By Maria Cipriano
Staff Writer
On Monday, March 9, I received an email from the Coronavirus Planning Team at Sacred Heart University (SHU), stating that all classes would be moved to online from March 11 to March 29. Four days later, I received another email stating that classes would continue online for the remainder of the spring semester.
The following Friday came quickly, and I packed most of my belongings to return home, which is only 45 minutes away from campus. At the time, I did not realize I was going to spend the remainder of my spring semester at my house, continuing all of my classes.
During this transition I was curious about my mom and her coworkers, who also have to be at home but for their jobs. My mom works in the healthcare field as a registered nurse (RN) and I was able to talk to one of her coworkers, Nicole Lupo.
Lupo is a licensed clinical social worker who works from home on a daily basis, but her two daughters and husband joined her in the midst of this pandemic. Her initial thought was being thankful for working from home to reduce the risk of becoming a carrier of the coronavirus.
“My other thought was, ‘How am I going to home-school my children and have my husband, who does not work from home full-time? How are we going to function on a daily basis?’” Lupo said.
It was interesting to hear about how kids in school were going to continue with day to day school activities while learning at home.
“My two daughters use their Chromebooks and their teachers put all their assignments into Google classroom,” Lupo said. “It could be watching a video and writing a report on it. It could be to do math and submit on a Google document of what the answers are.”
Hearing this was different than what college students are doing for their classes because we use different video conferencing applications such as Webex or Zoom to communicate with our professors and fellow classmates.
Lupo was also documenting a daily journal on social media about her daily life during this pandemic.
While this situation has affected the entire world, I have seen at a local and global level people coming together to support and change for the better.
