The Year We Never Thought of, 2020

April 8, 2020

      These last few weeks have been a roller coaster of emotions for me. At the beginning of all this, I believed that the transition would be easy. I thought that in the same way as usual, there was no need to go out and that staying at home would help not to spread the virus and at the same time it would be relaxing. As the days keep passing however, my anxiety began to increase. Two weeks ago I lost the sense of smell and taste for a whole week, I did not understand what was happening, it was very frustrating, I took home remedies in great quantities and then I recovered, but I still kept feeling burdened with homework and online classes.

       I understand that the teachers are doing their best and I am really grateful for that. However my only concern at the moment is that many classes have not yet created a new grade plan and this terrifies me since that is what my next semester will be based on and I am afraid that this will affect my future university career as such. I also understand that due to bigger reasons  and out of our hands,we must remain calm, even though it is often difficult. My mom and dad still go out to work and even though you don’t use public transport and protect themselves a lot, I still get anxious that they go out with everything that is happening in the city. Lastly, to leave the negative things a little behind, a few days ago, during the weekend, I did a little activity using my instagram account to try to relax during this “quarantine” and have a little fun. I asked my friends to tell me something to draw in a paper and I ended up creating a really nice collage of drawings and they also enjoy telling me what to draw. I’m attaching some pictures of the process and the outcome.

April 15, 2020

       This year Easter did not have the aroma and tranquility of spring, there were no children in the parks, there were not as many families celebrating as usual. After so many days without going out, I even lost count, I went out to take a look at the panorama and nothing was as I remembered it. I worried more about enjoying the fresh air, even though it wasn’t as enjoyable because of the face mask, that I even forgot to take my cell phone out of my pocket. My family and I went out to give my baby cousin a present for Easter. It’s her second Easter, but this year we didn’t celebrate it at the park. Instead my mom and aunt hid the easter eggs around the house, it was fun I can’t complain.

      On Monday I woke up complaining again about being locked up, then I started to think. I understood how lucky I am to have the option to stay at home, not to be in a hospital, to be healthy. Sometimes it is necessary to hit bottom to realize many things. I started to remember the times that I preferred to stay at home instead of going out to the park, the times that I did not accept an invitation to lunch with my friends, or the time that I said no, because “I had plans already”, when in reality I just stayed at home watching Nerflix. Now I wish I could see my friends and the rest of my family. I don’t even want to turn on my television, I had to take two days off and turn off my social media accounts, anxiety rises and falls. There are days when anxiety takes hold of me, as there are also days that I manage to defeat it.

      But then again after Monday, my perspective shifted, I understood how privileged I am. I hope this ends soon, I hope all of the people I know stay safe. I can imagine  reading these diary entries to my kids or even grandkids one day. For now I’m starting to organize myself a little more, I’m exercising, I’m finding ways to fix up my sleeping schedule, and also to manage my time better. Living in a Pandemic has taught me many things.

April 22, 2020

The way Kim Todd describes curiosity in his essay “curious” is essential. In his essay it is clear how we humans respond to impulses of curiosity.  All the examples and descriptions remind me of a time when I was little. I was about 6 years old and on a staircase in my house there was a fire extinguisher, and my curiosity was so great that I inadvertently ended up opening the fire extinguisher, I remember my whole family thought it was smoke and that the house was on fire, until someone realized it was just the smoke from the fire extinguisher. I think that when we are children we tend to be guided by our instincts without worrying about the consequences. However, even as adults we often let ourselves be won by the desire to experiment and learn. In connection with this, I remember the day we read the article on the ‘Dresden Green’. My head began to imagine the importance of this and curiosity generated a greater desire for me to go to know all these artifacts. The first day I visited the exhibition everything was new to me. Seeing the videos, the photos and the stories of all these artifacts made me want to be able to create something, to invent something one day  to remark on history. I also imagined the curiosity that surely led all those inventors to create their artifacts, how maybe one day they probably woke up and thought of challenging science and their imagination and let their curiosity work to create all those magnificent inventions that today we honor as essential pieces of history. As I said earlier in the blackboard discussion, thanks to the curiosity of many, we have the privilege of seeing magnificent works, inventions and creations around the world today.

• Something I have done during this time at home that demonstrates my curiosity, is that I found a puzzle  when I was cleaning up and the puzzle has like 400 pieces, and I’m going to start  doing it today 
• I remember reading something about the only animal besides a human that can get a “sunburn” and I remember it was the pig and how they mention that, that is the reason the bath in mud. 

April 29, 2020

 During these days I have understood many things about myself. I understood that I don’t really need coffee to live, before I depended on a coffee to continue my day. I learned that it is good to admit my mistakes, that it is not right to hide my feelings. For whatever reason, everything that is happening has made me a more sensitive person who likes to face her fears and talk about it with the people she loves. I have learned to manage my anxiety and practice more empathy for others. I’ve learned to be strong and to value how privileged I am with myself and my family. Overall I think I learned who I truly am and to be closer with my inner self

      During this crisis I understand that even though technology has increased in a tremendous way, we are still “weak” when it comes to situations of this scale. However, I believe that the scientific entities of the United States have demonstrated, with their knowledge and continuous work, an essential response. I think they show that they constantly work hard to control situations like this. However, I think that the authorities in charge of disseminating and bringing the information to the public are not doing it in the best way. Personally, I stopped watching television and news on social media, mainly because I realized that many times the information was confusing and somewhat incomplete. I believe that the sciences take risks and give all their knowledge to our society and that has become quite clear these days.

 May 6, 2020

This semester has been full of obstacles, never in my life did I think that I would live in such a chaotic time as a pandemic. Online classes have been an adventure. At first I thought it would be great , since I would’ve been from the comfort of my home where I would do homework and also be in class from my comfortable couch. That happiness lasted for at least a week, then stress, anxiety, worries led to my motivation to drop, my performance to drop too, I would also admit that my procrastination levels increased way too much. I think I had taken the face-to-face classes for granted, now I value them much more. If it were in my hands, of course I wish that by next semester everything is already normalized and I could go back to normal classes. However I fear that this won’t be the case, I believe that nothing will be back to normal by September. This past week I got an idea in my head about whether it might be necessary for me to even take a semester off.  Although professors and many people have been kind enough to help and guide us during this semester in a great way, I think I am not ready to take a full semester in this way, and  I greatly appreciate the effort of professors in this situation, but I am afraid that I am not ready enough to continue taking classes online. While my friends have already registered classes, I still keep thinking about what I will do. In the meantime, I hope to end off this spring semester in a good way and think about what the future will be for September.

 May 13,  2020

      It’s been a little over two months ever since New York, the city known for “not sleeping”, took a break, and its lights were somewhat affected by this pandemic. I already reflected too much on what I have learned throughout this time, I also reflected on the negative thoughts that this situation brought to my life. But above all there is something that I would like to highlight, and this is the important value that I found in the word patience. It may sound a little cliché to say that during moments like this we have to be patient, but I really didn’t understand it, until the moment I had to live it myself. So if you’re reading of course I hope you never have to go through something like this, but I would recommend you practice patience at all costs. 

       And lastly to you who are reading this, I would like to finalize  by summing up some of the things that I learned from this sudden adversity that we face. I want to emphasize that the drastic changes that we faced, were not to my total liking. Things were difficult, online classes were never my favorites, I wished every day to be able to physically return to the campus. My sleep schedule was totally uncontrolled, the days and nights became longer. I thought only of the moment  I would be running to hug those I couldn’t see, and I thought only of the moment this was all going to be over. However and mainly I reflected , not just on myself, but  on the world. This situation made me remember why I wanted to pursue a career in chemistry, I want to help the world in times of anguish, and I think this is what this pandemic showed us the most, the importance of science and how its workers fight day by day to help the world. I also reaffirmed my idea that we are all the same, the virus did not spread to only certain groups of people, the virus affected us all regardless of economic status, skin color or gender. I am sure that on January 1, 2020, nobody imagined what we were about to live, or at least me, I remember I had only thought positive things for this new year, and this situation showed me that at any moment of our lives something can change it and therefore, we have to live every  single minute, because the only thing we have assured is that at some point we will not have it anymore. Above all, I learned from my own experience what obstacles are for and finally managed to overcome something that I never thought of facing in my life, a pandemic.