Stressed Out

Editor’s note: This article was originally written in the final weeks of our Spring 2020 semester. At the time of publishing, UC Berkeley is operating fully online, with students scattered across the globe, glued to our laptops for classes, internships, and social lives. In the US, this summer was one of reckoning, with the pandemic, mass protests for racial justice, wildfires, and an unprecedented economic crisis, all of which have brought the nation to its knees. Reading this article again, I can’t help but think about how deeply my own outlook on the world, this field, and my own self has changed since March. It is my hope that through the articles we publish this semester we can all learn more about what it means to be human, and how it brings us together rather than divides us. — Lillian

When Life Gives you Lemons…
Friday the 13th of March 2020: a clichéd ominous day turned out to be true for UC Berkeley students, who received the news that their campus activities would be moving online, alongside several of their peers around the nation. Soon afterwards, in-person classes ceased, and within a week or two administrative offices and research operations also stopped. The sudden, abrupt changes in the lives of faculty, staff, employees, and students became a great source of stress. Students would have to learn to study from home, away from friends and the social atmosphere they had grown close to. Faculty would have to completely adapt their curricula to fit the framework of online learning. Added fears of infection by a deadly virus served only to increase the amount of stress all…