essay for pandemic experience

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.

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Community Reflections

My life experience during the covid-19 pandemic.

Melissa Blanco Follow

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Class Assignment

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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).

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

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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

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

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Columbia College | Columbia University in the City of New York

Current Issue
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“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!”

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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.

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.

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‘When Normal Life Stopped’: College Essays Reflect a Turbulent Year

This year’s admissions essays became a platform for high school seniors to reflect on the pandemic, race and loss.

By Anemona Hartocollis

This year perhaps more than ever before, the college essay has served as a canvas for high school seniors to reflect on a turbulent and, for many, sorrowful year. It has been a psychiatrist’s couch, a road map to a more hopeful future, a chance to pour out intimate feelings about loneliness and injustice.

In response to a request from The New York Times, more than 900 seniors submitted the personal essays they wrote for their college applications. Reading them is like a trip through two of the biggest news events of recent decades: the devastation wrought by the coronavirus, and the rise of a new civil rights movement.

In the wake of the high-profile deaths of Black people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police officers, students shared how they had wrestled with racism in their own lives. Many dipped their feet into the politics of protest, finding themselves strengthened by their activism, yet sometimes conflicted.

And in the midst of the most far-reaching pandemic in a century, they described the isolation and loss that have pervaded every aspect of their lives since schools suddenly shut down a year ago. They sought to articulate how they have managed while cut off from friends and activities they had cultivated for years.

To some degree, the students were responding to prompts on the applications, with their essays taking on even more weight in a year when many colleges waived standardized test scores and when extracurricular activities were wiped out.

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‘the full covid-19 experience’.

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Alvin Powell and his mother, Alynne Martelle, who passed away from COVID-19 in April 2020.

Photos courtesy of Alvin Powell

Portraits of Loss

Alvin powell.

A collection of stories and essays that illustrate the indelible mark left on our community by a pandemic that touched all our lives.

I remember thinking, “I guess I’m having the full COVID-19 experience,” though I knew immediately it wasn’t true. Having the full experience would mean switching places with the frail woman before me. It would mean my eyes were the ones that were closed, my breath silent and shallow.

But I also knew she wouldn’t want it that way. My mother, Alynne Martelle, was protective like that.

It was April 2020, and I was sitting in a Connecticut nursing home across the bed from my sister Kelly San Martin. I wasn’t thinking about how outlandishly I was dressed, but each glance across the bed provided a reminder. We were both wearing thin, disposable yellow gowns and too-big rubber gloves, with surgical masks covering our noses and mouths. We were each hoping the protection would be enough, but at that point in the pandemic’s first spring surge, nothing seemed certain.

Earlier that day — a Friday — I had been working from home and heard from my sister that my mom, 80 and diagnosed with COVID-19, had taken a turn for the worse. I called the nursing home where she’d lived for nearly five years, and the nurse said to come right away. So I told my editors at the Gazette what was going on, got in the car, and headed down the Pike.

I had a couple of hours to think during the drive. As a science writer for the Gazette, I routinely monitor disease outbreaks around the world — SARS, H1N1, seasonal flu — and discuss them with experts at the University. My hope is to lend perspective for readers on news that can seem too distant to be threatening — yet to which they might want to pay attention— or things that seem threateningly close, but in fact are rare enough that the screaming headlines may not be warranted.

“I suspect that a nursing home isn’t part of anyone’s plan for their final years, and it certainly wasn’t for my mother.“ Alvin Powell

There were two times during my coverage of the pandemic that I felt an almost physical sensation — that pit-of-the-stomach feeling of shock or fear. The first was when Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist and head of the Harvard Chan School’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, said early on that, unlike its recent predecessors SARS and MERS, which got people very sick, this virus also caused a lot of mild or asymptomatic cases. As that news sank in, I realized how difficult the future might become: How can you stop something before you know it’s there?

The second time I had that feeling was just a few weeks later. Through February 2020, the number of cases in the U.S. and globally had continued to grow, and it became clear that a major public health emergency was underway. Harvard’s experts, among many others, were offering a way forward, and I was writing regularly about the pandemic, about the new-to-me concept of “social distancing” and the importance of using masks to reduce spread — even as faculty members at our hospitals were also warning of shortages of personal protective equipment, or PPE — another term now embedded in our daily language. That was when President Donald Trump used the word “hoax” in discussing the pandemic. When I read that I thought, “This could get a lot worse.”

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By the third week in April, it had. Then, of course, the winter’s much larger surge was still just a vague threat and 100,000 deaths nationally from COVID-19 would soon warrant front-page treatment in The New York Times. Nursing homes — which concentrated society’s frail and elderly — had been hit hard early, as protective measures were being worked out and individual habits — life-saving ones — were still being ingrained.

I suspect that a nursing home isn’t part of anyone’s plan for their final years, and it certainly wasn’t for my mother. She was born in Hartford, poor and proudly Irish. She was artistic, eccentric, and joked later in life that if she hyphenated all her last names, she’d be Alynne Cummings-Powell-Martelle-Martelle-Herzberger-Harripersaud. Though she was tough on her husbands, she was easy on her kids. Despite the roiling of her married life, our home in the Hartford suburbs was mostly stable. That was largely due to the stick-to-it-iveness of my stepfather Sal — the two Martelles in there — and the fact that her four kids never doubted that she loved them.

She traveled even more than she married, preferring out-of-the-way places and bringing home images of the people who lived there. Among her destinations, she spent a summer in Calcutta volunteering at one of Mother Teresa’s orphanages and, on her return, she struck up a correspondence with the future saint.

Alynne Martell (center) surrounded by her children, Laura Lynne Powell (clockwise from left), Kelly San Martin, Alvin Powell, and Joseph Martelle. They are pictured at Hawks Nest Beach in Old Lyme, Conn., where they’ve gone for a week each summer for more than 45 years. Powell and his mother on a family kayak trip on the Black Hall River in Old Lyme.

Mom’s later years were difficult. Her mental decline had her moving from independent to assisted living and then to round-the-clock care. In the last year, her physical health and mobility had declined as well. When my mother spiked a fever in April, my siblings and I assumed it was COVID. It took the doctors some time to work through the possibilities, but they eventually got there, too. They and the nurses reminded us that it was not universally fatal, but nonetheless asked whether she had a living will. She did, and wanted no extraordinary measures taken.

Though many hospitals and nursing homes weren’t allowing visitors, the home where my mother stayed would let us in. Several family members had converged on the parking lot there, and we had a robust discussion of how safe it would be to go inside. My mother’s room was on the first floor, and some family members peered through its sliding glass door. My sister and I decided it was worth the risk to sit with Mom during her final hours, as she would have if indeed our places had been reversed.

On that Friday when Kelly and I entered the lobby, the facility appeared to be taking necessary precautions. In addition to providing PPE, they questioned us about our health and took our temperatures before letting us farther into the building. The main thing I was uneasy about was the use of surgical masks rather than N95 respirators. The N95s, I thought, would provide a level of protection commensurate with sitting in a place where we knew the virus was circulating.

On the second day, two friends teamed up to get us the N95s one had stockpiled during the 2009 H1N1 epidemic. We met in the parking lot for the handover — accomplished with profuse thanks and at a safe distance. The masks eased my mind. The key to weathering the pandemic came not from hiding away, but from a clear-eyed assessment of risks and having a plan to manage them. I had also learned during months of covering the pandemic that even measures inadequate on their own could be powerful when layered over one another. So, though it now seems like overkill, after doffing all the protective gear on the way out, we also changed into clean clothes in the chilly April parking lot, our modesty shielded by open car doors. We stowed the dirty clothes in plastic bags in the trunk and made liberal use of the giant bottle of hand sanitizer Kelly had brought.

“My mom had a metal sculpture of herself made by artist Karen Rossi. Her four kids are hanging off her feet in mobile-style,” writes Alvin Powell.

The result was that my sister and I were able to sit with my mom for several hours over the weekend. She was mostly asleep or unconscious but roused herself, seeming to rise from a place deep inside, to rasp out that she loved us. Then she retreated inward again.

Mom died the following Monday, and I went into home quarantine for two weeks, breaking it once to head back down the Pike to make arrangements with a completely overwhelmed funeral home. She had wanted to be cremated, but the crematorium was also backed up, so they refrigerated her body for several days until they could get to her. Afterward, my brother, Joe Martelle, picked up her remains and brought her home to await her burial.

But we delayed too. We put off her funeral until the family could gather for the bash she wanted as a farewell — she’d picked out the music and assigned tasks to different family members — Joe and I were to build the wooden box for interment. “August,” I initially thought. Then “October.” I was sure about October. My sister in Sacramento, Laura Lynne Powell, had suggested early on we might have to wait for the April anniversary of her death, which at the time seemed ridiculously distant since the pandemic surely would be controlled by then. Now, of course, April’s here and it is still too early for a big gathering.

In the year since my mother died, I’ve been back at work and have continued to learn as much as I can in order to convey our shifting — yet advancing — knowledge to readers. I’ve been repeatedly reminded how far I still am from “the full COVID experience” because the virus seems insatiable and just keeps on taking.

I don’t for a minute think my family is unique in its impacts, but many of those around me have experienced some ugly aspect of it. My son was laid off; my daughter’s 18th birthday, high school graduation, and freshman year in college have been canceled, delayed, or distorted beyond recognition. Two daughters and four grandchildren have been diagnosed with COVID and recovered. In February, four family friends in my Massachusetts town saw the contagion flare through their households, while my own family in Connecticut watched with concern as a loved one became severely ill, later rejoicing at her recovery after treatment with remdesivir.

The pandemic picture seems to have become even muddier lately, devolving into a foot race between vaccines and variants. Through much of March, vaccines seemed sure to win, but warnings from public health officials have become dire of late, warning of too-soon reopenings and the potential for a fourth surge. My stepfather Sal has gotten his second vaccine dose though, so hopefully he, at least, is out of harm’s way. I’m also hearing of friends and family whose first dose appointments are looming. That gives me hope and serves as a reminder that there is one part of “the full COVID experience” I’m looking forward to: its end.

Alvin Powell is the Harvard Gazette’s senior science writer.

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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.

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Looking back on lockdown days

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Art class and self care during the pandemic

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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.

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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.

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One Student's Perspective on Life During a Pandemic

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COVID-19: Ethics, Health and Moving Forward

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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.

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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.

Personal Experience With the COVID-19 Pandemic

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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many areas of individuals’ daily living. The vulnerability to any epidemic depends on a person’s social and economic status. Some people with underlying medical conditions have succumbed to the disease, while others with stronger immunity have survived (Cohut para.6). Governments have restricted movements and introduced stern measures against violating such health precautions as physical distancing and wearing masks. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced people to adopt various responses to its effects, such as homeschooling, working from home, and ordering foods and other commodities from online stores.

I have restricted my movements and opted to order foodstuffs and other essential goods online with doorstep delivery services. I like adventure, and before the pandemic, I would go to parks and other recreational centers to have fun. But this time, I am mostly confined to my room studying, doing school assignments, or reading storybooks, when I do not have an in-person session at college. I have also had to use social media more than before to connect with my family and friends. I miss participating in outdoor activities and meeting with my friends. However, it is worth it because the virus is deadly, and I have had to adapt to this new normal in my life.

With the pandemic requiring stern measures and precautions due to its transmission mode, the federal government has done well in handling the matter. One of the positives is that it has sent financial and material aid to individual state and local governments to help people cope up with the economic challenges the pandemic has posed (Solomon para. 8). Another plus for the federal government is funding the COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, and distributing the vaccine. Lastly, the government has extended unemployment benefits as a rescue plan to help households with an income of less than $150,000 (Solomon para. 9). Therefore, the federal government is trying its best to handle this pandemic.

The New Jersey government has done all it can to handle this pandemic well, but there are still some areas of improvement. As of March 7, 2021, New Jersey was having the highest number of deaths related to COVID-19, but Governor Phil Murphy’s initial handling of the pandemic attracted praises from many quarters (Stanmyre para. 10). In his early days in office, Gov. Murphy portrayed a sense of competency and calm, but it seems other states adopted much of his policies better than he did, explaining the reduction in the approval ratings. In November 2020, Governor Murphy signed an Executive Order cushioning and protecting workers from contracting COVID-19 at the workplace (Stanmyre para. 12). Therefore, although there are mixed feelings, the NJ government is handling this pandemic well.

Some states have reopened immediately after the vaccination, but this poses a massive risk of spreading the virus. Soon, citizens will begin to neglect the laid down health protocols, which would increase the possibility of the increase of the COVID-19 cases. There is a need for health departments to ensure that the health precautions are followed and campaign on the need to adhere to the guidelines. Some individuals are protesting their states’ economy to be reopened, but that is a rash, ill-informed decision. The threat of the pandemic is still high, and it is not the right time to demand the reopening of the economy yet.

In conclusion, the pandemic has affected individuals, businesses, and governments in many ways. Due to how the virus spreads, physical distancing has become a new normal, with people forced to homeschool or work from home to prevent themselves from contracting the disease. The federal government has done its best to cushion its people from the pandemic’s economic effects through various financial rescue schemes and plans. New Jersey’s government has also done well, although its cases continue to soar as it is the leading state in COVID-19 prevalence. Some states have reopened, while in others, people continue to demand their state governments to open the economy, which would be a risky move.

Works Cited

Cohut, Maria. “COVID-19 at the 1-year Mark: How the Pandemic Has Affected the World.” Medical and Health Information . Web.

Solomon, Rachel. “What is the Federal Government Doing to Help People Impacted by Coronavirus?” Cancer Support Community . Web.

Stanmyre, Matthew. “N.J.’s Pandemic Response Started Strong. Why Has So Much Gone Wrong Since?” 2021. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2022, September 29). Personal Experience With the COVID-19 Pandemic. https://ivypanda.com/essays/personal-experience-with-the-covid-19-pandemic/

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IvyPanda . "Personal Experience With the COVID-19 Pandemic." September 29, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/personal-experience-with-the-covid-19-pandemic/.

It’s Time to Start Taking Mpox and Bird Flu Seriously

It’s been a bad month for public health.

On August 14, the World Health Organization declared mpox as an international health emergency , given the “unprecedented” spread of a new, more deadly variant . In the United States, bird flu, formally known as H5N1, has spread to 10 agricultural workers in Colorado, an alarming development since only three other cases have been reported this year.

Mpox and bird flu are distinct infectious diseases; however, they have been united by assumptions that containment is easily achievable and thus a complacent public health response. Indeed, almost 100,000 people got infected with mpox after the 2022 outbreak, and while the disease shrinked away from public view, mpox continued to spread and evolve into deadlier variants. Similarly, while bird flu first jumped into mammals around the same time in 2022, the response in the U.S. was anemic with little consistent messaging or concrete action.

This is part of a larger inertia around infectious diseases—one we believe is driven by two key factors.

First, public health leaders have grown overly cautious after the COVID-19 pandemic, seeing how bold efforts to contain the pandemic were met with anti-science aggression, populist outrage, relentless lawsuits, and at least 30 states limiting public health powers . The impending U.S. elections have added to the polarization and disinformation. As such, instead of proactive action, we are seeing trepidation.

Second, there is a sense that another pandemic cannot happen so soon after COVID-19—that these infectious diseases will inevitably burn themselves out like before. This is a “gambler’s fallacy,” and because of it, the U.S. may be underestimating the risks posed by mpox and bird flu, allowing two potential pandemics to brew on the global stage.

This has manifested in several failures for both diseases. For instance, the U.S. saw 1800 mpox cases between October 2023 and April 2024, while the more dangerous Clade 1b variant, which combines efficient sexual transmission with high mortality , started to spread in Africa. However, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stopped updating their mpox outbreak case count in January , downplaying this added threat since case counts were not yet increasing. The CDC restarted the public reporting in May, suggesting its discontinuation may have been overly expedient and optimistic.

Our mpox global health response mirrors such underestimation and delayed action. On August 7, the U.S. announced that it was donating 50,000 vaccines to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, almost a year after Clade 1b was first reported there. For reference, Africa CDC estimates it needs 10 million doses to control the current outbreak on the continent. In 2022, the U.S. failed to tackle mpox while it was confined to Africa, dragging its feet until the disease was spreading uncontrollably at home; we are seeing history repeat itself in 2024.

Read More: Health Experts are Watching a More Dangerous Version of Mpox

For bird flu, the mortality rate can be as high as 52% , given WHO case data. But as the New York Times noted , “Only recently has the [CDC] begun to mobilize real funding for a testing push, after a period of months in which various federal groups batted around responsibility and ultimate authority like a hot potato.” In the U.S., ignorance is bliss, with our public health leaders rolling the dice that this too shall pass.

So, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) detected bird flu in cattle four months after it happened, or that the agency has not required routine testing of cattle (unless they cross state lines) nor vaccination of farmworkers . While decisions to leave these programs voluntary are multifactorial, they are likely influenced by political reticence after COVID-19 and recent Supreme Court rulings striking down vaccination requirements.

To be clear, the pandemic risk of mpox or bird flu is currently low. The transmission dynamics of mpox, requiring very close contact , make it more difficult to spread than SARS-CoV-2. Similarly, cases of bird flu have thus far been mild and limited in number. However, these are not absolute truths, but day-by-day assessments, which require real preparedness—measured in testing, ongoing surveillance, and forward planning.

We have no easy answers for overcoming public health paralysis. But at minimum, the U.S. needs better public health communication that not only emphasizes transparency but also holds our leaders accountable. Bringing this COVID-19-era lesson to mpox and bird flu is one way to give Americans a new, positive memory of public health, fostering early, decisive action and realistic risk assessments.

With two rapidly evolving outbreaks, we cannot afford trepidation and false optimism. And, even as we work to make the U.S. safer, we cannot forget our global obligations to share vaccines, medicines, and resources. Global crises require global solidarity and collective action.

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More From Forbes

In-person events are back, but they look nothing like they used to.

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Eran Ben-Shushan is the cofounder and CEO of Bizzabo , the Event Experience OS powering in-person, virtual and hybrid event experiences.

The next generation of in-person events has arrived, shaped by the lessons learned from two-plus years of hosting data-rich, inclusive, effective virtual events. Event organizers are changing how they structure event format, length, attendance, venue and more. They’re creating immersive experiences blending the most dynamic elements of virtual and in-person.

These immersive experiences remain essential as we resume gathering in person. After analyzing the events using my company’s event management software, we found that in-person and hybrid events increased 255% between the fourth quarter of 2021 and the second quarter of 2022. In addition, the American Express Meetings & Events Global Forecast predicted that 81% of events in 2022 will “have an in-person element.”

As the cofounder of a data-driven events platform, I believe virtual events have proven their value and will continue to be critical components of marketing strategies. But as event professionals choose to incorporate in-person experiences, the gatherings must have a renewed purpose.

The Event Impact Gap

Events are a critical component of any marketing strategy. Events bring people together to engage and connect them with your brand (and one another) while creating a revenue pipeline for the business. And while event organizers were traditionally focused on planning and logistics, they’re now also bringing enhanced skillsets around data analysis, marketing operations and digital production. This evolution has been happening for years and quickly accelerated during the pandemic.

As event experience leaders navigate the new world of in-person events, they face what I call the “event impact gap,” which refers to the difference between the aspirations event organizers have to create impactful experiences and their ability to deliver them. Any deficits prevent event experience leaders from truly connecting with their audiences and hinder their ability to create business impact.

As your organization embraces the next generation of in-person events, focus on three themes to close the event impact gap.

1. Make sure your audience connects to a specific purpose.

To maximize your in-person experience, commit to a bold purpose early and tailor your audience to that purpose. Different events will attract different audiences and generate different outcomes. Take time to understand the hearts and minds of your target audience: What topics interest them? What knowledge and insights do they hope to gain by attending your event? Use the answers to inform your event’s goals and purpose. Every decision—from the venue you choose and the agenda you compile to the technology you implement to execute the event—should flow from your event goals.

It’s tempting to rely on past plans and models, but remember that you’re welcoming attendees into a new world of in-person events with different expectations. Instead of looking backward, move forward with new ideas to delight and engage your attendees. Develop those new ideas by empowering your team to get creative.

2. Get creative with relationship- and community-building.

Events are key to building relationships. Roughly 80% of professionals agree that networking is crucial to their career success. As you roll out in-person events once again, use this unique opportunity to think creatively about how to engage attendees. Leverage your existing customer and experience data, as well as the registration information you gather, to build personalized experiences that enable people to connect.

Communities aren’t bound by a place or time. Reframe how you view attendees: As a community taking shape with the potential to form robust connections. Updating your mindset frees networking from the confines of a single event or format. Foster connections before guests arrive and well after closing remarks. Successful event leaders must imagine both how to plant the seeds of connection and how to nourish them.

3. Activate data to understand your return on events.

Events can be a powerful marketing channel to drive business results. But as some companies react to economic uncertainty, CMOs and marketing leaders need actionable data to demonstrate the impact of their events or their return on the event.

In-person events have long been a black box, impenetrable to data collection, but they no longer are. Event experience leaders can apply the data collection lessons they learned from virtual events as they go forward.

To maximize and communicate the value of in-person and hybrid events to stakeholders, your event experience program can prioritize a data maturity model. Rather than using data in a vacuum, the data maturity model uses every event touchpoint to create a thread connecting events and providing insights to align your efforts with key success metrics.

Data maturity includes:

• Data capture through assessment, which includes the ability to gather granular data holistically, such as session attendance and demographics.

• Data integration connects captured data to your business systems, thus enabling you to take future actions.

• Data utilization leverages integrated data to offer audiences better, more valuable experiences. Identify and curate precise data points to personalize experiences, such as customized communications for increasing conversion and attendance rates.

• Data translation applies lessons learned to future planning. Revisiting data from past events drives decision making to offer better, more successful event experiences.

When you can access, integrate and apply your event data, you enable your teams to do more with available resources. Better data empowers your team to experiment to improve event experiences and discover new ways to engage.

The world has changed. At the height of the pandemic, event experience leaders faced new challenges around every corner and rose to the occasion. As in-person events continue to return, event organizers must design with purpose, broaden their approach to community-building and evolve their data practices. By relentlessly seeking to satisfy attendees’ needs and desires, you can take all of your events to greater heights.

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A $49,000 monthly student-loan bill and incomplete debt relief: Borrowers are facing confusion as repayment looms

Some student-loan borrowers are running into hurdles leading up to the payment resumption.
Insider spoke to borrowers with inaccurate monthly statements and incomplete debt relief.
While their loan companies said the issues might be fixed, there's a time constraint with interest restarting in September.

When Jess saw what her monthly payment would be in October, she couldn't believe her eyes: $49,726.63 due on October 15, according to documents reviewed by Insider.

Jess — who requested to use a pseudonym for privacy but whose identity is known to Insider — knew when she was alerted by her student-loan company on August 1 that this payment is a mistake. So she called the company, and a customer service representative agreed that the five-figure monthly payment is not accurate. But Jess said she's called four times already, and her balance has yet to be fixed — and interest on her loans will resume in two weeks regardless.

"It was obviously unreasonable," Jess said. "You'd have to be unable to fog a mirror to think that this was reasonable. There's just no way. Absolutely no way."

After an over three-year pause on federal student-loan payments and interest to give borrowers financial relief during the pandemic, interest is set to accrue again starting in September , with bills due one month later . Jess has a $198,906 outstanding balance she was planning to pay off on an income-driven repayment plan — prior to the pause, she said she was paying around $137 a month. With her payments currently set on auto-debit, she's worried the nearly $50,000 payment will not be resolved by the time the pause ends, and money she does not have will be withdrawn from her account.

"If they don't change anything, at a very minimum, what happens is I immediately go into default, because there's not enough money in my bank account," she said.

Jess's incorrect monthly payment statement is just one of the challenges borrowers are facing as President Joe Biden's Education Department and federal student-loan companies work to transition millions of borrowers back into repayment. It's an unprecedented transition, and with every borrower having a unique repayment situation, broad guidance on repayment often is not sufficient.

'It feels utterly hopeless'

Amid concerns with the repayment resumption, the Education Department had some good news for borrowers — it has begun discharging $39 billion in student debt for over 800,000 borrowers who made the qualifying 20 or 25 years of payments on income-driven repayment plans. This announcement was part of the department's one-time account adjustment to get relief to borrowers who have reached the repayment threshold.

Karin Smith, 57, was one of the borrowers who was notified she was eligible for relief, and on Tuesday, she was happy to see that her $71,000 loan — the biggest of the three loans she held — was gone. But the $14,0000 interest on that loan was still there, and tacked onto her smaller $8,000 balance, according to documents reviewed by Insider. She said she called customer service and they told her to wait ten days to see if the interest goes away. But with interest on her other federal loans set to start building again in September, Smith said she's worried it won't be resolved in time.

"It feels utterly hopeless," she said. "It's not that I'm not glad that the $71,000 has gone, but it's just like, I'll die with this. And my 16-year-old is getting ready to go to school himself and I'm still paying off my loans. It's been 30 years, haven't I done enough?"

Along with the hurdles Jess and Smith have run into, Insider has previously spoken to borrowers in the past who could not reach their loan company due to hours-long hold times with customer service, leaving them in repayment longer than they needed to be. Insider previously reported that one company, Nelnet's, call center temporarily shut down during an influx of requests from borrowers.

Additionally, some borrowers have told Insider via email and on X, formerly Twitter, that they are unable to access their payments due to technical errors on the loan company's website, making it impossible to financially plan for repayment. Nelnet, one of the federal servicers, told a borrower on X that "there could be a few reasons why payments are not showing. The best assistance for this issue will come from a representative on the phone. That way if needed they can research the issue further for you." Of course, the long hold times make doing so difficult.

As Buchanan said, the issue for the servicers are limited resources — and it's something Education Secretary Miguel Cardona is asking Congress to address .

"Right now, House Republicans are pursuing an appropriations bill that cuts $22.5 BILLION from education," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona wrote on X last month. "It's the lowest allocation in 15 years. They are defunding education. Let's call this what it is - a Republican attack on our students' futures."

Are you experiencing challenges with repayment? Do you have a story to share about student debt? Email this reporter at [email protected] .

Update: August 21, 2023 — This story was updated after publication to include comment from the Department of Education.

Watch: Why student loans aren't canceled, and what Biden's going to do about it

Main content

Biden's bittersweet convention moment: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to a special edition of From the Politics Desk, bringing you the highlights from the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Biden delivers an ode to Harris in his political swan song

By jonathan allen and natasha korecki.

CHICAGO — In a political swan song rendered less than a month after he abandoned his campaign for a second term, President Joe Biden on Monday praised his own presidency and urged fellow Democrats to help elect Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him in November.

“Join me in promising your whole heart to this effort — that’s where my heart will be,” Biden said on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention.

In remarks that ended well past midnight on the East Coast, he also highlighted a long list of accomplishments — from major infrastructure and climate change laws to lowering the cost of prescription drugs for seniors and combating the Covid pandemic.

Biden was greeted with a thunderous standing ovation, with chants of “Thank you, Joe” drowning out his attempts to start his speech and thousands of signs reading “We ❤️ Joe” waving when he was introduced. It was a bittersweet moment for a party that sought Monday to exalt Biden after it turned on him just a few weeks ago — and to flip the page from its past to its future. He began speaking after more than four minutes of applause .

Once he left the campaign and ensured with his endorsement that it would go to Harris, Democrats began to venerate him — a process completed Monday when thousands of delegates embraced their lion in winter with the warmth of their cheers. Relinquishing his own power to enhance the chances of defeating former President Donald Trump, many Democrats say, was the ultimate act of political altruism.

“I think it’s hard to put into words the selflessness,” Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill., said Monday night. Casten said Biden gave his life to public office, reached the pinnacle and stepped aside. “We don’t get a lot of examples of that in American history.”

Hillary Clinton hopes Harris can pick up where she left off

By alex seitz-wald.

CHICAGO — Earlier in the night, Hillary Clinton took the stage in suffragette white to pass the torch to a woman she hopes will do what she couldn’t — become the first female president of the United States.

“The future is here,” Clinton said to sustained applause. “I wish my mother and Kamala’s mother could see it.”

Eight years removed from her crushing defeat in the 2016 presidential election, the former senator and secretary of state weaved herself and Harris into the long story of the women’s rights movement, from the passage of the 19th Amendment to this November’s election.

“The story of my life and the history of our country is that progress is possible. But not guaranteed,” said Clinton, who was the first woman nominated to lead a major party’s presidential ticket. “We have to fight for it. And never, ever give up.”

In the audience in the United Center, some women could be seen wiping their eyes — including Gwen Walz, the wife of Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — and giving knowing nods when Clinton joked about Trump’s making fun of her and Harris’ laughs.

When she mentioned Trump and his felony conviction, the crowd responded with chants of “ lock him up “ — an ironic repurposing of the chants Trump supporters used against Clinton eight years ago. She smiled and nodded before she moved on.

Democrats’ salute to Biden papers over a complicated place in history

By chuck todd.

Despite the cheers, let’s not pretend this isn’t an awkward and bittersweet moment for Biden. I’ve spent my entire professional life (over 30 years now) tracking, reporting on and watching Biden find a path to the Oval Office. I saw him try and fail … a lot. It was clearly his Holy Grail. No matter how many ways his ambition for the presidency went sideways, he always wanted to come back and try again.

The reality is this: Biden is going to be a one-term president, and history judges one-term presidents quite harshly. With the possible exception of those historians who pine for the days of James Polk, who kept to a one-term pledge, every other one-term president in our republic’s history became a one-termer because of a harsh verdict from voters or party leaders.

A lot of folks besides the first family are trying to shape Biden’s place in history. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went so far as to suggest Biden might belong on Mount Rushmore. It’s hard to take her suggestion seriously, of course — it strikes me as a party leader’s trying to appease an old friend who she knows is angry over the role she played leading the charge to get him out of the race.

Tim Walz, 60, said Biden was the best president of his lifetime. How many Americans would rank Biden ahead of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama?

The point is that the Democratic Party is awash in hyperbole regarding Biden as it lays out emotional padding for a soft landing justifying his unusual exit. Whether true or not, on a human level, it’s the right thing to do. Nobody wants to see their life’s work just tossed away in history’s dustbin.

Biden is going to be a one-term president because the public lost confidence in him, period. Some people may have liked him and wanted the Biden from the Obama years but lost confidence in this version of Biden being able to do the job. Others may have lost confidence in him because they thought he was guided too much by the progressive left. Still others may have lost confidence in him simply because he didn’t successfully put Trump in the ash heap of history.

Perhaps expectations that Biden would be able to get the country to turn the page on Trump were too great — though Biden did feed those expectations himself. But it does mean the country’s expectations weren’t met.

The long-term question for Biden’s legacy is whether there’s anything he did that any Democratic president wouldn’t have done. Is there anything he accomplished that was unique to Biden?

🗞️ Tonight’s other top stories

💻 Hacking update: The U.S. government confirmed the Trump campaign’s claims that it was breached by Iranian hackers. Read more →
🩺 Check-up: Trump said in an interview with CBS News that he would publicly release his medical records. Read more →
🚫 Bad blood: Trump shared AI-generated images on social media of Taylor Swift and her fans supporting him. Swift endorsed Biden and harshly criticized Trump in 2020. Read more →
🪑 Seating chart: Walz’s Minnesota delegation is a bit more removed from the convention stage than would be expected for the VP nominee’s home state. That has to do with the fact that Minnesota has the largest bloc of “uncommitted” delegates. Read more →
📱 New frontiers: Harris created a bilingual WhatsApp channel targeting Latino voters, which the campaign says is the first of its kind in a presidential election. Read more →
🤳 Like and subscribe: More than 200 influencers will attend the convention this week with dedicated “creator credentials” that will grant them special access. Read more →
🗳️ Vote watch: The Georgia Election Board adopted a new rule that could give county election administrators additional options to delay certification. Read more →

That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at [email protected]

And if you’re a fan, please share with everyone and anyone. They can sign up here .

How to cite ChatGPT

Use discount code STYLEBLOG15 for 15% off APA Style print products with free shipping in the United States.

We, the APA Style team, are not robots. We can all pass a CAPTCHA test , and we know our roles in a Turing test . And, like so many nonrobot human beings this year, we’ve spent a fair amount of time reading, learning, and thinking about issues related to large language models, artificial intelligence (AI), AI-generated text, and specifically ChatGPT . We’ve also been gathering opinions and feedback about the use and citation of ChatGPT. Thank you to everyone who has contributed and shared ideas, opinions, research, and feedback.

In this post, I discuss situations where students and researchers use ChatGPT to create text and to facilitate their research, not to write the full text of their paper or manuscript. We know instructors have differing opinions about how or even whether students should use ChatGPT, and we’ll be continuing to collect feedback about instructor and student questions. As always, defer to instructor guidelines when writing student papers. For more about guidelines and policies about student and author use of ChatGPT, see the last section of this post.

Quoting or reproducing the text created by ChatGPT in your paper

If you’ve used ChatGPT or other AI tools in your research, describe how you used the tool in your Method section or in a comparable section of your paper. For literature reviews or other types of essays or response or reaction papers, you might describe how you used the tool in your introduction. In your text, provide the prompt you used and then any portion of the relevant text that was generated in response.

Unfortunately, the results of a ChatGPT “chat” are not retrievable by other readers, and although nonretrievable data or quotations in APA Style papers are usually cited as personal communications , with ChatGPT-generated text there is no person communicating. Quoting ChatGPT’s text from a chat session is therefore more like sharing an algorithm’s output; thus, credit the author of the algorithm with a reference list entry and the corresponding in-text citation.

When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notation that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023).

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

You may also put the full text of long responses from ChatGPT in an appendix of your paper or in online supplemental materials, so readers have access to the exact text that was generated. It is particularly important to document the exact text created because ChatGPT will generate a unique response in each chat session, even if given the same prompt. If you create appendices or supplemental materials, remember that each should be called out at least once in the body of your APA Style paper.

When given a follow-up prompt of “What is a more accurate representation?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that “different brain regions work together to support various cognitive processes” and “the functional specialization of different regions can change in response to experience and environmental factors” (OpenAI, 2023; see Appendix A for the full transcript).

Creating a reference to ChatGPT or other AI models and software

The in-text citations and references above are adapted from the reference template for software in Section 10.10 of the Publication Manual (American Psychological Association, 2020, Chapter 10). Although here we focus on ChatGPT, because these guidelines are based on the software template, they can be adapted to note the use of other large language models (e.g., Bard), algorithms, and similar software.

The reference and in-text citations for ChatGPT are formatted as follows:

Parenthetical citation: (OpenAI, 2023)
Narrative citation: OpenAI (2023)

Let’s break that reference down and look at the four elements (author, date, title, and source):

Author: The author of the model is OpenAI.

Date: The date is the year of the version you used. Following the template in Section 10.10, you need to include only the year, not the exact date. The version number provides the specific date information a reader might need.

Title: The name of the model is “ChatGPT,” so that serves as the title and is italicized in your reference, as shown in the template. Although OpenAI labels unique iterations (i.e., ChatGPT-3, ChatGPT-4), they are using “ChatGPT” as the general name of the model, with updates identified with version numbers.

The version number is included after the title in parentheses. The format for the version number in ChatGPT references includes the date because that is how OpenAI is labeling the versions. Different large language models or software might use different version numbering; use the version number in the format the author or publisher provides, which may be a numbering system (e.g., Version 2.0) or other methods.

Bracketed text is used in references for additional descriptions when they are needed to help a reader understand what’s being cited. References for a number of common sources, such as journal articles and books, do not include bracketed descriptions, but things outside of the typical peer-reviewed system often do. In the case of a reference for ChatGPT, provide the descriptor “Large language model” in square brackets. OpenAI describes ChatGPT-4 as a “large multimodal model,” so that description may be provided instead if you are using ChatGPT-4. Later versions and software or models from other companies may need different descriptions, based on how the publishers describe the model. The goal of the bracketed text is to briefly describe the kind of model to your reader.

Source: When the publisher name and the author name are the same, do not repeat the publisher name in the source element of the reference, and move directly to the URL. This is the case for ChatGPT. The URL for ChatGPT is https://chat.openai.com/chat . For other models or products for which you may create a reference, use the URL that links as directly as possible to the source (i.e., the page where you can access the model, not the publisher’s homepage).

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Becoming Socially Distant Through Technology: The Tech Contagion

Privilege in a Pandemic

My World is Burning

Opportunity to Serve

Let’s Do Better

The Virus That Makes You Forget

Welcome to My Cage: The Pandemic and PTSD

A Somatic Pandemonium in Quarantine

How COVID-19 Changed My Senior Year

Physical Distancing

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One Student's Perspective on Life During a Pandemic

Personal Experience With the COVID-19 Pandemic

Works Cited

It’s Time to Start Taking Mpox and Bird Flu Seriously

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How to cite ChatGPT

Quoting or reproducing the text created by ChatGPT in your paper

Creating a reference to ChatGPT or other AI models and software

Other questions about citing ChatGPT