BLOG: It’s a COVID-19 world after all
EDITORS NOTE: 5/2/20 – Post has been updated to include a reflection blog by the author.
April 6, 2020
Just a few weeks ago I was in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter with my family with only a couple of news stories breaking about the coronavirus. The latest I had heard was that Tom Hanks and his wife had tested positive in Australia and people were running to grocery stores to prepare for the worst.
That’s when the reality of this situation started to sink in.
My family is fortunate enough to have church friends who wanted to help provide for us while we were out of town. My mom was getting constant messages about what they could find at the store and what we should look for before we traveled back home.
The night before we flew back to Houston, my family made a trip to an Orlando Walmart to grab anything we might need when we get home. We had heard countless stories of stores with nothing on their shelves, and we wanted to be prepared.
The weekend we came home is when we found out about all of the local schools closing for at least three to four weeks.
This is when I got the email about switching all UHCL classes to being taught remotely.
I have taken a handful of online courses, so I was not too concerned at first. Then I thought about all my courses and what this would look like.
There are two classes that were going to be difficult to transfer to online learning. The courses are Selected Topics in Communication: Adaptation and Text and Media Production.
These classes are very hands-on and collaborative learning experiences. I did not know what the new format of these would look like. After receiving messages from both professors, I felt a lot better.
The professors are also having a difficult time right now, and that’s okay. This transition from pre-COVID-19 to mid-COVID-19 has not been easy. As humans, we always crave downtime and lazy days, but working from home can become mentally and physically exhausting when there are city-wide curfews and everything is closed.
My mental health does not do well with constant quarantine. It doesn’t help that I only recently found out about the postponing of commencement ceremonies this semester.
This is not how I was planning to end my time here at UHCL, but I am going to make the best of it.
May 2, 2020
Welcome to week seven of my quarantine diaries. Although the world is still on lockdown, there have been many changes and events happening in my life. With the start of Phase One by the Texas State government, I am looking back on my time in isolation, pointing out the good and the bad.
At the start of all of this, I was mostly concerned about how the rest of my last semester at UHCL would go. I was worried about not keeping up with work or getting overwhelmed from the abnormal way of living. I am thankful that my education has not suffered even through a pandemic.
All my professors have made it their goal to keep in contact and to make sure everyone is staying safe.
I consider myself lucky to have some of the best instructors to finish out my time at UHCL. This situation has not been ideal for anyone but having the support of fellow classmates and my professors helps a ton.
Originally, I was looking forward to an extra week or two of a break. Not necessarily from schoolwork, because that would have continued, but from my job.
I work in retail and we were still calming down from the holiday rush. Before spring break, I had been working non-stop and was craving some time off. It is crazy to think that after seven long weeks of being under stay at home orders, I am itching to go back to work.
I believe in being transparent and letting others truly know who I am and what I am going through just in case someone is feeling the same way.
My mental health does not enjoy the experiences that COVID-19 has brought with it.
I have discovered that for me, with self-isolation, I am too alone with my thoughts. Sometimes I find myself aching to go back to normalcy instead of feeling sad and without motivation. Living in quarantine has been a lot more difficult than I was expecting, but I am constantly trying to look for the positives.
Some of those positives include spending time with my family.
Pre-COVID-19 included my family and me being constantly on different schedules, sometimes not seeing them for days at a time. Now, we can do things together and learn more about each other than ever before.
This pandemic is far from over, but I am striving to find the beauty in the uncertainty.
