-
2021-03-18
Self description: “I am sitting in my bed right now as I’ve done for a lot of this quarantine. In regular times and I guess still now, I’m in three bands and I also work at the library, the public library. So I’ve been working there in person since we came back to work in May. I was contacted for this interview through Bussy Kween Power Trip, which is a Black queer punk band with three people, no guitars, so my close friends. I’m in two other bands. One band is called Je’raf and one is called Cordoba. And one person each from Bussy Kween is in each of those bands. Haven’t played a show in forever. I can give a little about what I look like or am like. I’m a woman. I’m 26, almost 27 I guess. I’m Black and Asian. I’m kinda short. And during this pandemic I’ve been in general super lucky to have a job still and a great living situation. And I met my partner right before the pandemic, so we’ve been chilling a lot and that’s been amazing. She is so great. Yeah, just going to work and working on all kinds of things in my home. And sometimes having the energy to do a bunch of music and crafts and other art things, and sometimes laying in bed for a full day.”
-
2021-09-09
Here in Victoria Australia, our pandemic experience has been easier than most. We live in a regional area and we have not had the angst of the long ongoing harsh lockdowns experienced by Metropolitan Melbourne . However going in and out of lockdown, hearing about growing exposure sites and increasing Delta virus numbers is disturbing and anxious making. The one constancy in our lockdown lives, is Pip the Whippet. Walking, sleeping, eating and loving is all she does. In lockdown her daily taste was to go into the local cafe and bring cheer to the Barista while my husband waited to pick up our takeaway coffees. Attached is a picture of Pip the Whippet waiting for our take away coffees. She has been a ray of sunshine in our lives at this point in time, and wearing her hound tee has brought a smile to all, as we progress through this, the strangest of times.
-
2021-04-17
In February I registered for the 1st Minnesota living history event organized by the Liberty Rifles. The idea behind it was that we would create an interactive living history event in conjunction with the National Park Service for the public at the Gettysburg battlefield. At the time, I hadn't been apart of an authentic event before, nor had I been to Gettysburg, so I was really excited for the event. I spent something like $800 improving my impression and so that I could be sure I met the uniform standards and guidelines. Unfortunately, two months before the event the NPS canceled it over Covid concerns. Needless to say, everyone was pretty bummed about it, but the LR event organizers had a plan B event in mind, so a few days after the news of Gettysburg being canceled we were told about the Hell Spot at the Port Republic event, and that we were going to portray the 1st Virginia Infantry (US). Covid cancelled a lot of events in the hobby, and for most of 2020 nothing was happening, much to our dissapointment.
-
2021-09-20T19:35:00+00:00
This object shares both of our experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic
-
2021-09-20
Our interview tell our experiences with the pandemic both personally and in relation to our surroundings from the perspective of a high school senior.
-
2021-09-20
I was nineteen years old, now soon too be twenty-one, when news started circulating about a new virus that was spreading around in China. Personally, I thought the whole thing was just a bunch of fear mongering being played up by the media for clicks. In March of 2020 my theory would turn out to be drastically wrong. Slowly the spread of this new virus became worse and worse and before I knew it, everything was shut down and my family was in lockdown. My in-person classes at Duquesne University were all cancelled and moved to online conference calls over Zoom. For the first time in my life, a global event was having a real, tangible effect on my life. Being born in December of 2000, I have already lived through some world events that will go down in history. Wars in the Middle East, the Housing Market Crash, 9/11, the rapid advancement of computers and technology… all things I was alive for but either to young to remember or to ignorant to see the significance. For the first time in my life, I was seeing a major occurrence in the world directly impact my life and was able to comprehend the seriousness and significance. The object I have loaded is a picture of the Ferris Wheel my family owns and potentially one of the last times I will ever have seen it up and running. Hundreds of thousands of small and family run businesses have either been shut down temporarily or shut down for good because of the pandemic, my family business is no exception. My family runs Reinhart Amusements, a business that provides rides and games to Parishes around the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area for their summer festivals. I’ve been working for the businesses since I was fourteen and started helping long before then. Like many others, we too had to shut down because of the pandemic. My family does not rely on this business financially like my grandfather did. For my parents and many in my large family, it is more of a self-fulfilling hobby. I’m very lucky to get to say that my father and his father have put smiles on the faces of kids and adults alike all around the Pittsburgh area. It is now September 20, 2021 and we have not been able to partake in a festival for over 2 years now. It is sad to say, but after talking with my father and if we are unable to open back up in 2022 then we never will. I don’t know what the future holds with this virus and the world. What I do know is that though the pandemic may take away my family business, it will never take away my own and many others happy memories of it.
-
2021-09-20
I recently got a message from my best friend since middle school telling me that she had tested positive from Covid. She was vaccinated before I was and quarantined more vigilantly during the majority of 2020 than anyone else I knew. Delta variant breakthrough cases are less rare than people believe.
Part anecdote part advice The KHN article answers common questions about what to do if you become one of the breakthrough cases of Covid-19 and what this may mean long term.
-
2021-09-20
-
2021-09-17
This MassLive article reports on the Big E's reaction to the newly instated mask mandate in Massachusetts. The Big E, or the Eastern States Exposition, is a New England fair held in West Springfield, Massachusetts, annually. It was cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic.
-
2021-09-20
This page on the Big E's website lists the health and safety measures put in place at the Big E, known formally as the Eastern States Exposition, which is a New England fair held annually in West Springfield, MA. The fair was cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic, so it has a series of health and safety measures in place in attempt to make attendance safe in 2021.
-
2021-09-16
This MassLive article reports on the Board of Health's decision to enact an indoor mask mandate, which will affect the Eastern States Exposition, or Big E, held annually in West Springfield, MA. The New England fair was cancelled in 2020 and is trying to make a comeback in 2021 despite the pandemic.
-
2021-09-20
This article reports on the crowds on the third day of the Eastern States Exposition. Commonly referred to as the Big E, the Eastern States Exposition is a New England fair held at the end of September in West Springfield, Massachusetts. It was cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic, and town residents have concerns about the Big E in 2021.
-
2020-09-18
Basic interviews between two college students looking back on the start of the pandemic.
-
2020-03
The year 2020 was looking to be much like other years that I spent in college. I was going to be going to classes, meeting up with friends, and working out most days. As March approached, my excitement grew. Spring break was coming, and I had a scheduled trip to Cancun, Mexico. There was talk of a virus spreading through China, but it was very unknown to us. Prior to our trip, we joked about contracting the virus. Little did we know, that would be the week living in the world the way we knew it.
My trip to Mexico was everything I wanted it to be and more, but I was ready to come home and finish the semester. We came back from Mexico, and I returned to Duquesne. Within one week of my return, everything changed. Universities around the country started to close for, what we thought at the time, two weeks. Duquesne followed suit. School did not return that semester and the entire country began to shut down.
There was a lot of fear and unknown. One minute I was having the trip of a lifetime, and the next minute I was at home with my family only leaving to get groceries. We began using masks everywhere we went, using hand sanitizer many times a day, and staying as far away from others as possible. Although life felt like it completely stopping, the pandemic allowed my family and I to experience something that we might never get to experience again: over a month of quality time together. I was now doing school via zoom and my father, brother, and uncle were home from work.
During this time, my family spent a lot of time together. My father and I would find interesting ways to work out every day since our gym had been shut down (see artifact image for a picture of my watch after completing a weighted vest walk. We began these weighted vest walks during the pandemic.). We would watch Netflix series as a family, do puzzles, and even play board games together. I will never forget these memories, even though they were accompanied by fear of the Coronavirus.
-
2021-08-15
For me, the pandemic brought a new found attention to the passing of time. My hope for a post-pandemic life is one where we continue to find time for the things we most appreciate and enjoy - like a walk on the beach at low tide.
-
2021-09-19
This video interview discusses Sydney and I's respective experiences throughout the pandemic. It is important to me because the two of us realized (through the interview) that our experiences were more similar than we first thought.
-
2021-09-18
Explains our experiences within the COVID-19 high school years, our two years of upperclassmen experience. It's important to us because it happened to us during the most formative years of our lives, and we're reflecting back on it.
-
2020-04-09
At the start of 2020, and even into the beginning of March, we had absolutely no idea what was lurking right around the corner. I recently got shown this video, and I thought it did a perfect job of capturing the suddenness of the pandemic. So much happened in only a matter of a few weeks; the shift in what life was and would be like in April compared to January was stark.
-
2021-09-03
Mask trash near the pick up-drop off at Forest Ave on ASU's campus.
-
2021-09-13
One month after classes began on campus, this new banner was put up in downtown Tempe. It encourages the community to get vaccinated.
-
2021-09-18
A white, disposable mask on the ground outside Tops Liquor.
-
2020-05
Alexander Krusec
May 2020
Pittsburgh, PA.
I’ve always liked using gambling terms to describe my life. Things like “I got dealt a bad hand” or “quite while you’re ahead” always rolled off the tongue well, and more than that they were effective at describing the situation. Unfortunately, there wasn’t exactly a good poker term for a global pandemic.
The pandemic was bad timing on my part. I won’t get into the details, but my life in high school wasn’t the best, especially during my junior and senior years. To say I was severely depressed during those years would be an understatement, and I spent a good chunk of my free time crawling out of a hole of self-hate. And just as I was starting to not only feel better, but be better, my school let the student body know that we were going home for two weeks. Then a month. Then the rest of the year.
I’ve always considered myself to have extremely bad luck. Given my track record, I always guessed something bad was going to happen, and often it did. That was my life, and I had always just accepted things for how they were. For the pandemic, that was the plan. I was just going to accept the hand I was dealt and try my best to play it. Luckily for me, things changed.
I don’t know what it was, but one day in May I jwoke up one day and I had stopped worrying about things, stopped obsessing about my own bad luck. I went to my grocery store job that day and for whatever reason I just did better. I did a good job that day despite the fact that the store’s shipment came in about two hours late. It was as I was driving home when I realized that my life did not have to be define by what happened to me, but rather what I did in response.
I could name off a dozen different books and movies that have the exact same message of “persevering through adversity no matter what”, but the movies don’t hit as hard as a real-life epiphany. Of course, I wasn’t expecting my life to change in a used Honda Civic, but the fact of the matter was that the message finally hit me. Despite all that had happened to me, from my own depression to a pandemic, the thing that mattered was that I was still standing.
There’s a great quote from the video game Destiny 2 that describes the type of resolve and will I now strive to have. It’s message is simple: don’t let the darkness in our lives break us, and as the pandemic still rages on a year later, it's a message everyone can use in these times.
“I am a wall. And walls don’t move. Because walls don’t care.”
-
2021-09-17
This audio file shares two perspectives and personal stories about the pandemic.
-
2021-09-15
Two college students recall how their final years of high school were changed by COVID-19, discussing how sports were cancelled and classes went online.
-
2020-03
My mom is an oncology nurse and has worked in the field of nursing for the past 30 years. I recently asked her to talk to me about her experience this past year as a healthcare worker. She recalled the first week in March when things were becoming intense. People were asked to wear face shields and gowns as they were working in an immune-compromised area where the patients had cancer. At the time there was no vaccine. “It was incredibly intense and scary” my mother said.
“People were worried about getting Covid from other staff at the hospital and also worried about contracting Covid from the patients.”
“I walked into the hospital and there was an incredible underlying anxiety, the feeling of unease was palpable. People did not talk to each other like they normally did - everyone was consumed with the thought of not using each other’s pens, putting gloves on when receiving things from the pharmacy. Things we would never have even thought of before.”
She continued, “It was a feeling of both being unsettled and a blind trust you put in your coworkers to be as clean, as responsible and in isolation outside of work as you. The intensity of that feeling was there the moment you walked in. The environment had changed. People were not as happy, communicative, relaxed.”
She explained how working in Covid - there was an incredible newness to it - a fear and apprehension.
-
2021-09-17
Day to day life during pandemic.
-
2021-09-17
This audio interview shows how my friend, Emily Fink, and I have experienced the pandemic and how it has affected us.
-
2020-05-30
When the pandemic quarantine was initially imposed, I found myself with lots of free time on my hands. After weeks of low motivation and extreme boredom, I decided to sign up as a food delivery driver for Doordash, a job that was in high demand at the time. By this point in quarantine, all restaurants were closed for indoor dining, but many were still offering carryout and delivery services, largely through food delivery apps such as Doordash. Some of my friends and I started driving Doordash as frequently as 5-6 nights a week. We strategically prioritized the 4 to 8 PM time-slot in order to cover the majority of the dinner shift. Although it was quite mindless work, it was one of the few things that I had to look forward to as a daily break from the monotonous isolation of quarantine. Orders were frequent and because of the high demand for delivery drivers and very light traffic, tips were generous and reflective of the community’s appreciation for service provided by “frontline workers” like ourselves.
After about a month of driving, my friends and I decided to put together a fundraiser called “Dashathon” to support some of our favorite local restaurants and small businesses that were struggling during the pandemic. Because many smaller restaurants did not have the financial resources to operate at a loss during periods of the pandemic, many were forced to shut their doors. Our idea was to reach out to all of our family and friends and designate one night where all of our income and tips from Doordash would be donated to these struggling restaurants and other local charities in need. With lots of outreach, we secured underwriting from 10 different sponsors as well as a dollar-for-dollar match pledge from Doordash itself. Our Dashathon was even highlighted in a television news segment broadcast on the local Denver NBC-affiliate newscast (linked above). We were successful in recruiting over 40 drivers to participate in our event. Through a competition-style format that rewarded the highest earners with gift cards from our sponsors, we were able to raise $15,000 dollars in just four hours. The proceeds were distributed in their entirety to designated local restaurants and charities.
-
2021-08-20
Lining the walls of my school’s athletic center are 113 shields containing the names of the members of the corresponding graduating class. Over this past summer (2021), the alumni association at my high school posted a photo from the Class of 2021 graduation presenting their shield with the caption included in this post. Out of 114 graduating classes, only one is missing from the wall, and that is my grade, the class of 2020. Like the “generation lost in space” referenced in Don McLean’s American Pie, the class of 2020 was the grade lost in space.
I do not resent my school for the lack of an effort to ensure our class was included amongst the others. Yet as the wounds created by the pandemic were closing following a year in college, I returned home to find a deafening gap between the shields of 2019 and 2021 on the walls of my home of 13 years. For months, I felt the need to have in my back pocket a thesis to convince others that I had a right to feel disproportionately cheated by the pandemic. To my brother upset about his second year of college, to high school juniors, and to anyone else who dared to undermine my pain. “There are people dying, and you are complaining about your high school graduation?” Walking this hallway suggests that without a graduation ceremony, a high school class will not be documented in what is more or less an archive of the school. Ironically, it seems that perhaps this graduation was more important than anyone acknowledged.
-
2020-04-06
When you look at this picture, you notice something right off the bat. Most likely the fact that the streets of New York City are completely empty. On April 6th, 2020, New York City was as quiet as it’s ever been. The streets were empty and there was a ghostly feeling to it. If you were downtown that day, something had to feel wrong. I chose this picture to submit to the archive because these streets represent how the majority of people felt during lockdown; empty and alone. When people are cooped up and confined to the safety of their home, they start to realize the things that they took advantage of when things were normal. This picture also represents the odd nature in which the pandemic brought upon the world. We’ve never experienced anything like this before, and didn’t really have any idea how to prepare. It kind of just happened, and whether we liked it or not our way of life was going to have to change for the time being. While sitting in our homes, time was never an issue and, for me personally, I kind of just expected that one day this was just going to be all over.
-
2020-03-28
This music note is the logo for Tik-Tok, the reigning social media outlet that allows account holders to both create and view content in the form of 15-120 second videos. As of 2020, there are an estimated 65.9 million monthly active Tik-Tok users in the United States alone (Statista). Although the app was created in 2016, it skyrocketed in popularity during the pandemic and saw a 75% increase in weekly average users from January to September of 2020 (Forbes). I, among millions of others, joined those figures when I created my Tik-Tok account in late March of 2020. When school closed indefinitely earlier that month and my job followed a few weeks after, my meticulously structured daily routine was thrown into a state of disarray. As mounting uncertainty grew over whether it was safe to leave our homes at all, the four walls of my bedroom transformed into a prison. I was perpetually shackled to my bed, spending every day in a continuous cycle of sleep that lacked a beginning or an end. That was until I discovered Tik-Tok. Suddenly, I had a reason to wake up in the morning, anticipating the stream of new videos that would appear on my carefully crafted “for you page”. I spent hours glued to my phone screen, fascinated by the small glimpses into the lives of people who were just as bored as I was. I appreciate Tik-Tok for the fleeting but much needed moments of laughter and distraction it supplied me with throughout the pandemic, but the app holds value to me because it showed me that I was not alone. In the early weeks of quarantine, I spent countless nights in pure distress over what I believed was “wasted time”, and it felt as if I was on the fast track to loosing years of my life. However, Tik-Tok showed me that these feelings did not belong to me alone. Countless other people felt the same way I did, and this knowledge put into perspective the importance of staying connected. My cycle of isolation left me alone with my feelings in a vacuum, but once I opened myself up to the outside world through Tik-Tok, I found solace in the online community of people who shared the same sentiments I did but chose joy and laughter instead of sorrow and despair. Tik-Tok provided me with the support I needed by allowing me to witness the happiness of others, eventually prompting me to create my own.
-
2020-06-25
This screen recording, a small snippet taken from a live video posted on the Richardson High School Eaglettes Facebook page on June 25,2020, takes place in the back parking lot of my former high school. The fixture in the middle of the video is a "stick chick", and just beyond the stick chick is the stadium where I performed at every football game for the last three years as a member of the Richardson High School Eaglettes, a Texas style dance team. What you witnessed was the senior hat-hanging ceremony, meant to be performed in our big auditorium at the end of our final show that is usually held in April. This moment is meant to be the pinnacle of the drill team experience, a last bow in front of your teammates, family, and friends as they celebrate and applaud you for your hard work and dedication. Every early morning, every sore muscle, every tear of frustration was meant to be justified in this moment, when I could finally hang the heavily sequined hat that carried the makeup, sweat and troubles of my three-year experience and inwardly declare "I did it". But that moment never came. When school closed indefinitely in March amidst the raging global pandemic, our final show was the first event to be cancelled, followed shortly after by prom and graduation. The disappointment was crippling. I felt my world cave in as every important moment I had waited months for was stripped from me, and soon sadness made way for anger. Then one day I received an email, announcing the date of an outdoor and socially distanced closing Eaglette ceremony. And funny enough, the moment you see here almost didn't happen. I was so content with my anger that I contemplated not attending the ceremony, controlled by the belief that denying myself of this moment would show the pandemic that it could no longer hurt me. But with some motherly encouragement I gathered myself up at the last minute, making it just in time to hang my hat. I recieved honks instead of cheers, headlights instead of stage lights, and the ages old concrete of the parking lot as my stage. But I wouldn't have had it any other way. What you witnessed was my moment of victory, my realization that good can spring forth amid bad, and the moment that I decided I would not let the pandemic defeat me.
-
2020-04-23
This is a succulent that I received as a gift during September of 2019. I didn’t pay that much attention to it, though, because I was always busy with school, sports, and work. Then, when school shut down, I started taking better care of it, and it grew this interesting little sprout with yellow flowers on it. I took this picture to send to my grandpa, who loves plants, and asked him what it was. I think this succulent really illustrates life for me personally during the pandemic. Before the pandemic, I filled every single day up with activities from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed. And that was ok, I did well with that schedule, and I was able to grow in that environment. This succulent received little care and attention from me, and was still able to grow in that environment. Then, the pandemic came. It was an adjustment to not have to do anything, with the exception of online school. It was definitely not a schedule I was used to. But with time, I found the positive in spending time alone and doing things that I didn’t normally have time to do. I was still growing, but in a different way than what I was used to. I had to learn to spend time alone, and to occupy myself without school or work or sports. This succulent received more attention from me after the pandemic, and was able to grow with this new environment, but it resulted in a different kind of growth. Plus, it allowed me to have an opportunity to talk to my grandpa. We weren’t allowed to see them during quarantine, and I knew he would appreciate talking about something that he loved so sending him this picture allowed me to still keep in touch with him and talk about something that we both enjoyed.
-
2020-05-04
This is a sculpture of a seahorse hanging onto a piece of seaweed. The base is newspaper, toilet paper tubes, masking tape, and paper mâché. The seahorse is painted gray and the seagrass is painted green. Each element is covered in soda tabs, and the ones on the sea grass are spray painted green. The whole thing is attached with nails to a branch I found in the woods of my backyard.
This paper mâché seahorse was a project for my sculpture class senior year. I remember the base of the seahorse was due on Friday March 13th. That morning, my mom told me to bring everything home in case we went virtual and weren’t allowed back in the school. So I lugged the whole thing back home that weekend, and sure enough my mom was right. Most of my classes didn’t do very much for the rest of the year, since we were seniors and AP tests were the only thing we had to worry about. However, my art teacher did not take this approach. She continued to hold weekly meetings to check in on our progress for this sculpture. She had us come by the school to pick up supplies to finish it, and it ended up being really good for me. I wasn’t too happy about this at first, since I was only taking the class for fun and it ended up being a lot harder than I thought it would, but it quickly became the most enjoyable part of virtual school. I am the kind of person that needs direction and a schedule or else I will just waste the day, so the pandemic was hard for me once school went virtual and I didn’t have anything to do. I had an abundance of energy and nothing to spend it on. This project allowed me to complete something that required focus, and that also allowed me to take a break from the mundane days I was experiencing. I didn’t have time to sit there and think about all that I was losing and all that the world was losing, because I was working on this piece. It got to the point where I looked forward to doing this homework, and I was actually sad when I finished it.
-
2020-04-02
In Alexis Akwagyiram’s Reuters article named “African governments team up with tech giants to fights coronavirus lies”, she details how African countries are partnering with tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp to ensure citizens are up to date with news on the coronavirus and prevent false rumors from spreading through these channels and eventually causing a spike in cases. In the article, Akwagyiram mentions how “false claims that garlic, beetroot, and lemons are an effective alternative to antiretroviral drugs' ' continued to spread in most African countries. However, those claims reached the African community here in the United States. My mom, a Ghanaian woman, trying to find ways to prevent herself from catching the virus, especially since she had to work during the height of the pandemic, found herself believing these said rumors. I remember entering the kitchen every morning to see her making a mixture of garlic, hibiscus herb, and ginger boiling on the stove and pouring them in cups for the family to drink. This daily routine took a toll on her health as she began to experience symptoms such as trouble swallowing, difficulty sleeping, and irritability after eating which her doctor later diagnosed as acid reflux. With my mom already having an underlying disease and being immuno-compromised, she had to start taking new medications to prevent the reflux from affecting her blood pressure. What was supposed to alleviate stress and prevent us from catching the virus, just brought more trouble to my family with us now having to worry about the effect of this new diagnosis on my mom’s well-being.
-
2020-05-10
The first days to even weeks of the pandemic for me, consisted of a very repetitive pattern: wake up, zoom into classes, work out, nap once or twice, binge watch Netflix or Hulu and repeat. This monotonous lifestyle of the same thing every single day in quarantine, quickly started to wear me down. At first, I, like most people, had assumed it would be like an extended spring break, but as the coronavirus continued to spread, doubt started to creep into my mind, and it began to feel like it would never end. Two major events underlined this feeling for me and made me feel as though I was missing on an important part of my life and my “college experience”. First, I was unable to attend my youngest sister’s graduation, then quickly after I was informed that my internship for the summer was probably not going to be able to begin. These two things back-to-back, sent me into an even bigger funk, where I started thinking about all the things, opportunities, events, etc. both big and small that I was missing out on due to the pandemic. This lasted for several days, where I would do nothing but stay in my room, watch TV shows, and feel bad for myself.
Finally, sometime in mid-June, one of my friends suggested to go on a hike while wearing masks. This turned out to be a pivotal moment for me during the pandemic, as it showed me that I could continue to do things that brought me joy even during the pandemic. All of a sudden instead of gloomily sitting around my room, I began to think of things I could do or try with this “new normal” we were all subjected to. I realized how normally I do not get to spend much time with my family due to school and work, so I began to make it more of a priority to spend time with them, even if it was just watching a movie together at night. It also reignited my love of nature and just being outside, something that I had not prioritized since I was a young kid. I started taking hikes with my dogs, exploring new trails, and playing soccer again. Although my life, like pretty much everyone else’, had been completely turned upside down my the coronavirus pandemic, I was able to put a somewhat positive spin on it, by enjoying my time with my family and the chance to get outside.
-
2020-03
This collage of Instagram screenshots displays a common practice at the beginning of the pandemic that was used to stay in contact with friends and family during challenging times. When the pandemic first began, these Instagram stories were a respite from the loneliness of lockdown. Shown in these images are posts that encourage inclusion, individuality, and cooperation. An example of these posts is the orange drawing post. In this type of post, someone tags other people on their drawing and those people draw their own oranges. The chain gets preserved so that the viewers can see all of the people who also took part in the process. It was a way to connect people and produce a creative outlet.
The other posts are ones in which a person answers questions about their favorite Disney characters and shares what song they are listening to. You then tag a few people to do the “challenge” next. This was a way to stay in touch with people, but also a way to show that you were thinking of someone. During the pandemic, it was very easy to feel alone and secluded. When a friend from college whom I haven’t spoken to for a while tagged me, I felt that someone cared. I was on someone’s mind even during a time of so much fear and sadness. The idea of each individual tagging multiple people also meant that the number of people participating grew exponentially and, ideally, it made us all feel connected.
-
2020
The attached collage of photos displays the COVID-19 birthday parties that have become so well-known in my family over the past year and a half. After a few birthdays were skipped over due to uncertainty at the beginning of the pandemic, my family decided to do birthdays that would be distanced, outdoors, and masked. Unlike the passing of the months, which was meaningless when we were stuck indoors, the changing colors of the “Happy Birthday” sign added a sense of progress and individuality to each celebration. However, these photos, identical aside from the color scheme, are a reminder of the restrictions of the pandemic. While the decorations changed, the masks, socially distant tables, and disposable plates did not. Outdoor family gatherings at my house had once been a choice. However, during this pandemic, we did not have the option to eat indoors on a hot day or go to my uncle’s backyard where social distancing was more challenging.
This collage of photos is relevant not just to illustrate ways in which our lives have changed during the pandemic, but also how we have adapted and maintained our values. These photos reflect what my life has centered around during the pandemic: attempting to engage in my normal activities in a safe manner. This is surely a sentiment that many can relate to. Thus, I feel that, in the future, these photos can demonstrate the adjustments that were made in order to maintain family values and a semblance of normal life.
-
2021-06
This page from my bullet journal displays the workout I conducted each day during the month of June, 2021. The viewer should note three pertinent pieces of information to understand the necessity of this piece for the archive: the bullet journal itself, the exercise habits, and the timeline between the beginning of the pandemic to the actual entry. Primarily, I picked up the hobby of bullet journaling itself during March of 2020. I wanted a method to record my own habits – such as exercise, eating, music taste, and TV shows - in a scrapbook type format during the pandemic. Truthfully, the entire book would contribute to the archive, due to the personal detail and day-to-day routine recorded. Secondly, the workout tracker shows a slight addiction to exercise, with runs or walks every day, in addition to tens of thousands of steps I already took. These overexercising habits began for me during quarantine, with time and stress on my hands, and no healthy ways of coping. Finally, the reader should also acknowledge that I wrote this entry in June of 2021, a full 15 months after the start of lockdown in the US. That timeline shows that lingering effects of the pandemic remain, perhaps even grow with time.
This artifact expresses more about my experience with the pandemic than I can articulate due to one central reason: learning self-love through exercise. Though I’d always struggled with having time on my hands, the pandemic left me feeling more uneasy with loneliness and boredom. Without a healthy way to deal with my emotions, I turned to exercise for the release and endorphins that I needed. Before I knew it, a casual workout each day led to apple watch addiction, calorie counting obsession, and cycles of binge eating and overcompensating through exercise, etc. While this sounds like my own personal journey, quarantine kickstarted and exacerbated these issues for adolescents all over the nation. With the recent introduction of tiktok “What I eat in a day” videos and Chloe Ting’s workout videos, people grew obsessive about wellness and moving their bodies. I learned so much about my body and my brain through this struggle with overexercise and obsession – and I feel grateful for that. Still though, I notice these effects in myself and others. This small contribution of a workout tracker speaks volumes about habits of teenagers after months of loneliness and free time – whether teenagers obtained an obsession with appearance, food, or exercising. And if those issues did not resurrect for some, I’d argue that the pandemic brought many other mental health challenges to surface for my age group. While this submission does little to express my emotions or challenges surrounding my exercise routine, it conveys the lingering effects of mental health tolls and body challenges from the pandemic.
-
2020-03
I attached a letter I wrote to my senior year English teacher and forwarded to the administration after my high school canceled the rest of my in-person school year in March 2020. When reading it, the reader should specifically acknowledge the timeline and therefore lack of information surrounding the pandemic, as well as the personal memories incorporated. This letter houses pent-up frustration, unfiltered emotion, and a lack of education surrounding the pandemic. As an 18-year-old who just lost the remainder of her senior year, I cater to selfish and emotional tendencies. The reader should recognize that I composed this letter before the CDC, scientists, and government disseminated lots of information and education about the virus, so it embodies the unawareness and confusion that surrounded the pandemic. Aside from that context, the reader should acknowledge the remembrances incorporated into the letter – through imagery and specific quotes, my memories and mourning become more internalized. Clearly, these images and memories can only be understood by members of the high school class or close peers. However, these details such as “alter ego outfit”, “alpha omega day”, and “mudslide” speak to personal experience during the pandemic and allow for my specific outlook.
The letter I wrote bears lots of significance on my experience during the pandemic by allowing me closure and unleashed emotion. As a senior in high school when the pandemic hit, I never received closure with teachers, classmates, sports teams, etc. This letter gave some semblance of finality with my school’s administration and allowed me to express my concerns in an unfiltered fashion. Although reading the letter itself a year and a half later allows me to reflect on my emotions, the experience of actually writing the letter will never leave me either. I sat at my laptop, brainstorming what to write for an English busy-work assignment. I found it difficult to care about school anymore, after I had committed to Vanderbilt, and school moved to zoom. But, quickly, putting my feelings to paper resulted in an outpouring of passion, both positive and negative, and I cried, not sure why. Rereading the letter, as embarrassed as I am about my trivial concerns, I still return to the place of uncertainty, anger, and volatility. Even though I expressed lots of shallow ideas, the letter still bears relevance to me, as I’m proud of my honesty and vulnerability during that time.
-
2021-03-30
The picture that I have chosen for the archive is one of me after getting the vaccine in March of 2021. After receiving the vaccine, I captioned the photo, like many of my optimistic peers, “Covid over.” Since last February of 2020 when the pandemic started, a vaccine was finally being distributed across the country (USA), and a majority of people were ecstatic that quarantining was over. But little did I know, many people would be against taking the vaccine leading to variants of Covid-19 like the Delta variant. This picture was taken six months ago from when this archive was being made, and Covid is still not over because people choose to believe these conspiracy theories of the government putting microchips in the vaccine and other ridiculous things like that. Even with a vaccine that is available to everyone in the United States, the pandemic is still raging on with the Delta variant running rampant in the hospitals which has an even worse effect than the normal strain that was going around from February 2020 to around May of 2021. This picture is just to show how hopeful people get from new technology coming out that can save thousands of lives, but ignorant people choose to convince others what they believe since they are spreading their crazy selfish conspiracies. I was so hopeful of having a normal sophomore year of college, but once again Covid is still present (as of September 14, 2021) putting the elderly at risk and quarantining/putting a hold on people’s lives.
-
2020-05
The picture above that I have chosen for the archive was taken around May of 2020 which is a few months after Covid-19 started spreading very quickly around the United States of America. This was the very start of online school and the era of Zoom. For future readers, Zoom was the company that acted very quickly during the start of the pandemic and made virtual meetings the most convenient and efficient for schools, companies, and friends who could not see each other in person. I personally had many online meetings with my friends when our parents would not let us out of the house in fear of the treacherous Covid that we might bring back with us. In the picture, the very last high school class of my career was over Zoom, and I could not hug or see my close friends, classmates, or teachers before graduating. My private school went from kindergarten to 12th grade in high school, so some of these people I have known for more than 8 years, and Covid prevented me and many other students across the nation and the whole world from having that sentimental last day being able to say goodbye to our favorite teachers or seeing some acquaintances before heading off to college. It is just crazy to think that it will be a very long time before another graduating high school class is forced online or in the near future when online class is just a foreign thought that would baffle kids or young adults that hear about it.
-
2021-09-16
Starting a new chapter in your life can always be a little stressful simply because of the new change it brings. Coming from a farming county, I had just begun becoming comfortable moving into a big city during my freshman year of college. Second semester rolled around and out of nowhere COVID-19 immediately impacted my life. My once comfortable lifestyle I have adapted to in the big city changed back to my home where I started online classes. This was quite unusual because I had never taken any online classes and found myself struggling to learn from a screen rather than in-person classes. Weeks went by where I struggled to pay attention and succeed in the “classroom”. Although challenging, I adapted to something unfamiliar in my life and found my niche to succeed in a new environment once again.
Adapting to something new can certainly be challenging for people. COVID taught people to adapt to something new in their lives. It brought people together in the community in ways that I had not thought possible. One example of this is when I found out my grandma of 88 years of age became ill with COVID. It was an unfortunate event for my family that took a toll on all of us when we first heard about the news. It became real. Real enough to worry, real enough to take action. Real enough to show the importance of family in times of pain and struggle. Our family had to adapt to my grandmother’s lifestyle for the next couple of months. This meant no big grandma hugs for 5 months until her body recovered from this foreign virus. This took some getting used to as I had not realized the real impact of COVID and perhaps did not see it as dangerous as I thought. Again, I adapted. I adapted to realize that the people around you can make situations like this less painstakingly hard. The comfort and prayers received from family and friends made it comforting to know people cared and were there for me and my family. COVID was something that impacted everyone in different ways. Just remember people listen and people are there.
-
2021-09-16T13:00:00
This is a quick interview between two freshmen in college, recapping our overall thoughts throughout the pandemic.
-
2021-09-16
We described the social and emotional challenges that we faced when the lockdown first began. This included the topics of education, social media, and mental health.
-
2020-06
These images from June 2020 were captured during Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in New York City following the killing of George Floyd. The first image shows City Hall the morning after BLM protests. In this image of a landmark building covered in spray painted cries for change, graffiti depicts the frustrations over the cruel injustices institutions place on people of color. The second image depicts one of many protests during summer in quarantine when New Yorkers came together on avenues, bridges, and squares. Citizens marched and chanted as police followed alongside to ensure protests remained peaceful. These images capture uniquely complex dynamics when people were forced to pursue creative avenues, reinventing social justice movements to come.
My time in quarantine was not solely spent on COVID related activities, I also educated myself on how and why many US institutions remain racist, discovering ways that structural change can address unjust attitudes. I read articles written by advocates for the BLM movement and also by conservatives opposing it. In exposing myself to differing mindsets, I was better prepared to engage in conversations with others opposed to change in the hope of educating them on the pressing need for progress. Furthermore, my high school friends and I frequently Zoomed to discuss how our alma mater contributes to racism in both subtle and overt ways. These conversations allowed us to work with fellow alumni, as well as current students, to create a document clearly listing racial inequities within the student body, the faculty, and the curriculum. For each issue that we highlighted, we provided multiple alternatives for how the school could fix the matter in question. While these conversations were unexpected before the BLM protests occurred, they became productive and fulfilling conversations that in and of themselves began to address long held biases, racist representations and undercurrents of injustice within our alma mater’s community and programs.
-
2020-05
These photographs taken from April-June 2020 capture New Yorkers interacting with the empty stress of the city during COVID-19. The first image displays an off duty fireman walking down vacant 5th Avenue, apparently in tribute. His body position highlights the stress, grief, determination, and exhaustion experienced by so many New York frontline workers. The next image was taken of the once bustling streets of SOHO. In this photograph, an older man appears exhilarated during a moment out of quarantine. Getting some fresh air, he turned up his car radio and bellowed out the lyrics of “New York, New York”, the anthem for New Yorkers. The third image captures young cyclists riding, practicing tricks, and laughing. The final snap is of two jazz musicians near the entrance to Central Park, a spot they often inhabited pre-pandemic. They played exactly as they once did, only masked this time.
As a twenty year old who would normally be thrilled to spend the summer at home, surrounded by the lively energy of NYC, I was determined to find a way to interact with my city in a creative and safe way. After completing many projects from home (such as making filter masks for medical staff and collecting supplies for donation), I decided to use my knowledge of and passion for photography to capture fellow New Yorkers doing their part to help lower the spread of COVID and to find moments of camaraderie to fuel their, and others’, fight against this virus. In turn, the act of getting in my car and driving throughout the city, equipped with my Canon Rebel 55mm was my way of finding a measure of peace, purpose, joy, and meaning during the six long months in quarantine in New York City.
-
2020-10
Last October 2020 I celebrated my 22nd birthday. Between COVID-19 and the death of my father, my birthday wasn't high on my list of things to prioritize. However, my family and I decided last minute to go to Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut as it is one of my favorite places & they had socially-distant protocols in place. I enjoyed seeing the belugas, seals, penguins, and jellyfish in a safe and distant manner.
-
2020-08-15
The beginning of the pandemic almost perfectly overlayed with my beginning in the coast guard. From my first unit to A school, to my second unit as a rated member, Covid 19 has been a major part of every pit stop. I endure endless safety briefings to the now mandatory Covid 19 vaccine, the military did not fall short in its education and preparation for the pandemic.
-
2021
During the pandemic, I was able to get back into reading and also once the restrictions were lifted, I was able to get back in the gym and start biking again. I would try and bike anywhere from 10-15 miles per day which was a goal of mine to hit.
