New meals

 When Covid hit hard and officially shut everything down, Grocery stores stayed open while restaurants closed down. Our food consumption then began to rely heavily on my mom's cooking, from which I decided I wanted to start cooking. With the exception of occasional fried food, I'd say I eat pretty healthy. And coming from my mom, home cooked meals are usually healthy for our household. 

Me and my girlfriend, Madison, at
the Houston zoo lights during Christmas

On the right is a picture of me and my girlfriend. During the pandemic shutdown, we only traveled between our houses to restrict contact with other people. With the help of my mom, we started cooking dinner with her and eventually getting to the point when we would make our own meals for our families. I have to say that all of our dishes were top notch, 10/10. Since we were constantly cooking, our diets gradually became better and better, especially since neither one of us ever eat snacks or sweets.

From a financial standpoint, I'd say the pandemic contributed positively. Buying ingredients from the grocery store then cooking meals at home is cheaper. And since we never went out to eat anymore or got fast food, as a family, we saved quite a bit of money. Now obviously we were at home the entire time, so the electricity bill and water bill and other utilities went up but that's not what we're here to talk about. Food consumption and it's relationship to our family during the pandemic went very well. We were very fortunate, all things considering. Not only did it save us a little bit of money, it also improved our diets and contributed to learning how to cook with my girlfriend whom I love dearly.

The complete shutdown has ended, but the world is definitely not back to 100%. While in school, I try to continue to eat healthy in the cafeteria as best as I can and make the most out of these circumstances at school.

Experience is Knowledge

 Most information spreads online with social media or through news outlets. The decision is can people be trusted on social media, and which news outlets are telling the whole story. For the corona-virus, it's a hard decision to make because who you listen to could change your actions and how you see this situation of a global pandemic. 

My personal preference is listening to experiences. I listen to news outlets, and pay attention to some social media but I hardly ever trust it, none the less base my actions upon it. Friends and family who have been personally affected, articles about people's experiences with the virus, and famous athletes or celebrities have also been affected are who I trust. That last choice is strange, but why would someone with a huge platform and has tremendous amount of influence among young kids who aspire to be them, lie about an experience. They are often not tied into political affairs, usually, and they know their voice actually means something. Below is a video of Matthew McConaughey speaking out and using his voice to try and influence people to follow the necessary precautions so we can get through these times.

I try to listen to everybody regardless of what they believe or how they get their information. One of my buddies that I talked to, who is in a frat, was upset that they got singled out for second tests. He started complaining that it only affects old people, us younger kids have nothing to worry about, and that masks don't even help that much since we take them off in our rooms anyways. He wasn't completely wrong, but it definitely seemed like he never got the whole story. Yes, it affects people of age, but it also affects young adults, teenagers, and children too. If they don't have any underlying health condition then yea they'll more than likely be okay, but that's not the problem. It's those kids and young adults who then go on to visit with their parents and grandparents, and now there's a high chance of families losing loved ones. The entire story makes a difference. What actually happens and how it affects people make a difference. Just ensure that your information is trustworthy, and take proper action then we will be able to get through this.

Second Home

This year, as well as last year, I am living on campus in a dorm room. Similar to a hotel except this is where I live for roughly 8 or 9 months out of the year. It's my second home. Most of my belongings and living essentials came with me when I first moved in. If possible, I would like to stay here for as long as I'm supposed to stay here without having to get kicked out or sent home because of the coronavirus. And as far as I can tell by being on campus for a few weeks now, I think we'll be able to stay.

The University gave everyone who came back to campus a test for COVID-19. Once that first round of testing was over, they sent an email saying fraternities and sororities have a positive rate 3x higher than the rest of the school. That sounds bad but considering the rest of the school only had a positive rate of 1%, it's not too bad. The conclusion of this email stated that the frats and sororities were required to 

receive another test, round two. 

Greek Row at the University of Washington-Seattle

From what I've seen around campus, almost every student wears a mask with the exception of when they are dining. A few people here and there do not wear masks, seeming like they're only doing it to be rebellious. But it feels good to see that the students might want to stay on campus or so many of them would't be wearing a mask. Some schools have sent entire dorms home over outbreaks, some schools have gone back to completely online. Much of the outbreak issues resided with greek houses. But you can't blame them, frats are being frats, they're college kids like the rest of us trying to continue their college experience. The only difference between our University staying on campus and some in person classes is because our school singled them out and required them to have another round of testing. It's not a bad thing, they're finding a main source for outbreaks as seen with other schools closing again and taking action on it. Because of this, and students actually wearing their masks, I do believe that we will be able to stay on campus, and for most of us, continue to live in our second homes.

Myself with Covid

 My name is Luke Barrera. Being born and raised just outside Houston, Texas and then coming 1000 miles for college could strain things just a little bit when it comes to relations back home. I am a 19 year old Hispanic/White sophomore student at the University of Kentucky. I would say back home that i reside fairly comfortably in the middle class suburbs. My high school days were pretty easy. Our school had roughly 3000 kids and about 800 in our graduating class but everyone kind of new each other one way or another. I decided to travel far for college to start fresh, not that i needed to, without knowing a single person here. So far I'd say it has gone pretty well. I know a good chunk of people, have that one solid friend group that would always hang out, and I'm getting involved more than I expected to. Then the Corona-virus hit and slowed things down a little bit. School activities were being shut down one by one, more and more students were going home and staying home, and online classes were becoming normal. Me personally, I went home for spring break with one backpack of clothes and my laptop thinking I we would at least go back and finish the semester. Then they extended spring break for 2 extra weeks, and eventually went online for the rest of the 2020 spring semester. All my clothes, pillows, supplies, bathroom stuff was left in my dorm room. They told us to go back to campus and move out of the residency halls at the end of spring break, but there was no way I was going to spend hundreds of dollars just to go back for a couple hours, pack everything up and go home. I was lucky enough to have roommate who's family lived in Lexington and were nice enough to pack up my stuff for me and store it at their place until fall semester.

During the pandemic, I had it going pretty well. My and my girlfriend only went back and forth from each others houses and didn't really go anywhere except the grocery store and occasional fast food. We went to have lunch with my grandparents every Sunday so we knew we had to be careful anywhere we went. Living in Houston, a Covid hot spot, wasn't too bad considering the image that was plastered on the news for what its like to be in a hot spot. Nobody in my family or extended family got sick, I only knew of 2 friends who got it so it never really seemed too bad on the outside either. Coming back to campus wasn't too harsh of a transition. We drove up, so the scariest part was staying in hotel rooms that we couldn't be certain if they were actually clean. But we made it here, I tested negative, my family made it back home safely, and now I'm stuck in my dorm only leaving to get food and go to 1 class a week. It's ironic that it can be a little overwhelming not having anything to do knowing you are on a large college campus, but it's going well so far and I can only hope that it continues to go well.