By: Mitchell Hagenson Staff Writer
Who would expect that this disease would affect the way how we live our lives? Just think, one day everyone was just living there normal lives around the world, and then all of a sudden everyone is quarantined worldwide. There are many things that had to be either shut down, canceled, or delayed because of the coronavirus. Things like this year’s NBA Season, both the men’s and women’s N.C.C.A. Division 1 basketball tournaments, or even every spring/summer movie that was suppose to come out this year in the movie industry. The list goes on, but if you had to ask me how this virus has changed my life? Well where do I even start?
First of all, this virus has affected the way I’m doing my college work. When I first talked to my dad about the coronavirus, I’m not going to lie, I was a little nervous about what was going to happen with the rest of my college classes throughout the end of the semester, because well for one thing the governor from Minnesota, Tim Waltz stated that he was going to be closing all Minnesota colleges and schools down till further notice, and that everyone was going to be going switching to online classes/courses instead.
I thought to myself after that, “Well I wouldn’t be surprised if Iowa did the same thing to their colleges and schools.” Three days later, Governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds announces the same thing. I thought to myself, “Yeah, I saw that coming,” so that’s the first idea I had when it came to figuring out the plan for the rest of the semester at college.
The other idea that I knew that our college was going to be closing was when I was talking to my dad about the coronavirus for the first time, he said that, “This is just going to be like the flu, it’s will be here for 24 hours and then be gone the next day, if not the week at latest.” Well I have some news for you dad, it’s been more than one week.
Anyway, when it came to taking online classes for the first time this semester, I was worried. I have never actually taken a online class in my life before, so this was all new to me. For example, I had to do a informative speech for my communication class, we had to use this app called Zoom, which is basically like your average Facetime or Skype app. The purpose of this app was to present our speeches from our homes instead of having to drive back to the college just for one face-to-face interview with your professor. I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to connect with my professor or that I didn’t follow the directions that were given to me.
Another example would be the main classes that we would have to take for the broadcasting program. We usually would do our work in the classroom most of the time instead of doing it online. That, and most of the equipment we would use for those classes would be at the college and not at own homes, so I was a little worried how was that going to work.
The second way that this virus has changed my life is the how every activity or event that my friends, my family, and I had planned were either canceled or postponed till later this year. For example, my friends and I had these friends named Ditte and Jada that were from Netherlands and Thailand.
They were foreign exchange students that attended my old high school this year, and the year before that we also had this friend that was also a foreign exchange student named Francesco who was from Italy. My mom felt bad for Francesco last year, because she felt like he didn’t truly get the american experience, so she decided that if he were to ever come back this year to America this year, then she was going to take him to Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota to make him feel like he actually had a great experience coming to America.
My mom wanted to do the same thing for Ditte and Jada before they leave, but the problem was that they had to leave go back to their home countries, because of how high risked they were of getting the coronavirus, so that basically shot down my mom’s plans for them this summer and possibly her plans with Francesco coming back to America.
The third way that I’d say that this virus has changed my life is just being quarantined for 14 days. It feels like I’m in a steel cage most of the time and when I try to leave my house, my mom and dad always tell me reasons why I shouldn’t leave and how I should think about the other people around me. My mom thought we should be quarantined just for 14 days, just for my dad’s health, that and my sister just went to Haiti for a week for a mission trip, and then to Mexico for a week for a friend’s spring break trip, so my mom had reasons to keep my dad and sister quarantined for the next 14 days, and guess who has to suffer as well? That’s right, me, but yet I understood my reasons why for keeping us quarantined.
To conclude, I obviously have had an interesting time with this coronavirus going around my life. I’ve had to face challenges, I’ve had to stay quarantined for a bit, and I have even said goodbye to some friends that didn’t deserve to leave quite yet. This is an interesting time in our world today. I’ll never forget what this coronavirus did not just for me, but for my friends and family around me. I guess you can say COVID-19 is the time for everyone to stand up for one and another; not just in our communities, but worldwide as well. So the question that we should be asking, what you going to do when CoronaMania runs wild on you?
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