My Life During Coronavirus–Vlog #1: Home Quarantine Day #33

Qi Jian

Instructor’s Introduction

Qi Jian, a student in my WR152 (Writing Without Borders) class, created this vlog of her 33rd day in isolation during the pandemic. It was March 2020. The Boston University Campus had just shut down, and most students had left campus. Instead of a Wikipedia editing project that the students were supposed to work on that semester, I pivoted to asking the students to document their lives, in a mode of their choice, during that historic moment. Unlike many of the local students who had left campus to go stay with friends or family, international students like Qi found it difficult to leave. There were very few flights taking off, flight tickets were not easily available, and the few tickets available were very expensive. Many international students had no option but to hunker down in their dorm rooms or in their rented apartments waiting for normal flights to resume. Some of them lived for months in isolation relying on food delivery services for their groceries and on video calls to connect with friends and family. Qi’s vlog (in Mandarin, subtitled by her in English) of her 33rd day in isolation is a record of that unsettling time in Spring 2020 when the world outside her window shut down. 

Malavika Shetty

My Life During Coronavirus–Vlog #1: Home Quarantine Day #33

Artist Statement

I was asked by many people about what my life under COVID-19 has meant to me. I couldn’t come up with a word to describe it at that moment. I could only express my thoughts through sharing stories of my experiences. I told them how much I worried about my mom who was more than 8000 miles away from me and was fighting against the coronavirus on the front lines. I told them about how I dealt with the racism towards Chinese people when COVID-19 was raging in the United States. I also told them how hopeless I felt after I tested positive but was worried that my parents would worry about me so I wore makeup when I facetimed with them. After telling these stories, I looked back and realized that all of those stories share a commonality: Resilience. I created this Vlog because I want to inspire people who have suffered or are suffering from the pandemic. We may have panicked, become anxious, irritable, or sad, but I know that we will emerge from this stronger and more united than before. As Dr. Rosabeth Moss Kanter once said, no one can completely avoid troubles, and potential pitfalls are everywhere, so the real skill is the resilience to climb out of the hole and bounce back. Before everything gets better, we will always have to go through hard experiences in order to cultivate our new reality and grow from our hardships. Give your luck some time. Everything will fall into place at the end of the story. If it has not, you haven’t reached the end yet.

Qi Jian is an international student from China. She  graduated Magna Cum Laude from Boston University with a major in Mathematics and a minor in Economics in May, 2021. She is now a Master of Public Health Candidate in Biostatistics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She believes that humankind has a shared destiny and aspires to be a contributor and researcher in global health. Qi would like to show her heartfelt appreciation to Professor Shetty for being so supportive during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as for her help in improving Qi’s writing skills throughout her four-year academic life at BU.