“A virus inhabits the gray zone between the animate
and inanimate, spreads unseen from touch, breath,
the very qualities that make us human…”
“Honestly i adore being in quarantine (self-isolation or how you want to call it). No commuting, no useless offline meetings (online meetings are still persent, unfortunately), the less contacts the better (ok, it has always been true for me).”
“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.”
“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? “
” think I felt the virus’s presence sooner than most Americans because I have family in Taiwan. When my aunt, uncle, and little cousin came to visit for Chinese New Year in February, just a month before widespread US lockdowns, my aunt spent the entire time in self-imposed quarantine. She only smiled once during her visit: when we gave her a collection of cloth masks, gifts from Taiwanese relatives that we never needed to use in the clean California air.”
“As an American university student, 2020 has been a year of unprecedented weirdness. It’s brought upon a good deal of comfort and stark realizations for me. To sum it all up, life in quarantine hasn’t been bad at all. It’s certainly been a transformative time and, as a young adult, it’s come to represent the transition to adulthood for me.”
“As someone who has been home bound/self quarantined for a few years to due to chronic illnesses and disabilities, the pandemic hasn’t changed my life that drastically. In terms of daily life and mental health I’ve been struggling a bit however, there is no routine set in place for me, all the days seem to fade into each other, and I’ve been too scared to go outside because of my physical health.”
“Only a month ago, you were longing for peace and quiet and a peaceful interruption in the exhausting daily routine, now you only wish for some kind of occupation, even a distraction from all the idleness and the abysmal emptiness of boredom. These spiritual paradoxes, which were formed within a month, prove the basic imperfection of man and our ever-changing desires and desires.”
“Personally, each day has been a meshed together, and only by checking the date I can see that it’s a… Thursday?? I thought it was a Tuesday… wow I’m more out of the cycle than I realised. On the other hand, I plan on doing more things to keep me engaged other than watching TV and playing videogames, which – don’t get me wrong – are great, however, I’m only human, I have my limits.”
“Here in Texas it isn’t really that strict as it is in other places, and it has already started to reopen. Despite this I still barely leave my house as there is still high risk of infection and people wear masks everywhere they go.”
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
Address:
4th floor, Wallenberg Hall (bldg. 160)
450 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Stanford Mail Code: 2055