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Because of the pandemic, I wasn't enrolled in school last semester -- this lead to me scrambling to find opportunities during the summer and trying to find really, anything, to make me feel productive. Ultimately, I ended up overburdening myself - I took on too many part time jobs and found that as I got move involved with them, they all began to ask more of me, escalating responsibilities towards the mid summer months, when I was working more than 15 hours a day, all in meetings on Zoom. I think the worst part wasn't necessarily the work - it was the time I had to spend on Zoom, and the fact that I had to bring my brightest personality to all of these calls whether it be tutoring and trying to sound excited about the SAT, or doing sales calls and doing my best to look on top of it and professional, when internally, I began to overwhelm and exhaust myself. I also had very, very poor internet through most of quarantine - well below average than what most of us have access to now in school (I hope!) and well below the national average. This meant that during Zoom calls, I was either awkwardly frozen, seeing frozen faces, or had to dial in via phone. This sometimes caused a lot of anxiety, like when a student got mad at me for the poor internet and wanted to reschedule their session entirely - which would've been a whole process for me since my schedule was so packed. I'm still continuing to work during the school semester, and while I've been trying really hard to create some boundaries, I still regularly get overwhelmed when I look at a particularly heavy schedule of social Zooming and having to maintain that face.
October 13, 2020