Student Perspective: "As cliche as it sounds, COVID-19 changed my life completely"

 As cliche as it sounds, COVID-19 changed my life completely. From watching Outer Banks on Netflix and becoming my home’s personal barista to doing brand deals in front of 2.6 million people with Target and Walmart, it is safe to say my life a year ago was much different. During quarantine, I was depressed, in a funk, and very much not happy with my senior year. I was totally having a pity party (like the rest of the Class of 2020), but for some reason, I decided that my sadness would be cured if I chose to redo a shed in my backyard. You may be thinking, “Did this girl just say a shed?” and “What does she mean by redo?”. Well, I come from a long line of DIYers, “do it yourself-ers”, and with an exorbitant amount of time on my hands and an ugly shed at my disposal, I figured there was no better time to renovate it.

  It’s hard for me to recall the moment in which I made the decision to film the process of creating my “She Shed,” but all I know is that I did it. The app called “TikTok” is where I posted my short films and it quickly garnered millions of viewers. Within a matter of two weeks, I had two million people following me. I went from being bored out of my skull, to not having enough time in the day to film and edit these viral 60-second films. Agents from Los Angeles were fighting over my representation rights while I was simultaneously learning how to mentally handle thousands of nasty comments from rotten, old cyberbullies. At one point, a production company made me a profile and pitched me to HGTV for my own television show! It didn’t end up happening because I didn’t have a degree in interior design, but as you can believe I was pretty in shock with this entire experience. And my parents, oh - my good ol’ parents, they were just as astonished as I was! Something you should know is that I am the kind of person that always waits for the other shoe to drop, as they say. If something is going “too good” then I expect a catastrophe to happen to mess it all up. Well, this mentality has proven to be faulty and quite unhealthy because a year later that shoe is nowhere near from dropping. It has taken me this long to actually openly talk about the entire experience. If you knew me in person, you would find that I really don’t talk about Tik Tok much or what I do. This is mainly because I don’t EVER want to come off like I am bragging or snotty. For me, there's a difference between talking from a place of gratitude and from talking from a place of egotism. Just to be clear, my only goal from responding to this prompt is to exemplify an attitude of gratefulness for the experiences catalyzed by the dreaded COVID-19. A year later, I have now renovated a majority of my home and worked with a few of my all-time favorite brands. I’m no longer in my three-year-long high school relationship, I am financially independent, I have found friends in college that are going to be in my wedding, and I have grown into a fantastic businesswoman. Don’t be fooled, it is not all sunshine and rainbows in the life of __________ (I am trying to be mysterious and keep this anonymous, hehehe). On a real note, I still struggle with anxiety and depression and am often lonely despite my 2.6 million “friends” on Tiktok. Quite frequently, I feel immense pressure to constantly exceed the expectations of those around me and to always be “on” for them. Next year, I hope I am still doing what I love and can grow my new business called Playbooked. At the end of the day, COVID-19 has brought about some big life changes for me that have left me in a far different circumstance than I was last year. But, when it comes down to it I am still a girl who loves watching Outer Banks and can make a mean cup of coffee.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sister Doris Faber's First Election Experience

  I grew up on a Michigan farm, the last of twelve children.  We were not poor, but we lived off what we produced from a yearly harvest.  My aunt married a Detroit businessman, who had a more lavish lifestyle.  Once a year she visited my mother and the conversations turned to politics.   She was Republican and my parents were all for Delano Roosevelt, who helped farmers around us keep their land from falling into debt.  At a young age, I was not interested in politics, so I was happy when she returned to the city and our home was peaceful again.  President Roosevelt's policies surely  influenced my future voting choices.   I graduated at age seventeen and entered Central Michigan College.  Since the voting age was twenty-one at that time, my first presidential vote was for John F. Kennedy when I was in my third year of teaching high school at Catholic Central in Alpena. The first Irish Catholic to be elected president, the young Kennedy filled me with hope for a better America. Tra
Read more

"Closing Churches? Unheard of in my lifetime!"

  I settled in my car, suitcase packed for what I thought was to be a ten-day trip, waved goodbye to staff, and with a deep breath, set off for my 8-hour drive up north. It was Friday, March 13, 2020. I was principal of St. Edward School, a small Catholic school in Nashville, Tennessee. I had just said goodbye to students and families for the start of Spring Break. But it wasn’t feeling like a typical vacation from school. As students climbed into their cars their backpacks were bursting with textbooks, electronic devices, and packets of work from teachers. Parking lot conversations circled around talks of canceled vacations, canceled baseball tournaments, and rumors of staff and students in the local high school who might have “the virus”. A feeling of uncertainty and apprehension hung in the air as staff wished each other well without the physical connection of hugs that we were all so used to. Then my trip to Grand Rapids began. For months before, I had heard about the looming
Read more

"Entire shelves empty..."

I realized that the COVID-19 pandemic was going to be a global, life-changing event when I noticed how interrupted my routine was. At first, when news of the pandemic was beginning to spread, I wasn't very concerned; I remember the H1N1 crisis, and being vaccinated and hearing of its impacts then, but I was far too young to have any strong connections to the event. Because of this, I have no personal reference of comparison for Coronavirus. I think my point of realization was going to the store to pick up a few items for my mom, who was too scared of the virus to go out herself. I saw entire shelves empty due to other customers stocking up. My parents were in a frenzy, frequently going to various stores all over our area, buying what they could. Additionally, I was also stunned into reality when I realized how business's supply chain was impacted; my mom would order things online and they wouldn't arrive for months later, if at all.
Read more