My Student Seemed to Stop Breathing Then the Screen Went Blank and There’s Nothing I Can Do But Worry — The Reality of Lockdown in Shanghai

China’s COVID crisis and lockdown is leading to complex stress situations and in some cases trauma, resulting in even the most competent among them beginning to fall apart

Tonight, I watched as one of my ESL students, Nyah (not her real name), began having trouble breathing, then started gasping for breath. Unfortunately, she wasn’t in the room with me where I would have been able to call 911. She wasn’t even in the same country as me, but was calling in from China.

We had been talking about her decision regarding which graduate school offer she was planning to accept and how to decide. She has several offers on the table, but also was waitlisted at NYU, her first choice. Nyah has been worried about the decision, fearing that giving up any of the offers would lead to her deciding that was the program she really wanted to go to.

It could have been a panic attack related to this, given that Nyah’s also in lockdown in Shanghai, though I haven’t seen her have one previously, nor heard from her that she gets them. Still, it could have been a panic attack…