Scott Barkett (he/him)
I’m Scott Barkett, my pronouns are he/him/his, and I’m a Special Education and Social Studies teacher. At least one of my uncles and one of my cousins contracted COVID-19. I have family from a variety of places and many of them contracted COVID-19.
My cousin for instance is in great shape, he’s a former Marine, but COVID knocked him on his tail. He was deeply fatigued for at least a week, and found it hard to get out of bed. I think it took him a number of weeks to feel back to his normal self.
We were in contact, talking on the phone. It’s hard. It’s a lot to deal with and a lot to go through. You get used to feeling pretty good, pretty in shape, and suddenly you feel as sick as you’ve ever been in your life. There are some treatments out there that might be more promising than others, but there’s nothing that we’re considering at this point. So there’s that fear as well, as it gets worse and worse, what can you turn to? Once you turn the corner like he did, and you start to feel better, then I think it was just more of an annoyance than anything; wanting to be able to work out again, and things like that. The problem of course is you work out for a few minutes, go for a walk, and you’re suddenly feeling absolutely gassed. Those are tricky things for any of us mentally.
It was hard for me to have family members sick. It’s already hard teaching very far away from home, and I think it’s much harder when you can’t be there for someone. We’re used to taking care of people when they’re sick, and you want to be there for your loved ones. When they’re sick and you can’t be there—I know that that’s a challenge for all of us. It’s this weird disconnect, where it’s as if real life is happening elsewhere, but it’s through a screen or through a phone call rather than face to face. And that’s definitely hard.
After my family contracted the virus, I wouldn’t say my mindset about COVID-19 changed, just because I’ve taken it pretty seriously from the beginning. However I think it made it feel more real to me, especially when my cousins got it. It just reminded me that for all the asymptomatic cases, for all the more mild cases, even younger people can have a pretty rough go of things. It was all the more of a reminder to stay diligent and keep doing what you need to do to keep everyone safe.
My first shot of the Pfizer vaccine was two weeks ago. My second shot of the vaccine is on April 3rd and I’m excited. I don’t tend to do very well with shots in general. My body reacts not awesome to any kind of shot, but these have been two shots that I’m absolutely thrilled to get. I think that allows us to see my grandma for instance; she’s 97 now, so after this I can actually see her since she’s fully vaccinated. We can go and actually sit down and I don’t have to fear that I’m bringing something with me to the same extent.
The more people that can get vaccinated, the sooner we can get back to some normalcy and start to make up for what we’ve missed, which I really think is that human connection.
Jennifer Jaruse (she/her)
My name is Jennifer Jaruse, my pronouns are she/her/hers, and I am a teacher at the Learning Center. I contracted COVID-19 in December and I had symptoms for about four days. I experienced body aches, headaches, muscle aches, and ran a fever. My friend and I contracted it after we were together and because her sister is a nurse.
Once I tested positive, I would say it was pretty tricky, because I wonder what I had gotten myself into, and if I could’ve done better. I was really worried about missing work, but because it happened during school vacation, I only then had to quarantine for six or seven school days. It was pretty tricky to navigate it all, and it was unfortunate because I’ve been so careful, but I still contracted it.
Testing positive for COVID was a scary thing. Since I don’t tend to get sick that often, when I get sick, I don’t like to make a big deal about things. But when you test positive for [COVID], it’s worrisome.
With my living situation, too, it was hard to deal with the day to day things that I needed to get done. I also worried about not being able to be in the same building as all my students because they were in the building. And I worried about my food shopping and managing all that stuff since I am a single person, but I reverted to doing a lot of Amazon deliveries.
I quarantined with the friend that also tested positive, and we just called out of work and stayed together. Luckily because I was quarantining with someone else, it didn’t feel as isolating as it could have been.
I’ve taken the virus pretty seriously and contracting it just reinforced that. I have to say that I wasn’t too worried about how the symptoms would affect me, but I do worry about the people that I’m surrounded by and how it could affect them. I recognized the seriousness in it before I had it, and when I had it too.
Since I contracted COVID-19, I had to let people I was around know that I was positive just so that they could get tested. And I mean, for me, I didn’t really think of it as necessarily a private thing. I was mostly concerned about not wanting to alarm students. I would say that, even though I came back after the appropriate amount of time, I worried that they would be worried about how they possibly could still be affected.
It was super easy to be vaccinated. However, that night I got hit with a lot of side effects. It felt like COVID all in six hours. I experienced a fever, chills, muscle aches, everything except stomach issues.
The side effects for the vaccine were any worse than the ones from the actual virus. I would say that they were about the same, but in a shorter time span. It felt worse since they all came at once, versus when I had COVID it was spread out over days and it would transition to different symptoms, but I wouldn’t say the level of intensity was any worse.
Since I’m vaccinated, I’m excited to be able to somehow get back to a little bit of normalcy in some sense, but still have precautions.
Audrey Garon (she/her) is in her senior year and has been on staff for three years. Audrey enjoys running on the cross country team, listening to music,...