Back in America

Hi, this is Stan, how are you? I'm good, how are you? I'm good, thank you so much for accepting to update me. That will be short but yeah, I'm launching a newsletter where I'm going to revisit some of the topics discussed in the episodes and I wanted to bring an update to our last conversation. Did you see the question I sent you? Let me take them, just a minute. How have you been and how did you manage during that pandemic?

It's been kind of crazy, both in like all aspects of the word, just because trying to do schoolwork in a pandemic is really difficult and just the constant worrying about am I going to get sick, have I been in contact with somebody who has it. It's been like a crazy time but I've been in contact with a lot of friends, I feel like I've had a lot of support in that way to not have to be mentally affected but I know a lot of friends who did lose family members so now it's been hard on a lot of people mentally and emotional. Yeah, did you stay on campus or did you go back home?

I stayed on campus for the fall semester, this past fall semester. Okay, alright and how is it on campus? I actually didn't like how it was in the fall which is why I'm leaving for the spring. It wasn't, well some people might find it okay, I feel like if you need a lot of accommodations it wasn't really, I didn't really find that it was accommodating enough for me. Yeah, were you pretty alone or did you have a lot of people around you? I'd say the problem that I personally had was just the lack of safety precautions that Princeton was taking.

I think there were a lot of undergraduate students who were breaking the social distancing rules, a lot of people that were throwing like illegal parties in their dorms, inviting students from different campuses, inviting their friends that don't go to Princeton at all just to come to their dorms and hang out and party, they're not wearing masks and then there were a lot of like Princeton that like allowed the locals to like visit the campus still, like in the public areas and like a lot of those people weren't wearing masks as well. Especially if you went out on National Street that's like around the Princeton area like essentially none of the locals are wearing masks.

And the biggest issue I had was with the dining hall staff. I had to like report multiple times to the dining hall by the email that dining hall workers weren't wearing gloves while they were serving people food and they were touching the food with their hands and it was just like too much for me to feel safe in the spring semester now that we had more people on campus. Yeah, yeah. So what would be one thing that you've learned or that has happened to you that you are grateful for today?

I'm grateful for my overall health and just like being diligent and not contracting it. I don't know personally anyone who has contracted COVID but just seeing online people have posted about how they're dealing with it like the after effects of having COVID, hearing about people and their family members who have died from it. I'm just grateful that me and my family, none of us have been touched by this terrible virus. Yeah. What else happened since our conversation? So we spoke just after the Black Lives Matter demonstration in Princeton.

What happened to you in your life since that time in the spring? Since the time in the spring I've tried to be more conscious about, well I feel like I've always in my life I've tried to be cautious more about like just about Black Lives Matter and like black issues in America but I feel like even more after like seeing all the stuff that's been happening around the world, I've just tried to be more conscious about like actively following Instagram accounts that post things about this and just being more aware. Can I think before what a lot of people do is like we're just as black people we're

so used to all this trauma and seeing things so often and know that it's not really surprising anymore to like see it and it's like it's not that I actively try to block it out, it's just that I see it so often and it's not surprising anymore and we shouldn't normalize that. So I think it's just me I've been trying to be more proactive about seeing these things and trying to bring proactive change rather than just seeing it and be like oh I'm not surprised, it's not surprising, like of course something like this would happen. Yeah, yeah. Do you want to share anything about your thoughts about the current political situation?

It's just, it's really funny, not even like not funny, but funny in a morbid sense about how a lot of what Republicans like on social media were saying, oh when Donald Trump wins again for the past election, the Democrats are going to, they're going to loot and steal and hide in the streets. A lot of Republicans making, a lot of Republicans like to say that all Black Lives Matter protesters are all like looters and rioters and so a lot of them made these like allusions, these connections between saying that the Democrats are going to do the same thing, loot and riot in the street when Donald Trump wins again the 2020 election.

And it's funny to see that how Biden won and basically the Republicans, the Trump supporters in MAGA did the same thing at the Capitol. Do you have any hope for America now that the Democrats are in power?

Well it's more hope that I would have if Donald Trump won the election again, I don't know how he'd win the election again, but it still is a matter of just because Biden is in power doesn't mean that everything is going to magically change, that racism is going to end. Like there needs to be proactive change, like active steps that are done to mitigate these things. Because the same people that attacked the Capitol are still going to be in America and still going to be around and on the street and walking around like we're used. So these people with their thoughts are still going to be here.

So you're going to have to make active change just because a different political group is in power doesn't mean that these people are magically going to change their opinions. Ok, do you have a song, a book or a place that has helped you cope with the pandemic and the situation?

I don't really have a physical place, but online just being on YouTube has helped me cope with the pandemic because YouTube just has a lot of, like I stopped watching TV a long time ago and I just watch YouTube. Because YouTube just has a lot of information wise, like the news posts on it so I can get updated things up new or I can watch different YouTubers funny videos that I find funny. So I think that has helped me cope with the pandemic. You can listen to music, just everything YouTube has helped me. Yeah, ok.

Any songs? I don't really have a particular song, but just listening to music in general, like Afrobeat or Soka is what the music genre I tend to listen to. Yeah, I've been speaking to a lot of people who said I've started walking and I really needed my walk every day now. Are you one of those? Are you walking a lot? Yeah, I think I just don't like to feel like I'm not doing anything so I always try to

busy myself by doing multiple things at the same time. And because over the summer I was supposed to do an internship at a hospital and I kind of got messed up because of the pandemic, I was rushing to find a job that I could do. Not even just for the money, just so I'm busy myself and doing something. I'm actually a research assistant so I found that job and I'm still doing that job, but I'm trying to get a second job in the spring semester. Just like sitting around doing nothing is just really, I don't know how to describe it, it just makes me feel like I'm not doing enough.

Yeah, okay, cool. Anything else you want to add?

No, no, I'm fine. Thank you so much. I will let you know as soon as I wrote that piece and yeah, nice speaking with you Imani. Stay well.

Thanks, bye bye.

Thank you.