Emma Demorest / Daily Nexus
With the coronavirus pandemic altering every part of life as we know it, people everywhere are taking safety precautions so as to lower the spread. We spoke with one Isla Vista resident, Katie Hudson, about her brave struggle to clean her workspace and classroom materials for the remote spring quarter, even though they will rarely be used.
“In situations like these, it’s better to be safe than sorry,” Hudson explained. “I’ll probably be working at my desk, like, one hour a week, but cleaning everything made me feel really productive.”
Hudson said cleaning and getting prepared was an enriching activity on its own, like when she found out she was apparently taking Psychology 1 after wiping down the textbook for it (“I totally forgot I bought that, it seemed like a million years ago!”). However, she knows she’d learn more things if she read them rather than looked at the pretty pictures on the covers.
Hudson is taking a biology class this quarter but has not started on any of the work because she feels she has a good enough knowledge of “how science works” based on following the CDC’s preventative measures. “I’m pretty sure there’s a unit on bacteria and viruses too, and I’m like, ‘Hello?’ Work smarter, not harder, obviously. I pay attention to the news updates on Twitter, so I’m basically the new Dr. Fauci,” she said.
In addition to not showing up to Zoom lectures, she’s opting out of assignments (“What if I have to respond to a discussion post by a classmate that has coronavirus? That would be, like, really scary.”) and will be using Google for most of her open-book exams.
Hudson is proud of her other intensive preventative efforts, like wiping down pencils she will forget how to write with by June, disinfecting a planner that, let’s be honest, is not helping anyone right now and citing “social distancing” as a reason to not do simple chores like walking her dog.
Some might say Hudson is a bad student, but Nexustentialism looks on the bright side of things. At least she’s lowering the spread by staying inside and using her phone for eight hours a day. It’s a good thing she isn’t risking her life by opening a textbook that, who knows, a rogue infected Amazon worker might’ve licked up and down.
Sam Franzini wishes to live the carefree life of Katie Hudson, if only for a day.
