During my senior year of high school, I went home after school on a Friday in March, excited that we might have two weeks off. Even then I didn’t think it was realistic to expect the full break, and I expected to go back to school the following Monday. But that Friday would be my last real day of high school ever. College visits, prom, graduation and so many more great events to seal off my final year of high school were all thrown out the window. All that I had looked forward to in high school was taken away.
Even though I was unable to celebrate these exciting milestones with all my friends and family, I was hopeful for college. I was accepted into my dream school, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was eager for the time in my life when I would make many of my best memories, as everyone had always told me happened during college.
Optimistic about the fall semester, I was able to move in a couple days before classes started on Monday, Aug. 10. On the first day of classes, only one of mine was in-person. The 40-person class was held in a 200-person lecture hall and seats were blocked off, so everybody was spaced out appropriately. Later that day is when my symptoms started to develop.
Entering quarantine on campus
I didn’t recognize my dry mouth as a symptom until the following morning when I had a scratchy, sore throat that wouldn’t go away no matter how much I hydrated myself. I called campus health about getting tested when I was unable to focus in my online classes from feeling sickly. This was the second day of class.
COVID-19 long haulers: I caught coronavirus in March. I still haven’t fully recovered.
I made the mile walk to campus health the next day. I had been wearing a mask full time, even when I was sleeping. I felt so sickly and exhausted at this point, but we could not figure out how I could’ve contracted the virus. No parties, no gatherings — how could it be possible? The nurse who performed my COVID-19 test seemed so sure that I did not have the virus that she took off her protective gear while in the room with me.
As a precaution, she was still required to send me to the quarantine dorms at while I waited three to five days for my test results. Campus health gave me a bottle of acetaminophen, the only sort of treatment I ever got. For my transition to quarantine, I walked back to my dorm and gathered enough things for at least a week. You may not think you’ll need many things, but when you’re moving into a room with basically nothing but a bed and a refrigerator, it piles up. I brought all my bedding, and two containers of essential items.
At this point my body was completely exhausted and I had a 100 degree fever. Over the course of a couple trips, I moved everything myself and was not allowed any help.
Alone, isolated, locked out
I was one of the very first people to move into the quarantine dorms, so the building was practically empty — no one to help and nobody working in the building. Whether it was the unstaffed building, moving everything myself while sick, or the complete isolation, those who I share my experience with are most outraged by the lack of support.
Besides my test at campus health, every one of my interactions was held over the phone. Students in quarantine were given one bag meal a day, which mostly consisted of snack foods, but we also had three bottles of water and one hot meal.
Coronavirus: Some school districts are willing to open up public schools — for a price
During my first day in quarantine, I got locked out of my room while looking for my first meal which was supposed to be left outside my door. I had forgotten that the doors in this building automatically lock, unlike my normal residence hall. I was frustrated because it was nearly one in the afternoon and I hadn’t gotten my food yet, and now, I was locked…
Read More: I was in quarantine on campus. They gave me a bag lunch and little help.