultivated relationships with a select few who, like me, crave connection in the absence of the pandemic-friendly community offered by roommates or romantic partners ‘adjacent’ to their households. A conversation while biking 6 ft. apart is critical nourishment. I once petted a gentle old dog named Loki after one such ride to the Sausalito waterfront, and it was like oxygen for me — though for her, probably more about the hot pastrami sandwich in my hand.

“Most importantly, I’ve learned to be gentle with myself for the swirl of feelings this all brings. It is possible to feel at once abandoned by friends who have hunkered down with the privilege of companionship, while also compassionate toward their choice — one I’d likely make, if given the option. It’s OK to spend one night crying myself to sleep, wishing I could join my mom across the country, then the next cutting up playing Codenames over Google Hangouts as if I’d lived my life this way all along.

“Until ‘normal’ returns at some indeterminate point, in some indeterminate form, I’m learning what that looks like for now and receiving sweetness in every form. My friend and her husband recently invited me for a socially distant picnic, and to meet their puppy. I’ll be there with a fashionably colorful mask and hand sanitizer at the ready.”

COURTESY BRENDON JOBS ‘05

Director of diversity and inclusion, The Haverford School; social studies methods instructor at the Penn Graduate School of Education

“S chool closed suddenly in March as the threat of pandemic became a real crisis. Like many, I’ve been going through a grieving process for the life, vigor and human connection that the schoolhouse offered me in all my years of teaching.

“At the start, I was overwhelmed with the multitude of tasks needed to make the transition [to remote learning] work for my students, faculty and other communities that I serve. Fear and duty defined my feelings in that moment. But it wasn’t long before anger and resentment grabbed hold of me. Hopeful proclamations that ‘we’re all in this together’ came from official channels; they offered encouragement that if we adhered to social distancing we could flatten the curve and ‘get back to normal.’ It wasn’t long afterward that nasty disparities in race and class, in keeping with pre-COVID-19 patterns, magnified. As an educator, I wondered: How can I explain this to kids? How does what they’re witnessing shape their understanding of how the world works?

“As a black queer man growing up in the 1990s, I remember living with the fear of the AIDS virus. Implicitly, I was fed the message that I lived with greater risk of contracting the disease in a way that stigmatized me. Those old feelings have reemerged as I have witnessed COVID-19 transform from a foreign threat into a health crisis disproportionately infecting and killing Black and Brown people; meanwhile, violent, armed calls to reopen businesses rage from white protestors in Michigan and Pennsylvania despite these deaths. My mother and sister still report to their jobs as ‘essential workers,’ and my father lost his job abruptly as an early casualty of the predicted economic crash. These disparities will only grow as long as we continue to allow politics and business interests to make us willfully ignorant to wild differences in the human experience of this moment. I often struggle to imagine a different, more hopeful outcome.

COURTESY DR. JOSH JOHNSON ‘13

Surgical resident, NewYork Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center

“R inging loudly in the background of my day is a cacophony of alarms and notifications that are meant to signify an imminent medical emergency — yet they have become so ubiquitous that I can no longer distinguish among them. The hours I spend on the wards have not changed much; I am here for anywhere between 12 and 24 hours a shift, depending on the day. However, the intricacies of my work have shifted dramatically. Willing or not, I am greeted each day by an endless list of patients with tarnished lungs who require the utmost interventions possible to keep oxygen flowing throughout their bodies. It has been truly taxing.

“The difficulty lies in having to carry on and continue my duties without the time to grieve our losses, to celebrate our wins and to reflect upon our struggles. Yet what has been remarkable is that my connection to my patients and their families has never been deeper. Though my patients cannot speak to me, I hear their pain. Though I cannot see their loved ones in person I have had immensely intimate conversations with them, and I have forged relationships based solely on trust and hope. During this pandemic I have healed others more through compassion and understanding than I have through modern science. That is the lesson I hope to never forget.”

COURTESY NYPD

Chief chaplain, NYPD; adjunct professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

“L ife in the Age of COVID-19 has not been simple or easy for any of us. I’ve had to respond to new challenges: teach classes remotely, conduct Zoom funeral services, attend virtual meetings and counsel the troubled by telephone. Perhaps the most awe- some responsibility of all was to fulfill a request to do a video with a message of ‘uplift’ and ‘encouragement’ for our police officers. Quite frankly, reading the newspaper reports every day about the ever-mounting casualty figures, and discovering that many of the victims are people I know and love, leaves me in need of uplift and encouragement. However, I felt this was really important because police officers are among the first responders to have suffered the heaviest casualties. After all, they are required to answer the call of duty regardless of the risks, including the coronavirus.

“Somehow, notwithstanding my own concerns and anxieties, I managed to put something together. It was based on Mark Twain’s observation that courage isn’t the ‘absence of fear but the mastery of it.’ There are two ways to transcend anxiety: faith in God and faith in each other. To believe in God is not simply to believe that there is a deity who will intervene and alter reality to accord with our wishes. Even more basically, it is the confidence that there is a Benevolent Intelligence undergirding the universe that fills us with the hope, optimism and trust that human beings possess the wisdom and skills required to solve the toughest problems.

“Then there is the most effective therapy of all — each other. Men and women, helping and supporting one another by doing things they don’t have to do, is the essence of love and closest we shall ever come to experiencing genuine spirituality. It is true that COVID-19 requires us to stay apart physically, but getting in touch with each other — as well as family, friends and neighbors assisting each other — can be so important and pivotal in transcending this crisis. I certainly cherish the calls and emails I have received as I cope with the physical distancing of this experience. What they proclaim in the most eloquent and dramatic way possible is that we don’t have to struggle with this alone.”

COURTESY IAN LENDLER ‘96

Children’s book author

“L ike so many others, the virus, alas, has afflicted me.

“For I, you see, am a writer, and I write things of terrible importance. I am a Creator of Truths, a conjuror of metaphors. Every morning I sit at my desk and I call to my Muse; she answers, and we begin a delicate dance of words and images and — oh yes! — similes as well! And just as my prose begins to touch the great mysteries of Life —

“‘DAD! DAD!’ My children burst into the room. ‘Can we have some Goldfish crackers?’

“‘Be still!’ I shriek. ‘What matters your aquatic-shaped snacks when I seek Beauty?’ “But it is too late. My Muse begins to back out of the room. She says, ‘You never told me you had kids.’

“‘You don’t understand,’ I splutter. ‘Normally they’re at school now.’ But she is already gone.

“Then, my wife shouts from a different room that she’s on a Zoom call and the kids need lunch.

“So I make my kids lunch.

“In the afternoon, once again, I tap at my keyboard, calling my Muse back, and with a curtsy and an impish wink, she and I begin to weave our —

‘Dad! DAD! We’re playing Fortnite with our cousins. We need your computer!’ and my kids snatch my laptop away.

“And so I wander the house, alone, bereft of my computer (and thus, all meaning), until my wife shouts from a different room that she’s on a Zoom call and can I get dinner started?

“And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this sheltered-in-place ... until ... what’s this?!

“I have been asked to do an ‘Instagram live reading,’ whatever that is ... But I seize my chance to perform for my adoring audience. To conjure worlds for them; to shaman their imaginations to an ethereal realm.

“So for your undoubted delight (and the consideration of Nobel Prize committees), I give you what I believe to be my most harrowing and important work to date. ”

COURTESY STEVE MARTINEZ ‘11

Television producer, ESPN’s The Jump

“T he show must go on, but my daily routine has been altered significantly. The Jump is now entirely produced from home: on-air talent, producers, directors and so on; we’re doing our best to help deliver to folks a 30-minute slice of escapism every day. Most of our work in production is now done the night before a show (previously, most of the production occurred the morning of ). We complete our daily tapings by 11:30 a.m. PT, but by 1:00 p.m. PT, we are on a conference call discussing the plan for the next day’s show. The current production strategy involves a balance between staying ahead in terms of preparation and being ready for news to break at a moment’s notice.

“Communication has been a challenge at times. It might not look like it at home when you see three people on your screen, but it takes dozens of talented folks to put on a TV show. My previous routine heavily relied upon face-to-face communication for most of my catching up with staff members.

“I find joy in spending time with my wife, Stephanie, and my dog, Callie, here in my Los Angeles home. I also take great pride in the ability to get a show on the air with the entire staff working from home, something we never knew was possible until we were confronted with that problem. Mainly, I just want the NBA back.”

PHOTOS BY MIKE MELLIA ‘02

Director, photographer, creator of advertising for fashion and lifestyle brands

“M any of the world’s greatest successes took place in a garage — Apple, Google, Disney. By the same token, I always loved seeing pictures of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, two great abstract expressionist painters, painting in outdoor barns on Long Island during the 1950s and 1960s. They said they liked the light. What I really think they needed was the isolation and the silence.

BY MIKE MELLIA ‘02

“To me, painting is a performance with an audience of zero, and the record of that performance is the physical object created, a mysterious enigma. Over tens of thou- sands of hours of practice, you train yourself to not even be conscious of yourself; it feels like I’m watching someone else paint a picture. There is also some element to painting that feels like robbing a bank: the intensity, the speed and the risk that you can only experience after learning to transcend all your experience and training. These large oil paintings are inspired by the wild chaos, the light and the color of nature I’m experiencing with my wife and two babies at our home in Southampton, N.Y. I hope they will bring you some joy.”

P ASCAL PERICH

Geezer Fitness

I just did twenty-five push-ups, then vacuumed the floor and then dropped down and did twenty more, for what reason I cannot say or even want to think about, especially at this moment when I am still breathing hard.

I almost didn’t know what day it is and then I did, locked into time, suddenly more secure that it’s Thursday! Which means nothing or next to nothing. I am next to nothing— it’s in this room with me, an old pal.

Snow falling from gray sky, it’s time to bake, scones, I mean, and right out of the oven take one and butter it, with jam, teapot hot at hand, and exult in the fact of everything horrible.

COURTESY DAVID PENG ‘83

Head of Asia Pacific Ex Japan at Legal & General Investment Management; president, Columbia University Alumni Association Hong Kong

“T hough I am a New Yorker, I have spent my professional life in North Asia and this is my fourth posting in Hong Kong, with in-between postings in Taipei, Shanghai and Beijing. I was in Hong Kong during the SARS epidemic in 2003. Most people in Hong Kong remember that period well. When news broke in January about what was happening in Wuhan, people in Hong Kong quickly realized the potential of another epidemic.

“The Hong Kong government was quick to put in place restrictive measures. To date, Hong Kong has never had an official lockdown, but people take the lead from the government, which asked all civil servants to work from home under two orders. People in Hong Kong are very careful to protect themselves and others, and mask wearing is universally practiced. With one of the highest population densities in the world, Hong Kong has managed to ward off a high level of viral transmission and achieved minimal death.

“When I traveled to London for meetings at the end of January through the middle of February, friends and colleagues were not concerned.They also thought it was odd that there would be runs on basic supplies like toilet paper. We know now how quickly the virus traveled and the devastation it has inflicted on our world, with the highest rates of infection and death in Europe and the United States.

“At my office in Hong Kong, we continue to practice a work- from-home policy. Our U.K. head office went into lockdown. This forced many businesses to operate remotely and digitally. For many of us, it was a continuation of the restrictions we have become accustomed to.

“My proudest moment thus far during this pandemic is how the Columbia community in Greater China and Singapore banded together to raise funding to procure and donate PPE to our frontline medical professionals and essential workers. We raised more than $2.1 million in a matter of weeks, which allowed us to donate masks, respirators, gowns, gloves, eye protectors, hazmat suits and more to Columbia University Medical Center/New York Presbyterian Hospital and other affiliated hospitals and emergency service providers.

“During my time at Columbia, I was an official University tour guide. The highlight for me was always Low Memorial Library, where I would stop my tour group in front of the Columbia motto. In Latin, it reads: In Lumine Tuo Videbimus Lvmen (‘In thy light we shall see light’).

“During these dark times, it is my great hope that the pandemic has shown us how we can be better ourselves and that, united, we shall continue to see the light.”

PHOTOS COURTESY JILL SANTOPOLO ‘03

Editor and author

“O n March 12, when Penguin Random House (PRH)’s work-from-home policy began, I grabbed my laptop and headed out of New York City, down to Washington, D.C., where my husband works and where we have a second small apartment. I figured we’d be there for a week at the most, until he began to work from home, and then we’d head back to Manhattan. I’m writing this on May 8. We haven’t yet been back. We are grateful to have jobs we can do from home — his in data and analytics, mine as an editor and novelist. But both of us working from home has meant getting creative with our 700-sq.-ft. space. The bedroom is his office, the rest of the apartment, mine, with a desk — actually, a table that formerly held our record player — next to the refrigerator.

COURTESY JILL SANTOPOLO ‘03

“But at the same time, I can’t stop thinking about New York City. I lived there during 9-11, the 2003 blackout, Hurricane Sandy. I feel like I’ve abandoned my city in its time of need. Neoclassical buildings are beautiful, but so are skyscrapers.

“This pandemic might have made me a Washingtonian, but it also made me realize that in my heart I will always be a New Yorker.”

Entrepreneur; founder, Locasaur

“I left New York in mid-March thinking I’d be back in a matter of weeks, and my packing reflected this. As the situation became more clear, I realized I’d be staying here for a while, on my family’s farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Those who know me know I’m not exactly upset by this. I grew up here, alongside a rotating menagerie of horses, chickens, sheep and the occasional goat. There are 10 shades of green in every direction, and I’ve never been more thankful for the wide open, secluded space. “So much of what’s great about New York happens after dark, and waking up early is done at your own peril. When I’m home, however, I’m on ‘farm time.’ Coffee is on and the house is buzzing by 6:00 a.m. My company Locasaur’s daily standup isn’t until 10:00 a.m., so early mornings are usually given to farm tasks and chores. There is a rhythm that you get into living on a farm; days keep churning, things keep needing to get done. A farmer’s mindset is that no matter the day’s challenge, you find a fix.

C OURTESY SIMON SCHWARTZ ‘17

“The majority of my day is devoted to re- mote work of the most urgent kind. Locasaur is a relationship app for local businesses and their regulars, and right now local businesses need their regulars more than ever. Every creative solution demanded by the reality of COVID-19 — the bakery now doing road- side pickup, the florist who started delivering, the bartender selling premixed cocktails — starts with a business having a group of core customers who truly care about it. Our goal is to power some of those creative solutions and help these businesses go digital without giving up the ‘personal touch’ that means so much to their survival. The next 12–18 months won’t be easy, but local business owners are uniformly some of the toughest people I know. In many ways they, too, have a farmer’s mindset.”

COURTESY MARGARET TRAUB ‘88

Head of global initiatives, International Medical Corps

“M y work is emergency medical relief, so the pandemic has taken over my daily life in every way. My organization normally works in conflict and disaster zones overseas, but with COVID-19, in addition to responding to the pandemic in 30 countries, we have deployed healthcare workers and supplies on the front-lines here in the United States — at hospitals in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Puerto Rico, so far.

“My days start around 5:30 a.m. — bleary-eyed in bed, scrolling through emails and the latest news. I learned early that if I don’t get into the shower by 6:30 a.m., I wind up chained to Skype and video calls in my PJs (and sometimes a nice blouse) until 5:00 p.m. Yes, that’s happened more times than I’m comfortable admitting.

“In between calls with our teams — mostly about procuring PPE, or moving supplies and clinicians, or raising money — I’m checking in with my family in New York, Utah and Arizona. I have a severely immuno-compromised sister and healthy but 90-ish-year-old parents, so I worry constantly about them and have to resist the urge to go be with them. I frequently text and call friends, including my Columbia pals. And at some point during my days I try to squeeze in a workout — usually to old episodes of 30 Rock. Another important COVID-19 distraction: cooking and baking, which I love.

“My heart breaks every day, thinking of the suffering going on around us. And not a day goes by that I don’t feel grateful to be healthy and to have a mostly healthy family and a job that puts a roof over our head and food on our table.

“Thanks to all those heroes out there, putting their lives on the line to serve their fellow humans. Everyone stay safe and healthy!”

Issue Contents

Published three times a year by Columbia College for alumni, students, faculty, parents and friends.

Columbia Alumni Center 622 W. 113th St., MC 4530, 4th Fl. New York, NY 10025 212-851-7852 [email protected]

• CCAA on Facebook
• CCAA on LinkedIn
• CCAA on Twitter
• CCAA YouTube Channel
• CCAA on Instagram
• Manage Your Subscription
• Support CCT

Columbia Alumni Center 622 W. 113th St., MC 4530, 4th Fl. New York, NY 10025 212-851-7488 [email protected]

Borderzine - Reporting Across Fronteras

Borderzine (https://borderzine.com/2020/08/frank-hernandez-a-short-story-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-in-my-life/)

Pandemic Border Shutdown

Frank hernandez – a short story of the covid-19 pandemic in my life.

• More on Pandemic Border Shutdown
• Subscribe to Pandemic Border Shutdown

A laptop has the ZOOM software open during a Friday afternoon work meeting due to social distancing on April 3.

As the COVID-19 pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization on March 11, I knew my life would dramatically change. I just didn’t know how much.

Some professors were already talking about transitioning to online learning, some of my plans were starting to fall apart, and I found myself washing my hands at every chance I had.

At first, things were not that bad – Spring Break had been extended for a week and my university decided to transition to online learning for the rest of the semester. As I live on the Mexican side and study and work in the U.S., this meant that I didn’t have to cross the border every day for the next two months a half – quite a relief.

For the next weeks, my life was fairly tranquil. I had the time to read more than I normally do – something I was overly happy about.

I was able to cook more often than I normally do, and generally had to improvise because going to the supermarket every time something was missing wasn’t really an option.

Someone stirs vegetables in a pan as the water is boiling in a pot on April 25 Saturday afternoon.

I even started planting my own chiles.

Someone waters the chile plants as they continue to grow on April 6 Monday morning.

Though I knew things were not alright and people all around the world were suffering the devastating effects of this pandemic, I still found some comfort in cooking with my family on a Friday morning.

A plate with flour lies in the center of the kitchen next to a plate of chiles rellenos ready to be cooked on April 10 Friday morning.

Chiles rellenos are being fried on a pan on April 10 Friday morning.

It was until mid-April that the pandemic started affecting me negatively – or my plans to be precise. I had submitted a paper to a conference in Oneonta, New York, which was cancelled due to the outbreak in the state. Fortunately, the conference organizers created a website where the accepted papers can be found.

The Archipelago website was designed by the SUNY Oneonta Undergraduate Philosophy Conference committee to highlight the papers that were accepted to the conference on April 17-18 in Oneonta, New York, but was cancelled due to the pandemic.

I was also planning on taking a language course in Germany during the summer, which was also cancelled.

The letter of acceptance to a German language summer program in Munich lies in a table in my room.

I thought this was bad enough to be honest. Some of my biggest plans for the summer had fallen apart because of this new Coronavirus. I never imagined how much worse it could get. It must have been my privilege that made me blind.

Around the same time I had discovered my plans were being abruptly changed, two people in my family were suspected of having the virus. One of them was severely affected, the other was in a more stable condition but by the time he found out that he had tested positive for COVID-19, he had already infected most of his family.

As days passed, things were not getting any better. In a matter of weeks we lost two people in the family.

I hesitated a lot about sharing this story, but I finally realized that I couldn’t not include them in a story about my life during COVID-19.

As Texas starts opening up and maquiladoras in Ciudad Juarez – my hometown – are trying to reopen, I felt it was my responsibility to share the story of real people who were fatally affected by this pandemic.

This is no simulation and we shouldn’t minimize it. People are dying.

I assure you all, you don’t want to look back at these times thinking of people you’ve lost.

Editors Note: Frank Hernandez spent the summer doing a remote internship with Investigate Midwest , an independent news publication of The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. Due to the high level of contributions he made to reporting projects, the organization extended his internship into the Fall 2020 semester.

Comments are closed.

Don't miss a thing! Signup here for unique coverage of border life you won't find anywhere else

Join our mailing list to receive weekly news and commentary on Border Life

I am a.. Student Journalist Educator Reader Media professional

Thank you! You have successfully subscribed.

We hate SPAM and promise to keep your email address safe. You can always unsubscribe at any time ...

Personal Experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

The COVID-19 outbreak was a sudden and terrifying experience for all people around the world. I remember telling my friends that the virus would not last for a long time and that we would all meet after two weeks of self-isolation. I did not know how far it would go and what changes to my life it would bring. Sitting at home and watching the news about millions of infected and fatal cases made me realize how fragile human life is. The pandemic has both positive and negative effects on people and their businesses. This paper addresses these effects and provides my experience of the COVID-19 healthcare crisis.

The virus that is still ongoing has taught a valuable thing for all of us that is being able to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. You will never know what is waiting for you in the future, and you should be flexible and calm enough to embrace the new reality. At the beginning of the pandemic, it was fun to sit at home, watch TV series and chat with my friends. Yet, after some time, I realized how my mental health was going downwards as I started to feel anxiety about the world and my future. I also felt very sorry for people who lost their close ones because of COVID. However, I somehow managed that stress due to mental health support, podcasts, and books. I realized that being able to adapt to a changing reality is the only way to keep doing daily routines. At a country level, countries were also adapting and making new policies, and I think now many political figures are more flexible being aware of sudden changes. There were too many mistakes to realize the importance of effective and fast decisions that take into account today’s reality.

One more positive thing about the pandemic is that people learned the value of family and socialization. People cannot live alone, and they need someone to rely on and care for. During the pandemic, I was with my family, and I think it was the first time interacting with them so closely. We were discussing the situation and sharing personal concerns a lot, so that I could understand my family more and support them. I was also worried about older members of the family, thinking that I did not appreciate time with them before the pandemic. It made me reconsider my family relations and understand that they are my close ones, and I should dedicate my time to them more. I assume this was a great lesson for everyone, and I hope people would value their families and take care of them.

One of the crucial changes that the COVID-19 outbreak brought to us is online education. I did not know how to assess such kind of education as positive or negative as there are many arguments for each side. Personally, I liked the online mode of the studies because I could also register for other courses provided for free by different universities and platforms like Coursera. I also learned how to manage time properly as the increased number of assignments forced me to do so. Yet, many students did not like online education as we could not focus well on our studies. People live in different conditions, some of us did not have personal space for studying while others did not have time for education. Education is indeed a privilege, but the online mode made it even worse. Moreover, I heard that in some countries, students climbed on trees to have access to the Internet and do their homework.

The COVID-19 crisis increased inequality across the world and had a negative impact on the world economy. People in developing countries did not have proper healthcare services and tools for online mode of working and studying. Many people lost their jobs, being unable to sustain their families. Such conditions raised crime rates, unemployment rates, and global hunger, putting many countries in a hard socio-economic situation. Furthermore, the virus split people into two categories of supporters of vaccination and those who are against it. This division between people caused social disturbances that made the healthcare crisis turn into an ideological fight. People were making up some stories regarding the COVID-19 and not contributing to the solution of the outbreak. In my opinion, such a response of the public is expected as the general mass wanted answers that government officials did not have. As such, the government should be very careful on how to communicate with citizens.

Overall, there is much to say about the effects of Covdi-19. For me, it was an experience of taking care of my mental health and being close to my family. For the world, it has resulted in disrupted economies, increased inequality, and loss of lives. I hope the crisis made people rethink their lives and be supportive of others. I also believe that the world would not be the same after the end of COVID-19 if it actually has an end.

• The COVID-19 Pandemic: Concerns, Responses, and Lessons
• Ethnography During COVID-19 Pandemic
• Health and Medicine: COVID-19
• Experience of Working With a Nursing Specialist
• Working in a Group WikiProject
• The Internship at Studio O+A Company
• Coach-Player Relationship: Power Distance and Individualism-Collectivism
• Attitude Towards Death Essay: Life-Span Development
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, January 3). Personal Experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic. https://ivypanda.com/essays/personal-experience-of-the-covid-19-pandemic/

"Personal Experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic." IvyPanda , 3 Jan. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/personal-experience-of-the-covid-19-pandemic/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Personal Experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic'. 3 January.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Personal Experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic." January 3, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/personal-experience-of-the-covid-19-pandemic/.

1. IvyPanda . "Personal Experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic." January 3, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/personal-experience-of-the-covid-19-pandemic/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Personal Experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic." January 3, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/personal-experience-of-the-covid-19-pandemic/.

IEEE Account

• Change Username/Password
• Update Address

Purchase Details

• Payment Options
• Order History
• View Purchased Documents

Profile Information

• Communications Preferences
• Profession and Education
• Technical Interests
• US & Canada: +1 800 678 4333
• Worldwide: +1 732 981 0060
• Contact & Support
• About IEEE Xplore
• Accessibility
• Terms of Use
• Nondiscrimination Policy
• Privacy & Opting Out of Cookies

A not-for-profit organization, IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. © Copyright 2024 IEEE - All rights reserved. Use of this web site signifies your agreement to the terms and conditions.