Life From America’s Coronavirus Hot Spot
How Covid-19 is affecting New Yorkers.
New York has over 300,000 cases of the Coronavirus forcing Governor Cuomo to close schools statewide and mandating that non-essential workers must work from home.
These two policies have had a severe impact on many New Yorkers and their lives, specifically students and workers. Students have had their classes moved online, and many workers are finding trouble working at home or not working at all.
One high schooler named Sean Jacobs is finding difficulty with the transition online.
“I don’t like the way my school is assigning work,” Jacobs said.
Sean Jacobs attends Chaminade HighSchool and is currently a sophomore. He dislikes Chaminade’s plan for online learning.
“We are given classwork from every class we have that day due at 3:00 pm,” Jacobs said. “Then, we have homework that is due the next morning.”
Jacobs found Chaminade’s approach to be lacking since there was no teaching during the day. He hopes as they move to Zoom, the work will become more manageable.
College students are also being affected by the Coronavirus and the difficulties of online learning. Like schools in New York, colleges across the country are closing campus and moving classes online. Two such students are Alexis Powers and Molly McLaughlin.
Powers is a Freshman at Providence College. When asked about how her school was handling online learning, she said that it was contingent upon the teacher.
“Our school decided to leave it up to the teachers, so some are using Zoom, and others are posting videos,” Powers said. “A select few are not doing either and just assigning things to do.”
When asked about her experience, Powers voiced some concerns about the new learning methods.
“I do not like zoom because there are continuous distractions as well as technical difficulties,” Powers said.
Similar to Jacobs and Powers, Molly McLaughlin is also adjusting to online learning. McLaughlin is a sophomore at the University of Notre Dame. When asked about Notre Dame’s handling of online classes, McLaughlin has a similar experience to Powers.
“My school has most of my classes as pre- recorded videos that I have to watch and the usual assignments,” Mclaughlin said. “I have a few zoom sessions a week that I have to go to.”
McLaughlin has also found some difficulties with the transition. She worries about her ability to learn without being in a classroom in person.
“It’s definitely harder to learn stuff from the video than in person,” McLaughlin said.
Despite the new difficulties, McLaughlin appreciates Notre Dame’s understanding during this difficult time. She says that Notre Dame is implementing a pass-fail policy for final grades.
“We get an option at the end of the semester to change it [our grade] to pass, fail or keep the letter grade,” McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin is grateful for her school’s understanding and sees the new pass-fail policy as a silver lining to working online.
“The pass-fail option is pretty sweet,” McLaughlin said.
Workers are also facing difficulties during this time. One worker, Donald Jacobs, father of Sean Jacobs, was transitioning to a financial advisor for an Investment Management Company. However, with the Coronavirus, Mr. Jacobs is now being repurposed to help serve an Investment Banking Company’s banking needs due to new government policies.
Mr. Jacobs found only negatives when describing his work experience during this pandemic.
“I have had to do all my training and advisory work from home,” Mr. Jacobs said. “Working in financial services is a very personal business. One must build deep relationships in order to gain the trust of people to manage their finances. Without these personal interactions, it has been very difficult to build up these relationships.”
Mr. Jacobs thinks that this pandemic will bring about a shift in the financial guidance sector. He believes that this situation has many people reassessing their financial guidance needs.
“I think a lot of people have determined that they can manage their own finances over the past couple of years when the markets have been rising. Just last year, we had just over 30% gains in the broader market,” Mr. Jacobs said. “People got confident in their own ability to manage their finances without the knowledge of diversification and how to manage the ups and downs of the markets. I think this pandemic, and the resulting crashes in the market, have led people to reassess their needs in terms of financial guidance.”
Another worker who is facing challenges during the Coronavirus pandemic is John Hyland. Hyland is a freelance cameraman and DP, director of photography. Hyland’s job is primarily in the live event world, such as concerts and sale shows for major retailers.
“And so, leading up to those events, I’m producing all the content that shows up there. So you’ll often see someone speaking to a live audience, and they’ll present something. Then we’ll show a short film, so I shoot and produce those short documentaries for those environments,” Hyland said. “It could be anything. It could be interviews. I’ve done things where I’ve recreated Back to the Future scenes with CEOs. The job is always something different, so that’s basically the world I work in.”
Coronavirus has impacted this sector of work quite a lot. Hyland explained that many live events are canceling, affecting those like him who were working these events. Hyland explained that his job requires extensive traveling and that the Coronavirus is making this impossible to do.
“Everything I do is out of the New York City area, so everything is traveling,” Hyland said. “I was scheduled for quite a bit of travel up until May, and everything [is] canceled.”
Hyland further explained some difficulties of being a freelancer during this time. He says many are currently not working since production companies are on pause. He describes how many are relying on the federal government’s help.
“They’re [The federal government] helping smaller companies with employees meet payroll,” Hyland said. “They’re [freelancers] all taking advantage of everything they can whether it’s a bank that will allow them three months grace on a mortgage, you know, put it on the back end.”
Hyland also explains how many freelancers like himself are waiting to collect invoices from companies. With the current economic state, Hyland understands the situation some companies are in, but says, “I have a substantial amount of money that I’m owed.”
Hyland is now passing the time trying to improve his skills at home and taking an inventory of his equipment.
“The things I normally do, which is inventory and gear, making sure things work,” Hyland said. “I try to spend about three or four hours a day with online training and learning new things. I’ll be relearning some things camera wise, and I just spend some time trying to learn something like new software or whatever it is.”
Despite the current tough times, Hyland remains optimistic about things returning to normal.
“I have the highest expectation that we’ll recover quickly,” Hyland said. “Once the bell goes off, and they say okay, we can kind of get back to normal, people are gonna be out there. They’re gonna go shopping, and they’re gonna stay in hotels. These are all the industries that produce these events ultimately, so I know it’s coming.”
