Get Within 10 Feet De Anza College Covid19 Pandem
Free write 2 pages about your life this last month. You can write about anything related to this pandemic, how you feel about it, and how it has impacted your life. You can answer these questions below but are not required to. Just write.
- What stressors, challenges, drama have you had to deal with due to the COVID-19?
- Is anyone in your family or social group sick with the virus?
- Are any of these challenges related to race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation?
- Do I have your permission to share with the rest of the class? I will do it anonymously so your name won’t be in the quote. Your gender and age may be quoted though.
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My response to what a student turned in this quarter:
For me COVID-19 has made me depressed. The first reason why is that I have no one to talk to and I’m afraid to meet with my friends in person. The second reason is that I’m always staying inside and never really getting sunlight. Third, staying inside has gotten me very bored and when I don’t do anything I get anxiety. Fourthly it has been difficult for me to work out and thus making my body weaker along with my mind.
One) You can meet your friends over Zoom, FaceTime, Skype etc. People are watching movies together, doing happy hour using the video conf software above. It’s really important now to keep in touch with your support group. You can always call and text too. Two) You can go outside. Just don’t get within 10 feet 3 meters of anyone. Wear a mask to be safe. I recommend going outside since the weather has been nice recently and exercise.
Several students are writing about feeling helpless to alter their current situation. They also express a lot of guilt. They feel guilty for missing hanging out with friends, going to the movies, visiting colleges they might attend, graduations, going to birthday parties etc when people are gravely ill and dying by the thousands here in the US and throughout the world. My advice: Don’t be too hard on yourself. These are very stressful and sad times. Don’t compound it by beating yourself up. This historical moment will have a profound and lifelong impact on American society. We will soon fall into a recession and possibly a depression with unemployment at 15-25%. If you are just graduating from high school, the losses you are feeling may be especially acute. Prom. Graduation. Visiting colleges and deciding which ones to apply to. Looking forward to moving out of your parents house into a dorm. All those hopes and dreams are put on hold indefinitely. We don’t really know when things will be back to normal. It’s totally acceptable to feel sad about missing these life events and rites of passage.