Reflecting on the COVID-19 Pandemic

Why talk about the Pandemic now?

Fair question! The events from the very beginning of 2020 to when the pandemic ended around early 2022 had a drastic effect on a lot of people’s lives. I want to reflect a bit on that time now because I went through a bulk of major change during that period. A lot of it good, a lot of it not so good. Let’s talk about it and the lessons I learned during that period that have stuck with me.

My Original Expectations for 2020

Originally, 2020 was supposed to be a completely different kind of year (at least that’s what I hoped). I was finally coming up to the end of my time at Texas Tech and was applying like crazy trying to get my first job. Beyond that, my wife and I were also planning a wedding for June of that year. It was going to be great. I could finally start my life as a full working adult, go out in the world, and apply all of the skills I had gained in the Computer Engineering program. At the beginning of the semester, we had the department wide meeting and a lot of the people I had classes with in the program had the same hopes and excitement that I did in that they were finally done and that the "grind” was worth it.

Unfortunately, things would turn for the worse. Here’s a recap of how the start of that year went.

My Truck Accident

Around the end of February as I was heading to the wedding venue to discuss floral options, I got stuck in the 5 o’clock traffic and a 17 year old late to her first shift at Chick-Fil-A rammed into me at 60 or 70 mph. It totaled my pickup, the vehicle in front of me and hit the car in front of them. I was okay thankfully (just a tad bit of bruising) and without a vehicle.

Off To Galveston

So I started looking for a new truck. My Dad has a knack for finding truck deals and sure enough found one in Galveston that offered all these rebates and deals (one for being a student, etc.) on a similar red F-150 (ended up with a decent payment).

Before traveling to Galveston, COVID-19 had been in the news but it was more of a China problem and I didn’t take it all that seriously (a lot of you probably didn’t either). I flew out for an interview in the DFW area and for the first time at the airport, I saw a few individuals with masks and more people individually talking about it. I didn’t know what to think. I assumed it’d be another Swine Flu where a bunch of people would get it, be sick, and then we’d all move on. There was no lock down or shut down of the country then, why would there be now?

The Start of The Pandemic

So I traveled with my parents to go get the truck and lo-and-behold, we ended up going through Houston on March 11th, 2020. That day, the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic and cities started to shut down. The Houston rodeo had gotten canceled as well and dine-in restaurants became no different than fast food joints.

I was watching this right as we were coming through Houston. It became immediately more noticeable due to the fact that there was minimal to no traffic on the interstate (minimal traffic and Houston typically wouldn’t go together). Galveston hadn’t shut down yet luckily and we were able to get the new truck, drive back through Houston and make it back to Waco to stay the night. We ate dinner in College Station at an Abuelos and were the only people in there along with a single waiter and another couple. The waiter had a sense of humor in greeting us. “Welcome to the Apocalypse! Can I start you off with some Chips and Queso?” haha (I hope that waiter is doing well).

Coming Home and Class Canceled

The next day, I made the 6 hour drive back to Lubbock by myself and was silent most of the trip. I had this very creepy, eerie feeling that sat in the pit of my stomach. A wave of questions went through my head such as “Has it hit Lubbock?”, “Am I and my fiancée (now wife) going to be okay?”, “Is this really it?”, etc. Going through all these other cities and towns felt like I was in the Walking Dead. Like I was the only one on the road and everyone else had become a zombie.

I made it home and started getting homework done for the last week of class before Spring Break. Little did I know that it would be the last in-person class I’d take at Texas Tech. It was so bizarre, we all just sat there on that final Thursday after getting an email that class after Spring Break was canceled and that everything would be online. I vividly remember the last thing my Machine Learning professor said to us that week. “Good luck, and I’ll see you when I see you.” Rumors also started swirling that we’d get our senior project canceled and that we would have to stay another year. Also at the time, Texas Tech had a requirement for engineering students to go study abroad and a lot of people were going to complete that requirement that summer and graduate. What were they going to do? (Side Note: They ended up picking up trash on the side of the highway instead of just waiving the requirement. Luckily Texas Tech no longer has that requirement.)

Canceling and Postponing All the Things

The rest of that semester was a blur. I “lived” on my wife’s chair at her kitchen table finishing up the remainder of my coursework and senior project as best as I could. A lot of leniency was given luckily related to grades but also given that we had a hard time ordering resistors, capacitors, and other small chips (thanks China). I also “worked” remotely at a job that involved writing Python 2.7 for a payment processor related to a platform for professors at Tech. (Side Note #2: I ended up getting laid off that May because I was no longer a student. I basically got paid to study since I made minimal to zero changes to the code-base. I later learned that that platform ended up becoming deprecated the month I left anyways.)

Here’s a quick list of other things that got effected by the pandemic at a high level:

• Wedding postponed to June of 2021 (This one hurt a lot)
• Job Offer rescinded (bullet dodged here honestly)
• Turned down graduate school at Rice University (I did this one by choice, I didn’t want to be in Houston and most of the classes were going to be online anyways).
• Graduation Commencement (I wasn’t too upset about this one honestly looking back. We did get an offer to walk in a later graduation but I passed on it).

The one thing that did pan out was an offer I had accepted for a role in a government entity as a Software Engineer in Amarillo (might be it’s own article at some point we’ll see). I took the offer as it was the only thing on the table and moved to Amarillo alone in July of 2020 (I drove back every weekend with the exception of the Texas Blizzard to see my wife).

Masks and COVID Vaccines

I should clarify a few stances I held during this time and still hold now:

• Masks were never going to work unless they were an N-95 (even the N-95 has been called into question).
• The original Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines were rushed through development by Operation Warp Speed (Trump) and should have never been forced upon ANYONE (Biden). If someone did their calculus and wanted to take it, fine, but people who did NOT want to take the risk of the vaccination and instead face the risks of COVID without being vaccinated should’ve been allowed to do so, face those consequences, and not be ostracized by society at large. I didn’t take it and I am still thankful I didn’t (Watch Kyle’s story and his follow up).

The remainder of a pandemic was a blur. Texas opened up a lot quicker than other states and got back to a semblance of normal. My wife and I were able to have our wedding and it was everything we had hoped it would be. At work, I still had to deal with all the politics of that era from masks/vaccines awkward peer pressuring from coworkers to filing a religious exemption (you get the point). Luckily all of this failed and the mask requirement ended up getting removed as well.

I don’t want to harp on all of this too much. My only gripe that hangs around nowadays that even with all of the updated data we have now on how much EVERYONE (red and blue) screwed up during this time, no one has said “sorry” (I don’t think we’ll ever get that frankly). Luckily we all made it out and things are “somewhat” normal (somewhat may be exaggerating, life is still weird in some ways).

Lessons Learned Coming Out of The Pandemic

So what lessons did I learn from all of this? Well there’s a TON but I have condensed them down into 2 core lessons.

Lesson 1: Shit Happens

Pretty straightforward but it reigns true. I had a whole plan for how 2020 was “supposed to be” and reality had drastically other plans.

Lesson 2: Accepting It’s Out of Your Control

I ultimately reached a point around April of 2020 of acceptance that I have no control over any of it. Maybe that’s what the kids call “cope” but it’s 100% true. I accepted that my wedding was going to get pushed back, that the offer that got rescinded wasn’t the job for me, and that I was going to be coming out of my Bachelor’s degree during a very difficult period of time. That “acceptance” freed me from a lot of undue burden/stress and a “doomer” mindset. Shit is going to happen but what ultimately matters is how you respond to said “Shit“.

Accepting that it was out of my control got me on a path to start working harder outside of my job to make my situation better and to my shock, it worked. I was able to start a Master’s degree, switch to a drastically better job and come out of my time in Amarillo fairly unscathed. Regardless of how hard it was, I am really glad I made it through that time because it makes me even more thankful for the life that I built for myself.