GRC Student’s Experience With COVID-19

By Alyssa Baker

Starting a new quarter of college classes in a new year is difficult enough, but doing so with COVID-19, which I did, is much worse.

On December 27, I woke up with a sore throat, body aches, headache and fever which occurred just after I returned home from a vacation with friends. Without even getting tested, I immediately started a 10-day quarantine.

Due to the massive surge of the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus, I found that all drive-through COVID testing sites were completely booked and rapid test kits were sold out everywhere. Finally, I found a drive-through COVID testing site. I waited three hours in line and five days for results to find out I was positive. That was January 1, New Year’s Day.

On January 3, the first day of the quarter, I was told that I needed to get a lab kit for my Oceanography class which meant going to the campus – which was not possible because I was quarantined. The kits included all materials that I would be needing for the labs required for the quarter.

When communicating with the professor, he mentioned multiple dates, or that I could pick it up on a later date.

Luckily, I was able to get the first assignments of the quarter done without having the kit on hand. Professors were understanding of the circumstances and the fact that COVID is a big part of everyday life.

Now being COVID-free enabled me to get the kit and finish the assignments needed for the class without falling too far behind.

Having COVID also had an impact on other classes such as Multimedia Journalism. Having COVID enabled me to write about my illness and inform the community about my COVID experience.

Though we were online for the start of this quarter, campus resources were thought to have been opened after just two weeks but that changed on January 12 when Deborah Casey, the vice president of student affairs at Green River College, announced that “in-person services will reopen Monday, Feb. 7”.

She also said that “COVID-19 (Omicron) is spreading more quickly than prior variants.” Therefore, the school does not want to further the spread of this virus by having in-person classes and services available at the campus.