COVID-19 Experience
FINAL REFLECTION Choose an object from your actual real life that could serve as an artifact of your 2020 COVID-19 experience. Imagine this: 100 years from now, a historian finds all the objects left by our class and puts together an exhibit of these objects in order to represent the COVID-19 quarantine, so that people in the year 2120 can understand it. Each object in the exhibit represents a different individual’s COVID-19 experience, and each object reveals or embodies something about this moment, its rhythms, its tone, what it was like, how it felt. We are those individuals! Your assignment is to choose an object to represent your experience, and use that object to explore/explain/analyze/reflect on your experience. You can choose any object, BUT NOTHING MEDICAL — no masks, no ventilators, no thermometers or pulse oximeters, nothing related to the medical field — and NOT YOUR PHONE, because thats just too obvious. You must write at least 350 words. You must create more than one paragraph. Consider the following questions to get your writing ideas flowing enough to write 350 words. Make written notes before you start your reflection! You do not have to answer all of the questions in your reflection — only the ones whose answers feel relevant. Answer in enough detail to make your description unique. Don’t write answers that could apply to just anyone or any object. You don’t choose your blue hoodie because “I use it every day,” anyone can say that! You choose your blue hoodie because… After a while I could not stand being around my family anymore and my inability to get privacy was making me feel crazy. But my sanity was saved by a blue hoodie. My blue hoodie was never my favorite. It isn’t as soft as my red one. But the blue one has the biggest hood, so I could pull it over my head and it would come out so far past my face that no one could see in to my face unless they were right in front of me, and I didn’t have to see anyone else unless I turned to face them straight on. That, plus a pair of headphones, and I could just stare out the window with Bob Marley playing in my ears and tell myself I was at the beach, with the blue waves rolling over me. ^^^ THIS is an example of detailed description! But note that it is only ONE paragraph, not enough to fulfill the assignment. Remember, 350 words. Remember, MORE THAN ONE paragraph! Use your paragraphs to group your ideas, aspects of the object, facets of your experience, etc. — you can decide how to organize this paper, but it should be deliberately organized. HERE ARE SOME QUESTIONS TO GET YOU STARTED: Describe the object in detail. What does it look like? What is it used for? Is your relationship to the object visual, tactile, auditory, etc.? Is your relationship to the object passive, active, interactive, etc.? Get into the nature of YOUR EXPERIENCE with the object. How did you come to have this object? Where/when/who is it from? Is there a story to why it pleases you, entertains you, or comforts you? Why is it important to you? How does the object make you feel? What SUBTLE CUES or SMALL CHANGES do you feel in your body, speech, attitude, mind, etc., when you have/use/grasp/handle/look at/wear/etc. the object? What’s the difference between you with the object and you without the object? How does this object fit into the rhythm of your days? When do you use it, and how often? Do you use it on a schedule, at set times or regular intervals — or do you reach for it whenever you feel like it? To your mind, how does the object represent this moment in history? How is this object instructive of the 2020 COVID-19 experience? What does it have to teach future historians (or the people of 2021) about life during COVID-19?
