Pandemic Essays

by Carlos Medina

January 25, 2023

It was March of 2020 when school was canceled. I thought I was taking a full vacation, yay yay. I saw kids running excitedly out the doors with bright smiles, I was one of them. Of course, I figured I would return back to school in a couple of weeks at most, so I might as well enjoy this leap of absence. I would later find out that was not going to be the case.

The first week was amazing, free of homework, quizzes, and tests. I didn’t even talk to my friends during this first week because I felt fulfilled by my own company. However, as days passed, I began to get bored. I got tired of not doing anything productive. It was also starting to become apparent that going back to school was not a real option, and that scared me.

Establishments like Walmart, Target, and Costco, were having shortages of supplies and were mostly deserted. If I did go to stores, there would be a limit of people who entered, and in most places children were not allowed. For that reason, I stayed in my house, not going anywhere for almost a year. To say the least, I still do not know how I kept my sanity. I was irritated most of the time because I was sick of traveling from my room to the living room to the bathroom, and back again. At most, during the summer months I could go to my backyard and swing on my swing. There, on my red swing, it was like I was flying and my worries temporarily disappeared. But once the winter and fall months hit, it was another story. Of course, I was grateful that my parents still had their jobs and my life needs were met, but it still wasn’t comfortable.

By week four, I started to FaceTime my friends, and loneliness was slowly creeping up on me. Finally, by week nine or ten, remote learning began. It was so strange to transform my environment of relaxation to be a workplace. Speaking of workplaces, a couple weeks after remote learning started, my father had been let go, and was searching for a new job. My mother, who was working a small side job, was our only source of income. Things were starting to take a turn, and the worst part was that I felt it. I saw how things were spirling, and I felt my insides turn. In the beginning of remote learning, it was fine because I was given a list of things to do, and there was no camera watching me complete it. There wasn’t a strict schedule other than everything had to be due by 3pm, but I would still treat it like school because I wanted organization in the midst of all the chaos. However, although it worked for me, it did not work for everyone and so Zoom moved into the picture. Zoom was a pain for so many reasons. Primarily, having to stare at a screen non-stop for hours put a strain on my eyes, which made me buy blue light glasses. Then, the glitching on both my screen and teachers’ screens. If I was put in a breakout room, unless I was friends with the other person, it was so silent that even a whisper would be considered a shout. It was an overall terrible experience because I felt like I was being scrutinized.

Opportunities to go back to school arose, but I wanted to stay at home. I would later regret my decision because staying at home put me in a deep depressive state. It came in waves, but I would cry a lot, all the time. I started to feel anxious during remote learning, and could not focus as well as I had in the beginning. It was because I did not really socialize much with anyone other than my parents that I felt isolated only from the world and got lost in my webs of thought. It all went away, once I returned to school, but it was different. Kids were wearing masks, so I could not recognize anyone. I felt a shift in my peers emotionally too. I think after the pandemic I saw more kids with anxiety and depression than before, and it was understandable. I also felt that there was more separation between friend groups and cliques, whereas before the pandemic I felt like we were more of a connected school.

During lunch, instructions were given for students to be distant from each other, and even had us put up clear plastic paperboards to minimize chances of catching COVID. Then there was the testing; every week I had to spit in a tube sample where I would then be tested for COVID. All the changes were overwhelming me, and it made me hope that this was not going to be the new “regular.” Luckily, as time went on, life was starting to regulate like it used to be pre-pandemic. As a result, my gratitude to life became deeper than ever before. I learned to further appreciate even the seemingly small things in my life from going to the grocery store to living without a mask. To me, COVID-19 was much more than a pandemic as it was a force that changed my life from day to night. However, thankfully, I was able to live with both the Sun and Moon.

By: Kirsten Anzalone

Life at the beginning of 2020 seemed to run at a break-neck pace with little time left to fully process the events of the day. Our family schedule was a well-oiled assembly line: wake at 5:00 AM, breakfast, wish my husband a good day as he bolted out the door to catch the 5:25 AM metra, off to shower, make lunches, help the kids get ready for their day, drop the kids at school, go to work, run through the grocery store to pick up milk, greet the kids at school
pick-up, race to Irish dance practice, rush home to make and burn dinner, throw the children in the tub, clean the toilet, wipe the dust, run the dishwasher, read the kids a book, kiss them goodnight, check my text messages, remember that I forgot to pay a bill, promise to pay the bill tomorrow, tried to remember if I did shower that day, when was the last time I washed my hair, did I go to the bathroom today…maybe not. No joke. Can’t remember. Did I ask my husband how his day was? Opportunity slipped by – he’s already asleep. I’m off to bed, and I’ll do it all over again tomorrow!

Sometimes the days ran into each other. There were nights I realized I never fully looked my children in the eye that day. I never truly absorbed them. How could I let a day slip by without giving them a fraction of my full attention? I made false promises that the next day we would not be so crazed. And yet, there I was the following night, rerunning the crazy events of that day again in my head knowing full well that I did not fulfill my previous night’s promises.

And then COVID came.

We had heard about COVID for the first time from my father who reads the daily news from multiple sources. He warned us about a virus traveling abroad from China that would soon lay its filthy hands around America’s neck. But life was moving so fast, I was not prepared. I still had my younger daughter’s 4th birthday party planned for March 15, 2020. It was not until two days before that we had heard of patients in Illinois being diagnosed with the virus. So, in an effort to be cautious, we cancelled the March 15 party not realizing this would be the last time for over a year that we would even have a party date on our calendar.

I work in the College and Career Center at Prospect High School. I missed seeing senior students who were set to celebrate their College Decision Day, prom, and graduation. Soon, school was moved remotely for the remainder of the school year. Event after event was cancelled. My own children, in pre-school and 2nd grade at St. Raymond School in Mt. Prospect, adopted a fully remote elearning schedule. We learned Zoom on the fly, mastering the mute buttons and automatic filters that made me look 5 years younger. Ta da! (One piece of Zoom I will never complain about.)

One night in May 2020, I asked my older daughter how her day was, and she said, “It was great, mom! I love that you are my teacher now!” I reminded her that Mrs. Mitchell was her teacher, but she said, “But not really, because she’s not here. You’re here.” And I realized I was truly “here” for her. For the first time in 8 years, I truly looked at my daughter. I saw her talents, her inner-beauty, I learned her better from the inside out. COVID restrictions requiring us to stay home allowed me to fully embrace motherhood, to explore nature with my kids. I watched our 4 year old master her alphabet, recognize letters, and ride a big-girl bike. We made homemade pie, cookies, cinnamon rolls, and learned how to finger knit, tie-dye, and paint on canvas. We played more board games than I could count. My husband, a first-responder with the Illinois State Police, continued to work at the Crime Lab every day while I had the joy of staying home with our kids. And I do mean “joy.” I am not writing that sarcastically. I was so lucky to be at home with them, to be their teacher, mentor, playmate, and mom.

COVID restrictions in Cook County came at a time that was convenient for me, we can’t deny that. My kids still found me fun. I sent positive thoughts to the moms with newborns and the moms with teens. What were they doing to stay sane? To keep themselves positive during the day? I was fortunate that at 4 and 8, my children still found me exciting to be with while they stayed safe at home.

And now, in April 2021, people are starting to venture out. For families like ours who have been very cautious, this is new territory. Can our kids have a friend over to play? Can I see a friend in person without a mask on? I’m not sure if I will ever feel 100% secure and safe again. This pandemic hit my mental health hard. My Tiger Mom came out in full-force: I just wanted to keep my kids safe. I think anyone with kids would say the same.

If someone asked me to think of one positive aspect of the past year, I would reflect on how the stay-at-home order for our family was the reminder to…slow…down. I finally could breathe. I was able to finally enjoy my children without a time clock ticking next to me. I don’t want our schedule to ever get as busy as it was prior to March 2020. I am so happy with a slower paced life and daily schedule. When life returns to normal, I will be sure to hit the breaks and pause button more often; I promise you all I will never run a daily marathon at a break-neck pace ever again.

By Katie Shea-Moskop

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by Subhra Sarkar Roychowdhury

As of December of 2020 life right now is very complicated in the U.S. I can still remember back in January when I was going to school and about my business normally. Then, all of a sudden, the pandemic just rushed in and changed everything. I first heard about the virus at the end of 2019. I had thought of it as a small thing which couldn’t possibly get as far as it had. Now, it’s dangerous to even go outside. I’ve had to use laptops to actually “go” to school everyday. I hear of many concerning things happening in the world. I’ve had to stop going to the extra-curricular classes I have been attending for years. Our economy is breaking apart. It’s completely chaotic.

The coronavirus, the rapidly spreading virus keeping everyone at home, has been a bane to all the world. It’s killing old and young people alike, but it is especially deadly to those above 60 whose immune systems are generally weaker than others. In the same way, people with other diseases like asthma and diabetes are also more vulnerable to the virus than others. Not only that, even some pets have been affected. Hospitals and the ICU are being overfilled with patients, and many people who do have rooms there don’t have a ventilator for themselves. Fortunately, there are vaccine trials taking place. But nothing more than trials has happened yet. I hear the phrase, “Wear a mask,” get repeated almost everywhere I go. It’s on the news. It’s written on signs by restaurants. But even then, I see people walking around bare faced. The matter of social distancing is also something I notice many people not following even though it’s strictly explained in detail exactly like the mask rule. Consequently, there have been 1.5 million deaths worldwide, and the United States makes up 300K of them. The virus started in December of 2019. It’s just been growing ever since. Sometimes, even after recovering, people are infected again. Others experience different symptoms after healing like kidney damage, heart diseases, and lung problems. The symptoms include a fever, breathing difficulties, fatigue, headaches, loss of taste or smell, sore throat, nausea or vomiting, and diarrhea. Emergency symptoms are persisting pain or pressure in your chest, new confusion, not being able to be awake or stay awake, and bluish lips or face. In addition, some individuals are asymptomatic. So sometimes it’s impossible to tell if someone has the virus until it’s too late. The virus gets in through the gaps in your body, and it’s mainly spread by someone coughing and sneezing. That’s why people are asked to wear masks to cover their mouths and noses so the germs are kept in your mask and not directed toward other people. They are also asked to maintain a distance of 6 feet from other people and are encouraged to wash their hands thoroughly whenever they can. What makes it worse is the virus can stay airborne for an amount of time. At any rate, my parents are very strict about protecting myself from the virus, so I always wear a mask when I go outside and keep my distance from people.  I don’t see any problem with following the safety guidelines. 

I never imagined I would have to attend class using video calls. The day when they announced we would be learning from home, I realized that it was, in fact, the best approach to the situation. It was noticeably strange to be in a video call trying to learn. There were many distractions around me at home. In a normal classroom environment, it was way easier to pay attention, but in a video call, the teacher was on a small screen and could barely even see me and vice versa. That made everything much more difficult than in a normal and physical classroom. It got slightly better as time went on, but it really wasn’t to the same degree as a physical school.

All the extracurricular activities outside of school I had been attending had to either get cancelled or start teaching online. I only went to two. My piano class continued remotely, but my martial arts class did not start online classes until after a while. Even then, it wasn’t the same as how I used to attend them. But something like learning the piano online is very much easier than going to school online in my opinion. 

I can see that our economy is slowly falling into pieces. Businesses have had to fire employees and close down because they could not pay for one thing or another. Restaurants have had to force people to eat outside because of the relation between air circulation and Covid-19. Airports have had to shut down because of the lack of people riding with them. Small shops are going bankrupt. People are running out of money, can’t pay their rent, and are afraid to travel. Another thing is there are so many protests in the U.S., and many of them are getting violent. I don’t live in the locations of the protests, but Mount Prospect is near Chicago. From -here, you can’t tell there are any protests at all. I only see it on the news. Another thing I hear is lots of people are being overworked. People are starting to fall prey to hunger because they can’t afford enough food. Doctors are working day and night to help covid patients. Scientists all around the world are struggling to find a cure for this illness because of how it mutates. In every country the coronavirus is different, and that makes it all the harder to find a solution. There’s talk of a vaccine coming out in December of 2020 though. Even then, I can tell that the economy is unmistakably crumbling apart.

Everything is slightly more strenuous than it was before. Part of it is that I have to get used to it, but it’s also more difficult in general. I wish everything could go back to the way it was before the pandemic. I know it can’t happen immediately, but I hope it will start happening soon.

by Caitlyn Kviz
6/10/2020

For my family, the Covid pandemic didn’t really start to have much of an effect on our daily lives until around the beginning of March. My brother and I were attending college up at UW Eau Claire, having an otherwise fairly normal semester. We didn’t have much on our minds other than the typical college kid stuff, like trying to get in our assignments on time and finishing up projects and big papers before midterms week. At the time, I worked two part time jobs, both involving working on stage crew for a local theater and the student center at the university.

The week of March 8 in particular stands out to me as the first time our daily lives began to be directly affected by this virus. As other schools in the UW system began to think about closing, our Chancellor’s Office sent out near-daily emails with updates on what the university was doing to control the risks associated with staying open. It all came to a head on the morning of Thursday, March 12, when our chancellor held a forum with local health officials that was live streamed across campus. I watched it on a projection screen in my painting class in the fine arts building.

Even while watching the forum, the mood in the room was happy and light. None of us really took the situation seriously at this point. Instead, we joked around and talked with our friends. I distinctly remember telling a friend, “The chancellor looks like he needs a nap. He’s like, what do yáll want now?” We laughed and kept painting, working on a big project that was due at the end of the week. I remember in a group chat with some kids from work, someone had made a March Madness-style bracket to try to predict which UW schools would close. Our university’s Facebook page for memes was full of stupid jokes about Covid, too.

At the end of the forum, he promised that a decision would be made by 5 pm. that day if the school was closing. Meanwhile, I moved on to my next class in typography and graphic design, and afterwards went back to my dorm room to drop off my stuff and eat dinner.

The decision, and many subsequent long emails, started rolling in at around 4 pm. that day. Our school was going to stop classes, and take essentially a three-week long spring break to allow time for our professors to figure things out. Then we would take classes online for two more weeks and make a decision on the rest of the semester based on how things were going at that point. Although we shouldn’t have been that surprised by it, the news hit me like a load of bricks. Things were getting real. I called my parents and younger brother to begin arranging an early ride home for the break. We finally decided on a bus ride home that Sunday afternoon, which was difficult to secure, because the website kept crashing from, you know, the whole UW system jumping on it at once. Afterwards, I called it a night.

On Friday, I woke up to even more crazy emails, this time from the theater in downtown Eau Claire that I work at as a stagehand. I quickly skimmed through it. So they’re closing too, and I’m laid off. WAIT, I’M LAID OFF? I read through it again. I am, in fact, laid off, news that I unexpectedly took very personally. I’ve worked there since the place was built and had its grand opening in 2018. It was like my little baby, in a way, a product of our blood, sweat, and tears. I watched it grow up. The job had provided me with so many great friends, and a steady income, among other things. I wondered if this was it, and if I’d ever run into these people again. At that moment, I was overwhelmed. I rolled over and cried myself back to sleep.

The weekend went by in a blur. After many event cancellations, I was left with only one weekend shift for my student center job, helping to close things up. The production office was empty except for me. And before I knew it, my butt was on a bus going back home to Illinois. After I got home, my feelings changed rapidly, from being happy about being on spring break, to more like, what the heck do I do now? Out of all my classes, only one had a real online meetup time, which I looked forward to, for my only real source of human interaction besides my family. Otherwise, my online classes just added to my feelings of isolation and loneliness.

To add to the sense of aimlessness surrounding our daily lives, my summer job was continually pushed back throughout the spring and then cancelled a few weeks ago. Me and my brother both got jobs at the BSA’s Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico, which we were really looking forward to. After talking about it, we both decided to resign a few weeks before it was officially cancelled, due to our own worries regarding traveling such a long distance during a pandemic. Still, it feels like it’s two different things to decide not to do something, vs. being unable to even if you wanted because it’s cancelled. It really takes the fun out of things. We’ve tried to find summer jobs afterwards, but by then it was too late to be hired for something we were really interested in. The only places that seem to be hiring are grocery stores, which we turned down due to the personal health risk of interacting with so many people daily.

And from there, the days blurred into weeks, which blurred into months, like fruit in a blender. You’d think it’d be more exciting to live through such a crazy historic event, but yet, this is quite possibly the most bored I’ve been in my life so far. It’s like our standard summer vacation boredom but on steroids. We can’t go anywhere or do anything without wearing a mask, sometimes gloves, and in some places they take your temperature at the door. There are stickers on the floor everywhere to mark where to stand to follow the CDC-recommended six feet apart from other people. In some stores, arrows are marked on the floor so that shoppers can only go one way, to minimize contact. Going out in general has a much different feel to it than it did before the virus. In grocery stores, people don’t wander around, and read nutrition labels, and talk to each other anymore. Hardly anyone goes shopping for fun or because they’re bored. Instead, grocery shopping has been reduced to a get-in and get-out type of procedure.

You might wonder what we’re doing with all of our sudden free time. I wonder about this too. My days since the quarantine started have been an unpredictable mix of getting tons of random things done to spending almost the whole day either sleeping or on some sort of social media.

I’m pretty sure I’ve watched almost the entirety of the videos available on Youtube, for example. Heck, I even started an artsy Instagram for fun. I miss human interaction. We’ve started taking care of all our projects around the house that used to be at the rock bottom of our to-do lists. We replaced our basement stairs from like the 60s with some nice wooden stair treads. We painted the kitchen. It was a rager.

As I’ve mentioned before, humor and sarcasm are one of the main coping strategies my family has been using to keep our emotional and mental health in check. When we first got home from school, we used an advertisement for Target’s 14 Days of Beauty sale as a way to keep track of how many days had passed. By April, I started designing my own funny calendars using software I’d learned in college. Your tuition dollars hard at work, as my one professor likes to say. April’s theme was coronavirus memes I’d found online. May’s theme was Sea Cucumber Fun Facts, inspired by my parents calling us a sea cucumber for working on schoolwork in our beds. Similarly, June’s theme was Swear Words in Foreign Languages, reflecting everyone’s frustration and stir-craziness from staying home for so long. Hey, man, you gotta do what you gotta do.

The numbers of both people infected and deaths are still rising, but our government is still going forward with their plan to reopen the state. The reopening has unexpectedly become a very politicized, controversial issue. Some people argue that we’re going to kill the economy by staying closed for so long, so they want to reopen, and others would rather stay closed to minimize the human impact. All of the confusion in government leadership has resulted in a feeling that the ‘goalposts’ or light at the end of the tunnel, are constantly being moved. Our individual actions to control the spread are overridden by morons partying on the beach in the hundreds, for example. This is perhaps the most frustrating part of this whole thing. Instead of being able to control our own lives, like planning trips for months down the line, for example, we are at the mercy of both the virus and our government’s actions.

If I were to give advice to future generations based on my experiences, I would say that it’s important to follow all health guidelines recommended by your state or country right away and without pushback to minimize the risk of a virus like this spreading again. Similarly, I encourage you to demand quick action from your government if they aren’t taking any measures to slow the spread. It’s absolutely heartbreaking to see those graphs online that show that so many lives would have been saved if our current regulations went into effect even a week earlier that they did. Lastly, this pandemic, like so many other things in life, has proven that knowledge and education is power. It’s important to stay informed about the virus by reading the news, scientific journals, and other reputable sources, so that you can better recognize the symptoms and next steps needed to get help if you start to feel sick. By taking personal responsibility for the wellness of you and your family, we can help to avoid the spread of future diseases.

by Brian and Jessica Schwake

• Obtained dual citizenship Luxembourg passport on February 26.  EU Citizenship allows him to work in the UK.
• Signed with Livingston FC on February 27, 2020.

• Received international clearance from FIFA, US Soccer and Scottish soccer on Thursday March 12, 2020, enabling him to begin playing in games.
• League was suspended March 13 and he was furloughed.
• Stayed with good friend Ryan Schofield in GK for Huddersfield waiting to see if he’d be recalled.
• Returned home by April 9.
• Back in Scotland as of yesterday, June 14, 2020 for two weeks of quarantine before training starts.