The current pandemic COVID-19 has changed my life more than I thought it would. For the past few months, I have been watching the news and thought it would eventually spread to us. When I found out that the island was going on a stay at home order, I wasn’t surprised. My family was practicing social distancing and working from home prior to that. The pandemic has affected me and my family in many ways. Here are some:
When it comes to my daily routine, some changed for the better, others for the worst. One positive thing that changed for me is I no longer need to wake up at 5:00am. During the normal semester, I get up at 5:00am to get ready for school, skip traffic, and get parking in the structure. Now that I don’t need to be on campus anymore, I no longer need to get up that early. Everything else has changed for the worse. I rely on eating out to save on time, and this is mostly because I can’t cook. Being cooped up in the house for extended periods of time is really getting to me. I find myself using Discord to talk to my friends, since I can’t see them in person. It’s a good alternative, but it doesn’t feel the same. Other than watching a lot more TV and not going out, the things I do at home are mostly the same.
My work life has changed quite a bit. As an “essential worker” in the food industry, my restaurant stayed open and we all continued to go to work. Some of the changes that have affected the business is closing the lobby completely and only allowing a few people in at once. I found that it’s hard to keep your distance from the people in the kitchen because there isn’t much space to move around. It’s such a small work environment that in my opinion, if one person catches the ‘rona’, then everyone will catch it. For that reason, starting this week, I have taken a leave of absence. I found that the business wasn’t taking proper measures to keep us all safe and made the decision, keeping my family that has been home this whole time in mind. Besides me, there have been many people thinking about the same thing at my work and I think as the weeks go by, more and more people will leave.
During my time in the UH system, I have never taken a full online schedule because I need the constant reminders about assignments and have never kept a planner. This has made this new schedule quite difficult. In ICS-314, things haven’t changed that much because most of our assignments were online and class time was mostly used for practice or questions. However, my other classes are quite different. I’m also taking language and math classes right now and the way things are going, I don’t feel like I’m learning anything. Language classes require a lot of in-class interaction and the Zoom conference rooms aren’t the same as turning to the person sitting next to me to have a conversation. In my math class, the changes aren’t as bad, but starting Zoom and making sure the class is ready is turning our 50-minute long class sessions into 40 or even 35 minutes. I feel like I’m losing a lot of class time to learn.
My family has changed their daily routines as well and everyone is working from home. We all have our own little section that we’re confined to throughout the day, and because we’re all in meetings or working on something, it is very distracting when people are walking around the house. It also restricts where I can go in the house, and my brother is in the kitchen making it really hard to get food. When I look at my friends’ social media pages, I notice that they are still going out and hanging out with people and it’s really worrying because it hasn’t gotten any better since spring break.
I don’t really know the answer to this. This is something that I didn’t plan for, and it’s really hurting me now. If I had to think of a few things, it would be to keep a daily planner for myself. I find myself always looking on Laulima to see what I need to do next, but you can only go so far by scrolling through Laulima. I need to take control of my life and plan my time instead of wasting it by checking what I need to do every morning. Overall, the pandemic has changed me and my family’s life a lot and there aren’t any solutions except to wait it out. Hopefully once this is all over, we can all get back to living our old lives.