“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.”
“With such a large commute everyday in order to get to work, it is less expensive, more efficient, and more enjoyable to work from home instead. I think quarantine has opened a different way of thinking, and a new approach to my work for 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.”
“Being physically separate from others has seriously impacted the sense of community here, and I sense it will be difficult to get that back. The political divides that have become deep, and the different outlooks on COVID and societal restrictions, have pervaded too many things.”
“I don’t experience sufferings as most people do.
I’m aware it exists.
I used to feel bad that I’m not experiencing grief and pain like the majority of the population.
Yes, it can feel real.”
“I manage an obstetrics and gynecology office. Our business was essential and we did not have to quarantine. At the office, my job was to figure out how to keep patients and staff safe without clear guidance and limited access to medical supplies, run the business with a lower patient load and to keep staff employed. At home my job was to educate and comfort my kids.”
“Now, that may seem selfish considering thousands of people are dying, and what I care about is the ‘high school experience,’ but look it from my perspective. Isn’t it scary enough, that in four years I have to decide what to do with my life, and now I have to find out whether I’ll get a chance to do anything? “
“This situation affects my mental health in extreme ways. My brain is longing for the social connections that school and the freedoms that turning 16 brings me. I cannot exercise the things that I have waited for so long in terms of life and friends because of the people in power and the people that cannot follow simple directions.”
“[Quarantine] wasn’t too bad, as my parents and I are used to spending a lot of time together and we have the same hobbies. It felt like my childhood again, simply spending all day with my parents. However, these happy times were abruptly cut short when George Floyd was brutally murdered by police. This sparked many discussions about racial justice between my parents and I…”
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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