Josie's Journey

Payton Miller

The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an incredibly infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus that sent the globe into a state of panic and fear.

When COVID initially struck, many questions were asked. It changed the entire way of life, especially for those just starting up school. I interviewed Payton Miller, a Morningside swimmer who graduated with the class of 2020, about her transition into college during a pandemic. Miller explained that she comes from a small town in Wyoming, so many of the mask mandates and social distancing precautions weren’t so strict. Miller stated.”I knew it was going to be a huge transition and I would have to compromise”.

As if the jump to a completely different environment during a pandemic wasn’t a challenge enough, Miller faced many limitations coming in as a Freshman in college. “I remember people being like ‘your freshman year sucks’ because we didn’t get to experience many of the activities previous classes did”. One of the largest problems college students came upon was the socializing, no one could really do it. The masks made it hard to recognize your peers, and sometimes even hear them, social distancing prevented any major gathering, and there was a lot of fear and mystery to what would happen if you contracted COVID.

Along with the fear of COVID, there was the fear of being quarantined. Due to quarantine students would be taken out of classes and activities for two weeks to be secluded in a specula “covid hall”. Miller explained her time in quarantine, saying “quarantine led me to miss out on a lot of experiences in swimming as well as school and other activities like homecoming and Mak events, etc”. Miller also explained that her time in quarantine was really hard on her mental health because of how secluded she was while sick. “I got quarantined the day before I was supposed to travel home, so I didn’t get to be comfortable at my own home while sick”. To add on to this Miller also said the food provided was ‘pretty rough’– that may be true unless it was the COVID that took her taste buds!