Month: January 2024

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The Thunder of the COVID-19

Photo by National Post, Covid Pandemic Video

I was reading my biology textbook in class in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as a freshman in high school. I heard the chaotic stampede of worried parents rushing to pick up their children and they were acting terrified. At that point, I knew nothing in my life would ever be the same again. 

During the dark storm of the pandemic, COVID-19 also affected my family. The influx of patients in the hospital compelled my family to stay home despite being ill. I had to take care of myself as well as them since the virus severely weakened them. Without an evident explanation for the case, I didn’t contract the virus. I knew I had a responsibility to take care of them. I was able to get through that difficult time without losing my parents, but my dear great-grandmother passed away. 

The school has been closed since the third quarter of the academic year due to the lockdown. In Ethiopia, the majority of education was conducted through face-to-face instruction using paper materials, and the school was only recently attempting to transition to virtual learning. In these situations, I was unable to get in touch with my lecturers to get clarification before completing online quizzes and assessments. Sometimes I had to put on my mask and go outside to find better internet access because the connection was so poor. The outbreak of the pandemic caught everyone off guard, including educational sites. People had to adapt to the new way of life as their lives were disrupted. 

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Intellectual Biography

Photo from: The Essence of Change: A Multifaceted Perspective on Growth and Evolution

Personal Life Evolution and Change

My interests build up from my 6th-grade middle school personality and experiences. I was mostly a kid who would be coming to school seeking to meet my childhood friends and have fun on the school grounds The day will come when I go out to the field to play soccer with classmates and friends on a hot sunny day. I would be running across the green-yellowish field seeking to get the ball and get tired with a hard breath. I came to a stop and lay down on the grass while placing one hand over my chest while I held my other hand on top.  Within a short while, a friend came by with his face sweating like a pond. He would ask what I was wondering while looking up in the sky. All I could feel was my heart racing as I tried to catch my breath. I was mesmerized by how my heart beat like a pounding drum within my small-sized body. I would look aside at the kid and reply,  “When I grow up, I will be bigger and place my hands inside the body.” I had the idea that as time passed by, things will continue to change and so will my size but it all comes down to what I want to be doing over my life course as time passes with never to repeat itself.

Life is quite a wonder how all the diversity within the ecosystem works together in keeping the existence of the whole, there has to be a relationship within, as for the larger whole. There are certainly different concerns people can have including myself about having long-term job stability and balancing time expenses along with families and friends. From my childhood in Ethiopia, I was exposed to the reality of how the limitations of healthcare impacts the flow of society. It’s questioning how people beginning from the government to the farmer can work in society if there is a lack of health without a means of accessing treatment. I will sometimes wonder what it feels like to be part of the world’s wheel of work. 

I got to interview my classmate Gale who sits right next to me. During the interview, he said,” I am a senior, and I love computer programming.” That made me want to know how he balanced his free time within the four years in college so I asked about his hobbies, and he replied,” I like working out in the gym.” Then, the time came when he asked me the same questions. The question made me ask myself who I am as a person rather than referring to a freshman who is preparing for the work wheel. Would I want to focus only on the future or including my present being as health starts from self? When it comes to working out, I have always relished the sense of swimming as it made me feel at ease with everything within my mind and be a friend against gravity, and water. That made me embrace the importance of my current health while continuing the journey of life and the things that come with my cardio thoracic surgery career. Math isn’t my strength but I can try to learn from others interests such as computer science and other skills.   

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