Maintaining relationships and making new ones during Covid

 When I graduated high school I was hoping to finally break free of my parents and finally have a taste of the “freedom” college was supposed to have given me. However with Covid still very much present in our day to day lives, this has led to much disappointment in my journey into early adulthood. I didn’t move into the dorms because I didn’t want to risk paying for a dorm, buying lots of decorations only to be told 2 weeks later that I have to move out. I also missed k week and any events that might have taken place on campus as well as parties. This has also affected making friendships or at least getting to know other people because I have not been able to really meet people because most of my classes are online and I don’t live on campus. As I talked to my friends who went to other colleges like Transylvania and EKU and they seem to have the same problem as well.And Although I know these things are not that important in the grand scheme of the pandemic,these things were important to me in my college experience.

First two weeks of class

 First week of class Out of 5 of my classes this semester only one of them is a hybrid class. My Chinese 101 class as of right now meets Monday-Thursday from 12 pm to 12:50 in person. Although I do enjoy the class and think it is interesting, I can't help but feel that it is a risk to go to the class. Although I haven’t run into any problems yet, I feel like the more I attend in person class the chance of  the teacher, students, or I coming in contact with someone with a virus grows. And because there are no real safety measures to keep students safe other than the Covid survey , masks, and hand sanitizer. We as students can only hope that no one exposes us to it by accident.

To trust or not to trust

 I get my information about the pandemic through social media like Instagram and TikTok however I usually have to check them 2 or three times because sometimes people put out the wrong information. Another place I get information is from YouTube on the trending page or their covering of the pandemic where they pull recent information from interviews with doctors and scientists about the latest information on Covid. The last place where I usually get information on Covid is from the local news stations like Lex 18, sometimes I just happen to watch these like when my parents are watching them as well, however they do give me updates on how the Covid is affecting me locally. When it comes to places where I don’t trust the information one the pandemic I usually don’t trust most of what comes from the White House officials who are not doctors or scientists because there has already been so much confusion about  what people should and should not do in regards to keeping themselves and others safe. Although my family tends to trust more reliable information regarding Covid, some of my cousins have been invested in conspiracy theories regarding corona that range from it being a way to let the government put microchips in people to the virus being a tool of the devil to mark people with the mark of the beast. Although I can kinda see where they are coming from, especially with incidents in the past like the Tuskegee experiments,where health officials that black people and other POC thought they could trust did unethical experiments that not only hurt them but also put a lot of mistrust in between minority communities and health professionals. This affects me personally as well because even though I know that in order to create a vaccine for Covid there needs to be trials of people testing I don’t want anyone in my family to do these trials because of the fear that something may go wrong.

Will we be able to make it through the semester

 As of right now, I don’t think the UK will close before the end of the semester. This could just be because I myself don’t actually live on campus and only have one in person class this semester. Whenever I am on campus its only for limited amounts of time, maybe two hours a week after class. I don’t have any reason to be on campus so I go straight home. In the first two week My only in person class which is Chineses would have us meet everyday but now we only have in person classes two days out of the week. In class all of the students had masks on, all of us used hand sanitizer, and there were less than 12 students in the class in total. But I haven’t seen or heard of  any situation where I would think that the university would close campus early. Although I do see people walk around without masks, it tends to be rare and most people wear a mask.

Introduction

 My name is Queenzlynn Boateng I am 18 and a freshmen. I was born and grew up in Lexington Kentucky and I attend the University of Kentucky. I do not live on campus but I still live pretty close to downtown. I am Black and was raised by immigrants from Ghana. I would consider my family middle class. I don’t think I have a unique situation that relates to Covid but over the summer I did work at a daycare and there were a couple of kids whose parents caught Covid but luckily it didn’t spread. For my family and I the pandemic hasn’t really been affected negatively. I thought Covid was going to hurt my family more than it did because most of the women in my immediate family and extended family are nurses and my father and brother tend to work with a lot of people but know one has come in contact with Covid yet. The only things Covid has really made harder for my family is not being able to celebrate important events like graduation, anniversaries and prom, which aren’t as serious as quarantining.