My dad can’t live in Puno. The mountains are too tall, and his lungs are bad. Last year, we packed up our lives in Puno and moved to La Paz. I was the only new kid at school. It was so terrible that my mom and I moved back to Puno, so I could go to school with my old friends. I rarely see my dad anymore.
I just can’t overstate how much more difficult this situation is for students who are parenting… I understand that there are other challenging situations people face, but I often feel alienated further by the fact that I am parenting while working on my PhD, and the COVID crisis seems to have exacerbated that.
Strange times don’t even begin to explain this. Yesterday I sat on my bed with my daughters and we all worked on our homework. My oldest daughter said, ” I don’t know if I can do this much longer, mom”. There was silence and we could hear the rain outside, thundering against the ground. And then we heard a bird, not chirping, but singing. I told my daughter we need to be like that bird, it’s raining on our lives right now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find some happiness.
My most impactful memory of the situation so far happened on the last day of classes before spring break. We were frantic, not because of the virus but because the last day before break is loaded with deadlines. I had fifteen minutes before my next class and ten of that needed to be spent cram-studying for that day’s quiz, but I was trying to fit in every last second with my friends from the class that had just ended. Pretty soon I was forced to run off to the next building but as I was jogging away it finally hit me that I wouldn’t be seeing these people again and that even though nothing was final, we most likely wouldn’t be coming back after break. I would have hung around longer or skipped class to have one last lunch together but there were too many grades on the line and I really didn’t have a choice but to move on to the next thing. I realize how uneventful this story really is, but it sticks in my head as the first moment I felt that things had spiraled out of control and the first time that I felt powerless amidst the pandemic.
I miss the high stress of finals. I used to love how everyone would stress out together and we wouldn’t sleep at all. Now it’s just me, but at least I’m sleeping, mainly because all my finals are take home and spread out and I had 3 finals week and one due the week before and they’re all papers and due Mon, Wed, Fri evening/night. I miss my friends. I miss getting lunch with people. I miss my bed and room and school bc I have an amazing mattress topper and a really nice single. I miss parties with friends. I miss all the fun that used to happen and make school more of an enjoyable experience rather than just school y nada más. I miss having access to more clothes rather than just what I packed which are winter clothes and it is no longer winter. I miss bonding experiences with friends and the choir tour I would have gone on to Italy and Slovenia for which I still get STEP emails for. I miss campus food. Ya I miss like everything, but most of all, I miss social interaction.
Oh my gosh “are there things I miss?”, of course there are things I miss! I miss literally everything! I miss my old personality and my usual self and the more energy I had rather than being a sloth and beating myself up for not having enough energy. I miss my friends and people most of all, and physical touch. I am oh so lonely, I barely see my roommate and haven’t carried out a conversation with a real life person since the first week of school. If I do talk to people, it’s over the phone or over Zoom or FaceTime. But I also have kind of avoided being in contact with people to the extent I usually was because they always want to know where I am or how I’m doing and I don’t enjoy explaining that I don’t have a good home situation and am therefore not at home. Like I like to pretend I’m fine and have resources and am happy. But that’s kind of hard so I haven’t been reaching out as much because I don’t want to expose myself and people to ask me questions.
