“One interesting thing I noticed during quarantine is the development of online shopping, especially in my own life and with my family. I have changed to sometimes prefer online shopping as opposed to shopping inside of stores because of convenience…Quarantine has definitely changed many aspects of my life and how my perspective.”
“I usually am a very happy person but this year, due to the constant routine of school without seeing friends or leaving my environment, I felt small stints of sadness and even depression. It wasn’t major or anything, but enough to make me realize the effect quarantine had on me.”
“Days feel like they go on forever as you do the same thing every day. You finish one show and then just move onto the next. Life feels really purposeless. We spend every day trying to stay safe and protect the ones we love, but it’s like life isn’t fun or worth living if I can’t see the people I love or do the things I love.”
“The hardest part of this has been the inability to interact and socialize with some of my friends, and then losing friends due to the distance over the pandemic.”
“While quarantine has proved to be a time of self discovery, it has also been the time at which my mental health has been at its worst. Without the daily social interactions that I once had, and the sudden surplus of time, I was forced to confront my unhealthy habits and thoughts that I often crowded out of my mind.”
“Due to Covid-19, I have been in strict quarantine due to the fact that I live with my grandmother…Academically, this has also affected my ability to take the SAT and ACT, which is something I felt disappointed about because I spent so much time studying for them.”
“It’s been almost 365 days since everything took a turn for the worse, and most of us are still in shock. I could have it a lot worse but it is still pretty hard. I was getting less hours at work so it became difficult for my mom and I to pay our bills and expenses, grocery stores were almost completely empty…”
“I had to miss out on internships, summer programs, and my last year in high school. But it hasn’t been all bad. I’m lucky enough to have derived some good from the situation. I learned to better balance my life with school. I’m thankful that I figured this out before going to college. If I could give advice to others, it would be to sometimes set aside important things when you start to get overwhelmed.”
“My advice for others in quarantine would be to work on something. Find a hobby that will inspire you to become better. I took up speed-cubing during the quarantine and I have bumped my time down from about a 1:45 to consistently less than 45 seconds. I’m not that good, but I am getting better every day and it gives me something to focus on and destress with.”
“…the hardest thing about quarantine is not being able to see my grandma, especially not being able to hang out with her during the holidays. My grandmother lives in another state so we would probably have to do a two week quarantine before even visiting her, but my family believes it is still too much of a risk to take. We call her on facetime, but, of course it is not the same.”
Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic is an initiative sponsored by the Poetic Media Lab and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University.
Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA),
Stanford University
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