LITTLE THINGS ABOUT ME

Article of Sulma Lopez

I come from a village called Santiago Chimaltenango in Guatemala, I am a single 22 years old and a student that is currently enrolled in Solano Community College.

I come from a working-class family and I am also Catholic.

HOW THE PANDEMIC AFFECTED MY STUDIES?

Now that I am staying at home, I am having the hardest time of my life because even though people think that staying at home is easy, that is not true.

The pandemic problem that is going on in the world right now has affected me, and my family’s lives a lot.

So far, I am having the busiest month of the year because all my classes were transferred to the online and since I was not used to it, all this online work is new to me.

Needless to say, this situation has really changed my lifestyle to the worst.

This is me taking online classes during pandemic.

I was taking four classes this semester and at the beginning of the semester all was going well but it suddenly changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, when everybody changed to online classes.

That really made a big impact on my grades because each of my classes had extra work to do such as discussions post every week, the assignment that each class gives, and including the projects or papers that I had to do.

The only class that I did not have a discussion post in is on one class which was really good because I don’t think I would have handled it well.

My biggest problem was focusing on and managing my time because I have a big family.

Everybody is staying at home due to the quarantine and to make things worse I have a little brother and niece that are always making noise.

Before the quarantine, I usually went to the library so that I could stay away from them and have my quiet time. Unfortunately, now I cannot go anymore because all the libraries are closed.

My only choice now is to stay at home and follow all the government instructions to be safe so that I do not put my family‘s or other people’s lives at risk.

It’s hard for me to get things done because everybody is talking or screaming in the background which makes it really hard for me to concentrate.

I never thought that this semester was going to be the hardest semester because of the COVID-19 and it is not that I am sick, but it is because of all that is going on in my life.

There is no work and my entire family is struggling economically and now they are always worried about how to pay the bills.

We are just like millions of Americans who work depends on every paycheck to survive and be able to pay all the bills.

One class that has affected me the most is my Political Science class which is the one I am struggling so much with because it looks like I may be failing it. I wish I knew that it was going to convert to online, I would have postponed taking it but since I did not, I had to take it.

Political science was hard being in the classroom, but I was able to manage it. Now that is online is much harder than I thought.

My professor has been giving us discussion posts and assignments each week this past month and all of my assignments were due on the same day which makes it very difficult for me to complete.

MY THOUGHTS

I am not sure what my final grade will be in that class, but I just try my best to complete all my assignments. I can honestly say that this pandemic definitely impacted my life in a negative way.

The government’s decision to put everybody in quarantine has complicated all our daily life’s routine.

But I guess the government has no choice but to do so because of the thousands of people that were dying. The quarantine made my family members lose their jobs and now it is really hard for us to pay rent for that reason.

Even though we support staying at home but without money we are taking the risk of losing everything we have such as food and a place to live.

I hope the quarantine gets over soon so that we all can go back to our normal life and go back to work so that we can get back on our feet.  and I also hope that the COVID-19 can go away so that race discrimination can end as well.

I see so many people discriminate against Asian Americans because of COVID-19.