Zach Medeiros
MY COVID EXPERIENCE: I was very fortunate during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall I was able to better myself over the course of this year. As someone who loves to stay at home, it worked well for me. I was able to move home to my small, rural town from Guelph at the end of my third-year and complete my fourth year completely online. I have been able to use this year to improve my physical and mental health, improve my academics and get a better grasp on what I want my future to look like. I know that I am very fortunate to be able to experience that.
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University of Guelph's Face to Face Class Cancellation University of Guelph's Face to Face Cancellation |
OBJECT DESCRIPTION AND RELATIONSHIP TO COVID-19: : This screenshot of the University of Guelph's email was included because it was the first time something directly related to my personal life was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Before this, everything seemed far away and it didn't affect my personal life, but this directly impateed my day-today life because I was no long able to attend face to face classes, something I did every day of the week. I often consider this email to be the beginning of my COVID-19 journey. Up until this point, I didn't realize how real the entire situation was because I have never experienced something on this magnitude before. My archive contains five different primary sources that all have had varying degrees of impact on my life. I think that this source was the one that had the most impact. |
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PRIMARY SOURCE DESCRIPTION: This primary source is a transcript of the World Health Organization's Director-General's opening reamrks at the media briefing on COVID-19 on March 11th, 2020. This is an important primary source, it is the first time the World Health Organization referred to COVID-19 as a pandemic. This media briefing was the beginning of shut downs around the world. Days later, the United States delcared a national emergency because of COVID-19, and many countries followed that. This primary source will help historians in the future because it will show them the first step that was taken into COVID-19 because considered a pandemic world-wide. |
World Health Organization's Director-General's Opening Remarks - March 11th, 2020 |
| NHL's Notice of the 2019-20 Season Cancellation |
PERSONAL REACTION TO THIS HEADLINE Historians often have access to newspapers past, but not often to the way that readers felt about them. Use this space to react and respond to your chosen headline. Take care to explain your feelings about the story, providing all relevant points of view wherever possible. My initial reaction to this headline was disappointment, but it was soon followed by understanding. Hockey is my favourite sport and I am always following stats, games, etc. in my free time so it was, initially, a huge shock that the NHL season was cancelled. After I thought about the entire situation it made more and more sense why it was cancelled, and I agree that it should have been cancelled and that they did the right thing. It is easy to forget that people in the entertainment industry, athletes, musicians, actors, etc., are real people too, so naturally they would have been just as confused as everyone else and it would not be right to force them to go to their jobs in these conditions. After doing some research, this headline made me aware of the consequences that the sports and entertainment industry will face, both short term and long term. In the short term, there were postponements on games, events and projects which led to lost revenue. In the long run, there is going to be lost revenue because of people's fear of being in small areas with thousands of people, as well as the need to develop better response plans, similar to the expericences of thee hotel and tourism industry. |
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VISUALIZING COVID-19 This is Visual Capitalist's Pandemic History Visualization chart. It shows how many deaths there were for all of the pandemics throughout known history. This chart gives good context to how massive the impact of COVID-19 truly is. According to this chart, COVID-19 is the 8th most fatal pandemic in history. |
COVID Q&A
Describe the moment you realized how serious COVID-19 was:
The moment that I realized how serious COVID-19 was when the university cancelled face to face classes. In the 7 to 10 days before this I was actively watching the situation unfold on the news and I was watching what was happening in China and the USA, and then with other universities cancelling in-class activities. Additionally, although I knew how serious the day-to-day consequences of COVID-19 were, I didn't realize how dangerous the actual virus was until a few months later. I knew that it was a life-threatening, respiratory virus, but I think something that had been omitted from the mainstream news and internet is the lingering affects of the virus and these lingering affects could occur in anyone, not just people of old-age.
What did you learn about yourself or the people you live with during COVID-19?
One thing I learned about myself is that I appreciate the small town where I was raised a lot more after experiencing life in a big city for three years in Guelph. I know that Guelph is not nearly as big as some cities in the GTA, but it is a big difference from my small town of sub-10,000 people. Additionally, I learned how much I value my time alone. I enjoyed learning virtually far more than I did in lecture halls on campus because by learning from home, the rush to get to campus and to get home was cut out and it make life much more relaxed.
Other than wearing a mask, what was the biggest change you made to your daily life? Do you think this change will remain when all lockdowns are lifted?
The biggest change I made to my daily life was that I am more conscious of my cleanliness and my space in public. I work at a very popular discount store and the head office has been very hands-off with their care about the pandemic and its workers so it has resulted in us having to stand up for ourselves and tell customers to give us necessary space because it is a pandemic. Our staff has also taken it upon ourselves to keep a very high sanitation standard, even though it is not mandatory from head office.
Have you learned any new skills during the pandemic?
I have learned/improved two skills during the pandemic. The skill that I learned, to a degree, was cooking. Due to some health conditions, my diet is gluten-free and dairy-free so I have taught myself how to make popular foods that typically contain gluten and dairy. A skill that I have greatly improved was music production. I have been writing/recording music for about 10 years, but with all of the free time I have I was able to improve these skills and branch out to work with different artists around the world and provide myself with a new income stream while doing something I really enjoy.
How do you feel about university education in the last year?
It was the best year of my university education. Like I stated above, the omission of the rush to and from campus really benefited me overall. Many distractions were taken out of my life, I was able to move out of my rental house and get away from my noisey roommates so that stress was gone, in addition to being able to save on rent by living with my parents again.
List one positive thing and one negative thing you'll take away from 2020:
The one negative thing I would take away from this pandemic is that I have lost trust in the government, specifically the provincial government. I did not have trust in the Ford government prior to the pandemic, but it is scary how when people needed the government most (I.e. paid sick days, healthcare funding, proper vaccine distribution) they bascially chose to not do anything. All my life I had thought that the government was supposed to stand up for the well-being of the people of the province and that turned out to be false. Maybe it would be different if another party was in charge, because the conservatives were the worse party to have guide the province through a pandemic, but it is impossible to say for sure.
One positive thing that I will take away from 2020 is, again, my love for my small town. I feel like if I had stayed in Guelph I would have been more stressed out because of the speed of the big city, but where I live now allows me to live slowly and everything here is just a bit more relaxed.
What is the best movie or TV show you've watched, or the best book you've read, in the past 18 months?
I am not big into consuming any of those, I watched the first season of Game of Thrones which was okay, and I watched the first season of Designated Survivor which was also pretty good. I am a big video game player, can I say what my favourite game was instead? My favourite game I played was Skyrim.
How large of an impact do you think COVID-19 has had on your mental health?
I think it had a big impact, but positively. I was able to focus on things I like and really give myself a plan for every day. I tend to stress about the future, but the pandemic gave me a lot of time to sort my future out and get my short term and long term plans in place. It also helped me realize that there isn't a rush to complete life. I think all of society was going really fast in the winter of 2020 and the pandemic basically made the whole thing reset. It allowed for me to look at the necessary and unnecessary parts of my life. Things that I did that were unnecessary got cut out, people that I didn't want in my life got cut out. Overall, the pandemic really improved my mental health and I am very fortunate to say that.
How has technology impacted your life during lockdown?
It has greatly affected my life during lockdown. I am someone who spends a lot of time on my computer, fooling around with music production teechnology, or gaming, so technology was my main type of escape. I also participated in school via my computer, and everyone else in my house did as well because my sister is in college and my mom works for the high school. I think this lockdown showed how important and reliant a lot of people are on their technology.
How has the pandemic brought wider acknowledgement to systemic racism in Canada?
I think that ever since the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 there has been far more media coverage surrounding racism than I have ever seen before. The media coverage, in addition to everyone being at home consuming media, meant that the audience that was hearing about this was bigger than ever before, so this acknowledgement of systematic racism by the media got into more households, which is a good thing. This pandemic also made Canadians realize that although George Floyd was murdered in the USA, that does not mean systematic racism is isolated to just the USA. Only a few weeks ago from me writing this they found the bodies of 215 children at a residential school in Kamloops, BC. I don't think a lot of people realized how recently these residential schools closed down, at least I didn't. The discovery of this horrible news is educating a lot of people on the realities of Canada's own deep-seated systemic racism.
In what ways do you envision society changing due to the pandemic?
I think that one of the main ways that society will change due to this pandemic would be that people will be more conscious of their sanitization. Looking back on life before COVID-19, I think it is so bizarre how often public things were shared with out sanitation like shopping carts, door handles, etc. I also think that it is so strange that masks were never mandatory in a hospital at all times. I can remember sitting in the emergency room at the hospital with people all around coughing and sneezing. I didn't think anything of it back then, but now I think it will be impossible to go back without a mask on.
Now that you are done with both the course and your additions to the archive, is there anything you'd like to reflect on?
I think this was a good course to take because it educateed me on new things that I didn't previously know about COVID-19 and its different effects on society. I am very thankful I was able to use this time pandemic as a way to better myself in many ways and that no one I know was affected.
Gallery
Other archival items connected to my experience of COVID-19. Click on any image to enlarge.
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