The highlight of my family’s quarantine is an easy one. We welcomed a new dog to the family. My sister, Madison, and her husband, Alex, purchased a chocolate lab puppy a few days ago. They traveled to Oxford from Washington, D.C. to get the last puppy at the shelter.
When it reached Italy, there was a little more panic and seriousness about it in the media. In May, I was scheduled to be studying abroad in Italy, so our trip advisor sent us weekly updates about what was happening as the virus spread.
I realized COVID-19 was significant when one of my colleagues had a family friend in Wuhan, China, and they said the virus is to be taken completely serious, and it is not accurately presented in the Chinese media.
We began to discuss the virus in many of my classes, but I still just assumed we were discussing it as news and not something that would be personally affecting us. I did not realize the magnitude of what was happening until March when we were out for spring break and other students were speaking about how colleges were not letting students come back to school.
I am a sophomore integrated marketing communications major at the University of Mississippi, who is now back in my childhood home in Greenwood living off matcha and fishsticks. I am here with my parents, younger sister and tiny dog – happy to be home, but I just want this to be over.
While hundreds of millions of people in the U.S, are quarantined at home, there are still millions of Americans who have been deemed “essential employees” and are therefore still traveling to and from work every day.
It’s crazy to think how one thing, as small as a virus, took our precious world and turned it upside down overnight. The mention of COVID-19 brings up many emotions. Worry, stress, hope, and appreciation are all things I’ve experienced within the past month.
In these stressful times, my mother has challenged me to stay connected to the people I have left in the wake of COVID-19.
Soon my thoughts started to mostly be about my mother and fathers’ safety. Both individuals are middle-aged victims of cerebrovascular accidents and have diabetes.
How do you go from being an active student-athlete all year to sitting in the house all day? For many athletes across the world, the pandemic is a difficult time, but athletes and others can use this time to work on new goals and better themselves.
I first heard about the coronavirus while talking about current events in my journalism class about two months ago. At the time, I thought it wasn’t a serious issue and that it would go away within the next few weeks. Obviously, I was wrong about that.
