Story and Photos by Zak Rossi
When I went home for spring break, I expected to stay home for the week and hang out with my family for a bit, however, all of that changed after receiving a few emails from RIT. I quickly realized that the RIT campus was closed and classes would be moved online. The same was beginning to happen for my two sisters and parents as their education and work were also moving online.
Other changes came as well. Now, there are more people living in our house than I have been used to. My two sisters’ boyfriends are both around a lot. One lives with us as his commute to and from his family’s home is quite far, and my other sister’s boyfriend is often here the afternoons and evenings.
My dad works in his personal office in at home and my mom is an elementary school teacher which has meant that she’s had to adapt her teaching to distance learning online. On many mornings, for example, she records herself reading a book to her class for their reading lesson, which she hopes allows her students some continuity that resembles learning in a physical classroom.
Since the placement of orders to stay-at-home, we can only visit friends outside while remaining socially distanced from one another. To keep us all from getting too bored, my family has found new activities we can all do together. One day we spent the whole afternoon making decorative boards with paint and wood stain. Each of us made a different pattern, and my parents even made a board for our dogs to have in front of their food bowls.
For me, staying busy and occupied has been a mix of rediscovering old activities that I used to do, such as catching up on video games I haven’t been able to play with friends in a while, discovering new movies or reading some of my books that I haven’t seen in a long time.
One day, my mother and I had to return to my apartment on campus to get all my stuff. We spent an entire day doing this and even made good time for the 14-hour road trip to and from college. We are all desperate to find anything to help pass the time as we all have come to realize that we’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
