I found this activity helped me organize my thoughts about the Coronavirus, and also helped me realize what I did not know about the current situation. I have been trying to limit my contact with the news due to the fact that I find it overly depressing and not helpful, but, by doing this, I had been becoming uninformed. I tried to break my constraint map into the 5 main categories of how things are being affected, but I did find it hard when trying to prioritize what the most important things were since almost everything has been affected by COVID-19 at this point. Obviously, the sections that were more personal to me, such as Education and Social Interaction, were automatically prioritizing themselves in my mind, but I also wanted to include more big picture things, like how the Government was handling the situation, since this affects everyone. I felt it was very necessary to include Mental Health because, with everyone currently so invested in their physical health, they might not focus on their mentality which could be detrimental in a time like this. I highlighted “Lack of Social Interaction” on the map because I think this situation may help people realize how important social interaction is to their mental well-being, and, in doing so, bring more awareness to mental health as a whole.
Some other areas I highlighted include “Many kids rely on school lunch for food”, and “Food/ Retail workers are at risk”. Though it is a terrible situation, hopefully this quarantine brings attention to how heavily low-income families rely on school to feed their children, and forces more support systems into place for these families. Also, this situation has proven just who some of the most important workers are in a crisis, which are food and retail workers. These workers have had to stay at work due to people needing food and are often the most forgotten about workers or the most looked-down upon in society. This situation is proving that these workers, outside of heath services workers, are the most integral to our society and hopefully will earn these jobs the respect they deserve.
I feel like a lot of the information I have heard about Corona has been through social media, which has been both a good thing and a bad thing. Many people are staying connected through social media, helping them handle social distancing better. Others are using social media to post about how they are handling the current situation, giving people advice about how they can improve their living styles. These are all good things, but there have also been people making to situation seem much less serious that it is on social media and others who are spreading panic by way of false information and misleading statistics which could lead to people making drastic and poor decisions. This situation has really just brought to light the good and bad aspects of social media and it has definitely taught me that I need to limit me social media time or else it affects my emotions and mentality.
I am hoping that by mapping out my constraints and using the realizations that came out of this activity, I can stay positive and find ways to cope with the current situation. It will obviously be a hard time for everyone, but I think this activity helped me understand what I can and can’t control and hopefully that will help me make my living situation better while also allowing me to stay safe.
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