Hey everyone, Alexis from the NY Times here to bring you back to a time that we all want to forget, but really no one has. The time of Quarantine brought many people inside as stores and communities came to a close. The streets were empty. Major cities, such as New York City- the city that never sleeps, was suddenly asleep. Communities sang together from their windows as a sign of hope. It changed the world and affected each and every person in their own way. Don’t you remember how it changed you?
While searching for some primary sources to use in this article, I came across this poster showing some interesting photos during quarantine.
People had to change the way they were living, which changed the way we are living right now. Many teenagers were stuck staying home from college, sharing the home with their working parents and any siblings they might have as well. Many were vocal about how this time affected them and the way they keep busy during that time. This video I found was no exception.
This video shows what a normal week in the life in quarantine looked like for this young college girl from Marist College. Take a look to see what life was like:
This girl had to put her college life on hold to go into a new routine. She seemed to have a lot of freetime as her college classes turned online. Her days in a week included exercising outside, doing homework, eating, watching tv, editing videos for her entertainment using Premiere Pro, blogging, watching The Simpsons and Shameless, staying up late and sleeping in until noon (or at least 11). A typical college student out of place. She tries to see her friends as much as possible, but they are all busy with their own school schedules.
Along with the video, this was her inspiration behind the video:
“For my final, I decided to use the platforms of Premiere Pro, Photoshop and WordPress because those are the softwares that I know how to use the most. I’ve been using Premiere Pro since Junior year of high school when I was taught in my video production class. I later went on to using Premiere Pro to do all my video editing for my other blog. In addition, I have been blogging on my own for 5 years now, so I also enjoy WordPress. My original idea was to do a workout video and have a critique on it because I also enjoy making workout videos on my free time, but then I thought, how fun would it be to make a documentary video of my time in Quarantine? I would be able to use it for my other blog and I could look back at it whenever I want.
My plan for this was to record clips of activities I did everyday for one week, from Sunday to Sunday. It just so happened that Mothers day is also in there. I decided to include it because I wanted to show that even during lockdown where we couldn’t go to a lot of places, we still made the most of Mothers day. On a daily basis, my day to day pretty much looks exactly as it was shown in the video. As someone who has always been an early bird at school, waking up at 8 am, it was surprising that my sleep schedule was completely different at home. I would wake up every day at 11, sometimes even close to 12, and would go to sleep between 1-1:30 am. It’s feels very weird to start my day at noon when most people are eating lunch, but that is just the Quarantine life. I would take videos during the day and edit them on Premiere at night. I did this every night of the week until I finally finished. I actually really enjoyed putting this video together because I was able to incorporate more than just me, but also my family and friends when I would see them. I think when I look back it will be most interesting to see myself wearing a face mask. Then, I did a little article write up on WordPress as if I was a journalist from the NY times. I wrote about how this Quarantine has affected people and the world 10 years later.
The last part was to use my Photoshop skills to create a capturing poster as my thumbnail in my video. I decided to do a collage using various photos taken from the documentary. This was hard to do especially because I did not want to use the same picture twice and I had trouble trying to get them on my computer using photoshop because there was an issue with the scratch disk that I just could not figure out. So, instead, I downloaded Photoshop on my moms computer and edited it on there since there was more space on her computer.”
10 years later, people are outside and about, never wearing masks or anything. There are hand sanitizing dispensers everywhere as remnants of that time. Big brands that we all loved have not been around since, while small brands are thriving. People look at life a little different than before. We don’t compete anymore. We stand together. We help each other. We appreciate being outside at the park with our friends. We have realized who really cares and who does not. We are all able to travel. To see the world. We have cleansed the Earth. It has thanked us for staying inside by giving us clean oceans and air. We have stopped the overconsumption evil that leads to mass waste of products dumped into the world.
We have discovered new hobbies we never imagined we could have. Companies realized that they do not need to have offices in order to be productive. More and more homes are including offices in them for people to work from home. Public transportation has been emphasized instead of individual drivings in order to reduce carbon emission. The world has recovered from CoronaVirus and so have we.
This is the new normal.
WandeWorld 