Living through a global pandemic is not necessarily something I thought would ever happen in my life; I think that goes for all of us. It’s a strange experience and everyone is being affected so differently.

I remember hearing about the coronavirus briefly in January, where it originated from and how there was someone with the virus in Washington. I didn’t think too much of it; I thought this might just be something like the swine flu from 2009. When the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, that’s when things changed for me mentally.

I had never imagined this kind of situation before; it’s something I had only heard about from history books. I think every day we are still trying to wrap our heads around it all.

When UW Oshkosh announced it would be suspending face-to-face activities and classes, all of my roommates and I decided we would continue to live in our dorm. We were still paying for it and we could do our classwork from our rooms.

It seemed like the best option because being on campus would keep me motivated to keep up with my schedule and get things done, while still being able to live with my friends, not really knowing how serious everything was at the time.

Obviously, we ended up being told to leave the dorms for health purposes, which I understood and I am glad that our school made that decision to keep students and staff safe.

Since I moved out on March 22, I have been living at home with my parents and my sister. I feel very fortunate that I have a good relationship with my family and that my dad can still work from home with his job.

There are people that I know that can’t say the same about their situations and I think about them every day and how they are handling everything.

It’s been strange adjusting to online classes and having to remind myself every day why I am actually home and doing my schoolwork this way. It’s easy to forget still, but only for a few moments.

I am happy with the way that my classes are going and I think my professors did a good job of adjusting our coursework in such a short amount of time.

I hope other students are finding classes to be alright as well, but I know that not everyone adjusts and learns the same way.

A lot of my friends are in different cities and states than me, but we still stay connected by texting, using Snapchat, posting on Instagram and other social media sites.

I’m glad that our technology has made this easier on us by continuing to provide some form of social interaction while we stay physically distanced.

Although our technology can definitely make it harder at times too, constantly being able to check the number of cases in the state or the deaths in our country makes it hard to stay positive.

I think a lot about how there are so many people struggling with mental health issues and how this pandemic is affecting them. For those people that live alone or are experiencing a sort of social isolation, I hope that they are able to be around others at times and that our society wouldn’t criticize too much about social distancing as long as everyone is responsible.

I am very glad, though, that there are so many people spreading positivity so we can all be reminded of the good things that are still happening.

I’m pacing myself every day and focusing on what I need to get done until the end of this semester. After that, I just hope that things can start to go back to normal as long as everyone continues to be mindful of themselves and others around them.

We all need to remember to be positive and enjoy the good moments in our lives, no matter how small, because that can help us overcome this one day at a time.