Skip to main content

Kellie's COVID-19 Photo Essay

Image 1: Dog

It goes without saying that COVID-19 has had a huge impact on everybody. The announcement of the national lockdown in March resulted in many people working from home and unfortunately led to a high number of job losses. Over the past 9 months, I have noticed many changes in my own personal life and my environment as a result of this pandemic. I have chosen several photos to discuss in this essay which highlight these changes and I will discuss how I have adapted to them.


The above picture of my dog, Jack, was taken by me in my home in Co. Kilkenny at the end of March during lockdown. I decided to include this picture as it illustrates multiple changes in my home. Firstly, our dog stayed in the house much more now that everybody was staying at home. He quickly grew used to having us all around and getting lots of attention which led to him experiencing separation anxiety once we all started going back to work after restrictions started being lifted. Secondly, when the schools closed my sister returned home from Waterford, where she was studying beauty therapy. As this was a very practical class, she had to practise various activities such as makeup, waxing and nail design on members of my family rather than being assigned models by the school. Her work can be seen on my hand in this photo. As somebody who has extremely little interest or experience in the beauty industry, it was a challenge to figure out how to go about my daily activities with such long nails. I especially struggled when it came to typing for my online classes as I frequently ended up pressing multiple keys at once.

Image 2: Zoom Class

As a result of the pandemic I, like many others, had to make the transition from in-person to online classes. Fortunately, this was not too daunting for me because as a member of my secondary school’s Tech Team, I was already very familiar and comfortable with working on computers. The transition from physical to digital was not so smooth for others in my family and I was often called on by my father and my sister for lessons on how to use programs such as Word and Excel. The main issue I had with this new way of learning was the fact that I can be very easily distracted and often found myself losing focus on my work. As well as that, I had completely lost motivation to work due to the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the 2020 Leaving Cert. As seen in the photo on the right, I often found myself seeking entertainment in the form of my Nintendo Switch console for the first few weeks of lockdown. Online classes helped me learn valuable lessons of self-discipline and time management. I quickly realised that it was much easier to fully apply myself to my classes every day and give myself time to relax after having achieved the things I had set out to do.


 

Image 3: image0

This photo was taken in mid-April. While I found the transition from in-person to online classes relatively easy, it took a while for other classmates and staff members of my secondary school to adapt to the situation. This is a photo of one of the many error messages I saw while attempting to access my classes. To boost morale, my school held weekly assemblies for our year where we could all chat and catch up with each other. However, between participant limits and time restraints something always seemed to go awry. While many of my friends were annoyed by the amount of time it took to get things working properly, it provided me with a source of amusement and a break from the mundanity of working at my laptop all day. Something I noticed about attending school from home is that the teachers assumed students had much more time on our hands and gave us more work. As a result, the workload felt a lot heavier and I found it more difficult to make time to talk to my friends. I appreciated my school’s efforts to give us some time during the school day to relax a bit.
 

Image 4: Assembly

This photo was taken in my local Supervalu shop in Ballyragget, Co. Kilkenny at the end of May when restrictions started being lifted. Around this time, I noticed more people disregarding the signage in shops. At the beginning of lockdown, it was impossible not to take notice of these signs in shops as they seemed to be everywhere you looked. As the months went on, many of us became so used to these signs that we did not pay them much mind. I took this photo while I was waiting in the queue and noticed the woman in front of me standing in between the two-metre markings. After this photo was taken, a staff member came to our queue and asked her to move to one of the markers. She apologised and joked that she was so used to seeing these signs that she had almost become ‘blind’ to them. This statement made me notice a huge difference in our responses to this pandemic; while she had forgotten to follow the rules displayed everywhere, I felt as though I had grown accustomed to this ‘new normal’ so quickly that I would instinctively keep my distance from others even without the signs.

Image 5: Supervalu

I took this photo at the beginning of June when new travel restrictions enabled us to move anywhere within our county. I found this sticky note stuck to the side of a house on Abbey Street in Kilkenny. Although it was a short and simple message, I believe that “be kind to yourself” was something many people needed to hear at this time. I, and many people I know, struggled with mental health problems as a result of the lockdown. I became extremely nervous when it was announced that the government would be speeding up the lifting of restrictions. I was worried about case numbers starting to rise again and I had become so accustomed to being on my own that I was even hesitant to meet up with my friends. I struggled to understand how people around me were starting to continue their normal lives without fear of this disease. When I came across this sticky note it reminded me that there were lots of other people in the same boat as me. I feel as though mental health comes up in conversation so often that many of us have become desensitised to the topic and we forget to look after our minds. Seeing this show up in town, unprompted, reminded me that we hear about this topic so often because it really is just as important as physical health.
 

Image 6: Postit

When I accepted my place in UCC in the middle of September, I was sent a welcome pack that included the face-covering pictured above. This mask is a sign of the times and even after my time at UCC comes to an end, it will serve as a reminder of the impact this pandemic has had on my first year of university. I almost made the decision to take a gap year as the idea of starting college during this global crisis terrified me. Receiving this in the post reassured me that UCC was showing care for my safety, even before I had truly become a student. I also viewed the inclusion of this mask as a somewhat humorous acknowledgement of the bizarre situation my fellow first-year students and I found ourselves in. I was amused to find this mask when it arrived in the post, so I captured this photo of it and texted it to my mother, who was working at the time. As masks with multiple layers are recommended by the health services, I appreciated the fact that the mask given to us by UCC had multiple layers as many of the masks I had seen in shops were just one layer of material.
 

Image 7: UCC Mask

To conclude, I have discussed the impact Covid-19 has had on my life. I mentioned the transition from in-person to online learning and how I adapted to that change. I considered the impact Covid-19 has had on the mental health of myself and others. I examined the use of signage in a local shop and how certain people have responded to this signage. I also discussed a way in which my university helped its incoming first-year students through their transition to college life during a pandemic.