Students of the Pandemic
Note: Student submissions are not edited aside from minor grammatical corrections. These submissions are converted to their website in their original form, so as to preserve every narrative to the best ability. These particular submissions come from a Google Form, which can be found here. Assorted responses from different students have been archived here, with express consent of each individual. For their privacy, respondents will remain anonymous. Each quote is a response from a different individual
“Are there any experiences that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic that were particularly impactful to you?”
'“For me, online school was probably the worst thing that could have happened for my education. Over the duration of online school, I lost my work ethic, motivation for school, and my mental health plummeted. I found that teachers, counselors and all around most adults were not helpful in managing online school. Curriculum seemed scattered and unorganized with most of my teachers in my Freshman year of high school. This has continued to impact me this year, as I missed lessons and prerequisites that I needed to have for my current classes. This was my most impactful experience over the pandemic.”-Anonymous
“It was my junior year of high school when the pandemic started. In a way it was both a blessing and a curse for me since I got passed automatically on classes I was failing at the time lol. Though through my senior year it made a lot of things much tougher. I was in AP 3D art and it cut my classroom work time in class in half (we were doing hybrid schooling). While I still enjoyed my senior year, I felt like a lot of it was stolen from me due to the pandemic.” -Anonymous
“I did a COVID-safe production of Dear Evan Hansen with some friends, and met some of my best friends, got my drivers license, went through a pretty bad major depressive episode and came out of it, learned 3 new instruments, got into physical activity, had a few relationships, stuff like that. I think mostly the pandemic broke me down to my absolute core. I lost a lot of friends and virtually everything, I went into a mental spiral. At the end of sophomore year I wanted to off myself. Luckily I got out of that and I’ve come out as non-binary and made some incredible friends and I’ve never been happier.”-Anonymous
“Was there anything such as a club, organization, hobby, etc that helped you get through the pandemic? If so, what was it?”
“I found that knitting, roller derby, and video games gave me a much needed outlet and focus during lockdown.”-Anonymous
“During the pandemic I had a lot more time to work on a cosplay I started, even though no conventions were going on at the time. It was a much more complex one to make than I was used to but since I was stuck at home I had a lot of time to work on it. If anyone is wondering, the character was Bruno Bucciarati from Jojo.”-Anonymous
“Definitely music, theater, and hanging out with friends. My school orchestra and chamber orchestra helped a lot, as well as studying guitar and ukulele privately, and my theater organization, audience of one, was also great.” -Anonymous
“I found that hanging out with my D&D group on a weekly basis was of immense help to me, as it helped me connect with others during a time that I felt incredibly alone. It was a remarkable creative outlet.” -Anonymous
“Debate was a lot of fun, though navigating it through Zoom meetings (especially for tournaments,) was extremely difficult.” -Anonymous
“Definitely writing. It was extremely cathartic to write down all my thoughts and feelings in a way that helped me think through and process them.” -Anonymous
“I began skateboarding, starting about mid 2020. I sucked at it, but seeing my progress over the past two years has been awesome.” -—Anonymous
“Dungeons and Dragons and the hit video game among us.” -Anonymous
“Did you have any unique experiences working during the pandemic?”
“My coworker had a lot of conspiracies about the pandemic, and it was kind of hilarious to hear about during my shifts (ex. it was the government trying to surpress the people, the vaccine gives you blood clots in your lungs, you name it.)” -Anonymous
“Working in a retirement community was particularly interesting because you become so involved in their lives that when they get sick you feel awful for them. Doing COVID deliveries was the worst. Sometimes it would ruin a shift just because I wish I could make it go away.” -Anonymous
“I worked in a trampoline park during 2021. From what I can tell, my experience was pretty standard. We sanitized most things used, employees weren’t required to wear masks but guests were required, etc. Truly nothing too unique other than the fact that we were not paid overtime and experienced lots of trouble with scheduling shifts.” -Anonymous
“Working in food service was a nightmare. People were especially nasty to us during that time, and we never had enough people at work because everyone kept getting sick. I quit working there after four months.” -Anonymous
“How would you describe your relationship with social media post-pandemic?”
“Uninteresting. I rarely find anything intriguing on social media, just things to fill time.” -Anonymous
“Absent and sparse, which is a far cry from what it was initially.” -Anonymous
“Just makes me feel hopeless- nobody communicates at all.” -Anonymous
“I think I’m a bit burnt out from being online so much, but otherwise not much has really changed.”-Anonymous
“It’s become a lot more moderate, I don’t put as much emphasis on it or spend as much time scrolling. It’s also seemed to shift to a lot more serious topics. The political atmosphere on social media is incredibly intense now. In some ways I don’t like it, but it has had some extensive impacts on the general population.” -Anonymous
“It stayed roughly the same, I don’t get why everyone says it got so much worse for kids. I don’t know anyone who is on it markedly more or less.” -Anonymous
“My use of social media has increased drastically, but I wouldn’t exactly say that is a bad thing.” -Anonymous
