Stories

This world is different right now, for everyone. It has taken me time to get in the groove for school, I know I'm not alone. I have my bunny Truman to bring me joy, photo shoots on beautiful fall days, nothing can take away the beauty of nature. 207, gets 4 lovely seasons. The professors are working hard to get us our education, we're adapting. Still trying to have fun with everything, get this degree, the future successes to come. Gotta stay connected with family and friends, always. We gotta do what we gotta do. We can all get through this, we're all just doing our best.

Covid has kept us busy. Classwork takes longer, homework is harder, and everyone is stressed. Somehow I find myself in back to back zoom meetings, spending all day in front of the screen. When I’m done with meetings I am answering emails, writing papers, watching life happen outside my window. Imagine trying to apply to graduate school when you cant even go to the movies. Do I plan to move across the country? How are their numbers? Are they wearing masks? When I go to the store now I find myself counting how many people are not properly wearing a mask, or not wearing one at all. I try to go to restaurants but too often my skin starts to crawl. I wonder how well things are being cleaned, how effective their face shields are. Is this life now? Living in fear? But living in fear is still living, and if you are not careful Covid can take that away. So when people ask me how things are I say busy. I don’t say that I’m always nervous, I don’t talk about the anxiety. I just say things are busy. Because they are.

My dog has been helping me cope with COVID by distracting me when I am stress or saddened by the situation. As shown by the picture of masks, I make sure to follow public health guidelines by wearing a mask anytime I’m in public and social distancing isn’t possible.

The pandemic has impacted my life in similar ways as it has to other college students. Spring 2020 classes were conducted online beginning halfway through the semester. Graduation will now be virtual, no cute gown photos for me. No visiting family members, especially older ones in fear of unknowingly spreading the virus to them. Despite these restrictions, and many others, I have been impressed with people’s willingness and abilities to adapt and to make the best out of a difficult situation. I’ve seen people match their mask to their outfit, or gather outside while maintaining social distancing. People began changing their lives so they could still have a touch of normalcy. For example, my 80 year old grandma now does zoom calls with her garden club. People have even made humor out of the mask mandate, embroidering funny sayings onto their masks. A nice reminder to adapt to change with a positive mindset and to just go with the flow.

Going into 2020, I was overjoyed to be heading back to Orono. In the previous two semesters I had been far away from the friends and memories of the "College of our Hearts Always," spending Spring '19 out of the state for an internship and Fall '19 out of the country to study abroad. While the experiences of this calendar year are times I will cherish for the rest of my life, UMaine continued to call louder and louder the longer I spent away. By the the time Spring '20 rolled around, I was fully ready to jump back into classes for my final two semesters, catch up with old friends, and of course most importantly: see some great hockey.

The euphoria of returning was quickly torn away by the coronavirus, however. Many others can and have told the story of remote learning better than I could and with more interesting stories, so my own jumps to our masked and socially distant return this current fall. Most of my college friends have now moved on following "graduation" in the spring, and without the ability to spend the whole previous semester meeting new ones I feel that I have returned to campus in an alternate reality: the landscape seems so familiar, yet with the exception of a few occasional cases I feel almost a stranger to my own college after effectively a year and a half away. I spend most days buried in work in an effort to graduate in December as previously planned. While I feel optimistic about my future and the opportunities that lie ahead, I can't help but feel that the gradual bareness of the trees as we near winter is symbolic of a personal college era that is ending much more lifeless and void of color that it would at a brighter and warmer time.

However, within this changing of the seasons comes strength. Each Maine winter forces us to bear down and persevere through the elements in whatever form they may come, and I feel that there is also symbolism here as it relates to our community's effort to get through these challenging times together. In this metaphor, 2020 as a whole has been winter, with its elements manifesting themselves as the largest global health crisis in the last one hundred years. But just like a Maine winter, we have grown stronger and more resilient because of it. Through continually adapting just like we would to the temperature drop between September and December, we have proven that even in the most dreary of times there is always something worth fighting for, and a light at the end of the tunnel that we refuse to abandon. Perhaps even more-so than my time away from campus, this semester has forced me to push outside my comfort zone and pursue new opportunities for the better. While the circumstances are the furthest from ideal, I feel little doubt that I have grown enormously during this time. And isn't that what college is all about?

As a senior I find social distancing to be very hard, but wearing a mask no problem. Miss lunches with friends. We do have a group text most days just to stay in touch, helps, but not the same as personal contact. Not being with family is sad. We see family / grandchildren on zoom or Face-time, which is not the same. A Grandchild’s baptism was cancelled due to my daughter in law coming in contact with someone who had Covid 19. Many days I only have conversations with my husband and no one else. Miss going to church and seeing church friends. I stop in church to pray when it’s empty. Cancelled a bucket list trip to Italy and Greece, which was to take place last May. Our fitness center closed so I lift weights at home and my husband and I take hikes in the woods. The hikes are very enjoyable and being in nature helps tremendously. This spring and summer has brought me into the garden more than ever. Our vegetables and flowers were abundant and gave me much piece of mind. Always feel better when in nature or In the garden.

"Its become second nature to make sure I'm wearing a mask before I leave my room: Phone? Check. Card? Check. Mask? Check."

"My desk is covered in reusable PPE. There's masks hanging on my door handle, from coat hooks near my door, there's mask in my backpack and go-bag."

"You'll eventually forget that it's there, but it's annoying getting used to them."

"Masks have become a part of my routine everyday, it's so easy to forget that they're a necessity because it's already so engrained to put on a mask before leaving the dorm. It's just another piece of necessary clothing, like pants or a coat."

I keep several masks in the glove box of my car for grocery trips and social distanced visits with friends. No one has been in our house for the past 6 months beside my wife, our dog and myself. All of our interactions with people are limited to outdoor meetings only. Social events have pretty much stopped completely for us, so we have gotten in the habit of going on long drives through the country to relieve some of the cabin fever. Hikes have become a regular activity for us.

There is a table next to our door that is dedicated to cleaning supplies and extra masks. Shopping trips have been limited to no more than once a week, and each item is painstakingly sanitized before it comes into the house. My wife is a nurse practitioner, so her exposure is high. All of her clothes go in the laundry immediately when she gets home, and I am not allowed to interact with her until she has showered. Even with these precautions, we are still scared that one of us might become sick.

We try to follow every guideline outlined by the CDC. All of the public health activities are incorporated into our daily lives. At first, it was sometimes difficult to remember certain rules to follow (like wearing a mask everywhere), but it quickly became second nature. I think that living with someone in healthcare has provided me with greater appreciation for the work people are doing to stop the spread of the virus. I don't even have to think about putting a mask on when I leave the house - it just happens.

Telling family and acquaintances around my home in York county about my decision to return to campus for my senior year as a resident assistant, I remember being met with concern and barely-concealed disapproval. On my last day at the landscaping business I worked for over the Summer, I remember my boss putting his hand, caked with dirt, on my shoulder and saying, “You know they’re gonna send ya home in a week.” I read posts on social media from residents of Orono, Oldtown and the Penobscot Nation expressing concern and alarm regarding the return of UMaine students to the University. I wondered, I still wonder, if my decision to come back was selfish.

A few days ago, I was sitting on the lawn outside of my residence hall with another RA, the only time that I see maskless faces outside of my laptop screen every day, when she mentioned that one of her professors had asked her why she came back to campus if her classes were entirely online. Her laugh was loud and cut with anxiety, “I have no *expletive* idea!” I do. When you’re confined at home for months, and you hear that the university is reopening, you come under the impression that there might be a semblance of normalcy waiting there, that the little microcosmic science experiment might be impervious to the chaos outside. It isn’t, and that’s a tough pill to swallow for some people.

However, as we reach the end of the third week I’ve become tempted by optimism. I try not to trouble myself with the question of whether or not students should be back at the university, and accept the responsibility to the greater community that all Orono students bear. The human drive to make social connections is strong in our resident population, and it feels odd as an RA to be enforcing rules that hinder students in building interpersonal relationships. With that said, if being the buzzkill that asks students to pull their masks over their noses and sit farther apart is what it takes to keep Orono off the New York Times’ list of college-town outbreaks, then so be it.

UMaine is not a hellscape of booze and maskless debauchery, contrary to the way that some universities are (justifiably) being portrayed in the national media. Neither are our students the most well behaved, conscientious folks on the eastern seaboard. They are not the bright, diverse, eye-smiling, mask-wearing citizens skipping down the mall as if nothing is wrong that you might see in a university advertisement. They sit too close together, their masks fall under their noses, they go over to their friends' apartments, and some of them, god help me, still don’t wash their hands. But as I sit here in the neutered reading room of Fogler library writing this, I don’t see any of that. I see a bunch of barely adults doing about the most that I would ever suggest you ask of them: trying.

I have not gone into any stores to shop for anything since the COVID restriction began in March. Needless to say my reliance on Amazon has been tremendous to order items that I would normally have shopped for in a store myself. One picture is of an Amazon box which is my new go to for shopping during this COVID pandemic. The other picture shows a creative way to encourage a child to eat a nutritious meal. Food has become a big focus during this time. Being creative in the kitchen since there is a little more time to cook has been a plus; however, lack of food supplies at the grocery store, higher prices and shortages of cleaning supplies, toilet paper and YEAST has been definite disadvantages.

Adjusting to life during the COVID-19 crisis has been very challenging. Wearing masks in public is an absolute must. Social distancing has also been a challenge especially when it relates to my grandchildren. I am no longer free to just pick them up and give Grandma hugs as I once did. I no longer go into the grocery store to shop but rather use online, curbside pickup. In the one photo, life at a lake would have been the most preferable way to spend time during this challenging time. Fortunately, I did have an opportunity to go to a few lakes, use a kayak and bike during this time period. Also wearing masks has unfortunately become a new standard of life.

My daughter’s scheduled surgery snuck up on us in early August of this year.

The BIG question weighed on our minds: How were we going to keep a 21 month old safely ‘social distanced’ throughout 3 days of pre-op appointments, testing, surgery, and recovery in a busy urban hospital in a state where case counts were relatively high?

Before those 3 days in and out of the hospital, she had never needed to wear a mask or social distance, as we had been able to keep her from situations necessitating such precautions.

Expecting tears, resistance, possibly even a tantrum, we pulled out her teeny tiny mask as soon as we arrived at the hospital. We also had the sudden impulse to pull out her spare mask.

“Time to put our masks on!” We said with feigned cheer. “Look, your bear is wearing hers!” We put our daughter’s spare mask on her bear. She laughed as we put her own mask over her tiny nose and secured the loops behind her ears.

No resistance. No tears. Such relief!

Coping with Covid is not an easy task, and is not something I ever thought I would have to live through. We have such amazing technology to this day and are so ahead of our time, but yet I feel we have been set back with this pandemic. None of us are living, only trying to muck through and survive during these strange times.

Coping with Covid is being too afraid to go shopping at your favorite store. It’s not being able to go home to Massachusetts to visit your family. It’s waking up with a sore throat one morning and freaking out if I could have it, and checking my temperature every hour. It’s having to work from home, and not being able to remember the last time you left the house. It’s having your anxiety and depression skyrocket and just having to deal with it, because you’re too scared to go to the doctor right now. It's having to find a new hobby to pass the time and make life exciting again. It’s not being able to go anywhere without your wallet, phone, keys, and mask, each as valuable as the other.

Below is a photo that I took that reflects what coping with Covid means to me. I’ve started crafting and creating things because I found joy in it and it helps cope during covid. This is a photo of a wall sign I created to help keep my masks in one place. (I also thought the saying was clever, and very true!) Maybe this pandemic isn’t all bad, it helped me find a hobby I absolutely love doing!

This whole thing has taken a big toll on my mental health, with the extra pressures to keep it all together while also not being able to see other people as often without taking a bunch of precautions. I wish I could just press pause' on it for even a hour and hang out with some friends without having our masks on or keeping our distance. I have taken to going on long walks in the neighbor just to get out and enjoy not being in my house. On a particularly hard day for me, spirits-wise, I just happened upon this sign in my neighborhood. It was exactly what I needed in that moment. Part of coping with COVID is recognizing that it's really, really hard. And everyone is in it together.