“Life Could Not Get Any Worse” by Warlyn Ramírez

What I first saw as a good opportunity to have a rest from all my classes became one of the most stressful things that I ever experienced. COVID-19, Coronavirus, has affected my life not only as a student, but also as a person. I did not have the opportunity to fully experience my freshman year at Hofstra University. Coronavirus has brought a lot of changes and responsibilities into my life, which challenged me mentally and physically. In this reflection, I will be sharing my personal experiences during this pandemic, and how it has affected my life.

This new lifestyle and new learning system have brought some challenges to my life. Because classes are now remotely, I have to do almost double the work, because I need to learn most of the material by myself, and find a way to fully understand it. Another inconvenience is that I am at home, with kids running around, people making noise, and I cannot find a space where I can feel fully comfortable doing my homework. At Hofstra, I had different spaces –my room at the dorm, the library, various student lounges— where I could go and concentrate while doing homework. However, this kind of lifestyle has brought something good too; I spend the whole day doing homework, because there is nothing else I can do. I also have been taking on again some of my old hobbies, like playing chess, drawing, and coding programs.

            

As a student who used to live on campus, one of the most difficult challenges now is getting used to being at home all the time, and not being able to go out and socialize. Because of the quarantine, I have not been able to go outside, because I do not want to get sick and then get my family sick. This kind of isolation challenges me mentally, because I get tired of doing the same things again and again at home. Sometimes I lose the notion of time. It also causes me to lose concentration on my classes and assignments. This isolation has also challenged me physically, because I spend most of the time sitting in front of a screen. This can cause me vision problems, and it is not a healthy style to live, without any kind of exercise. I know I can do some types of exercises at home, but my mind is just too tired that I forget to do it most of the time.

COVID-19 is also affecting me emotionally, because I cannot be with my parents and my little brother right now. I have not seen them in a month, and I will not be able to see them until May. The reason for this is because they went to the Dominican Republic in early March, and they have not been able to return back to New York because there are restrictions on the United States’ borders and airports. Now I am in the apartment with my sister, little cousins, and my grandmother. This has given me the responsibility of going out and getting food for them. At the beginning of the quarantine, we all got sick with fever and headache, which caused great fear in my family that we all had Coronavirus; but after a few days we all went back to normal.

Even though this situation with the Coronavirus has brought some challenges into my life, it has made me mentally stronger in some ways. I have learned new ways of studying, taking responsibility for my classes, and being more on time with all my duties. When this is finally over, I will be more prepared for my classes for next semester, more prepared for life, and will certainly have a greater appreciation for the people around me.

Warlyn Ramírez is a freshman student at Hofstra University enrolled in the NOAH Program, and has served as a Student Fellow at the Center for "Race," Culture and Social Justice since his arrival in September 2019.