None of us will forget COVID-19. Bit by bit, we all lost parts of our normal lives. We lost our jobs. We lost our homes. We lost our connections. We lost our loved ones. At the time I’m writing this, many of us are still in the midst of the pandemic, grateful that we have made it this far and hoping that the tragedies are over for us.
I have been very lucky through this pandemic. Even for a highly privileged individual, I am relatively unscathed. I do not take that for granted, and I hope that the future will be exceedingly better for all of us.
It is important to think about the pandemic, though. Most people are experiencing a globally disruptive viral outbreak for the first time ever. Science and innovation are being pushed to new limits. Some people are being exposed to long-standing social issues for their first time.
This is the largest disease we have seen since the advent of the internet, the implementation of nuclear technologies, the development of artificial intelligence, the Green Revolution, the Space Age, an explosive increase in international travel, and other monumentally historic events. Probably the most relevant of these are in the realms of genetics, virology, pharmacology, biotechnology, and other related fields.
This pandemic is truly unique, and people are trying their best to record it. Nearly everyone is keeping abreast of statistics such as cases, deaths, tests, and vaccinations. In fact, the 21st century is marked by a seemingly insatiable desire for real-time data and relevant information. Data scientists, science writers, and journalists are just three types of experts who strive to fulfill the growing demands for quick insight.
The role of archivists in novel times should not be overlooked, either. When there are seriously pressing issues at hand, very few people are thinking about how they’ll preserve their experiences. Word-of-mouth and verbal traditions usually capture the essence of important events and themes. As time passes on, however, it becomes more difficult to validate specific claims with such methods. Sometimes, the accuracy of age-old stories is surprisingly well. Other times, it is disappointingly poor.
Inaccuracies do not necessarily render stories useless. However, if the goal is to obtain factual details, then it might be best to look elsewhere. The University of Wisconsin Archives and Records Management turned to students and faculty for COVID-19 information. They wanted to document pandemic experiences. Gathering this information during the pandemic was a great way to capture in-the-moment accounts rather than recollections. Most materials were accepted, including maps.
I had a map to contribute to their project! It just so happened that several of us in the UW Cartography Lab checked in on each other during quarantine and did a sketch mapping activity.
Sketch mapping is a nice way to see what ideas people conjure up and commit to in a relatively short time. With just a small inspiration or prompt, a group of people can implement different visual metaphors, emphasize different places, omit different details, and communicate vastly different messages.
For example, the sketch mapping activity I did with the cartography lab was about our quarantine experiences. As expected, many of us had our daily routines geographically restricted during COVID. If I remember correctly, the map with the largest geographical extent probably covered several square miles. Most of us kept our maps to even smaller scales. Mine was my apartment.
From March 20th to May 27th, 2020, I left my property twice. As an active man in his early 20s, going outside is natural to me. I have exercised outside when temperatures were well over 90 degrees Fahrenheit. I have exercised outside when the temperature was below zero degrees Fahrenheit. It’s what I do.
My apartment was my world in that time. My residence still is my world, but now I run outside, slipping my mask over my face whenever I pass somebody. Last year, I had my beloved grandmother to think about, so I stayed inside all day. I woke up, went to school online, did Peloton core workouts, did dumbbell workouts while watching Jeopardy!, video chatted with my friends, talked with my parents, did chores, and went to sleep.
It was a comparatively great quarantine experience without a doubt, but it was still alien to me. To be in that small space, largely unaware of the weather, oblivious to the lengthening days, and taking college courses at home, it was weird. All the while, I heard about more people getting ill and more people dying.
I kept reflecting on the last few weeks of life before this period. Even now, I miss seeing my classmates in person. I miss running with my friends.
It happened fast, too. I remember finishing a bowl of extremely hot ramen soup on February 28th, and suppressing a gnarly stomachache while volunteering that same evening.
I also remember seeing the legendary geographer David Harvey on March 4th. The main lecture hall of the Department of Geography was as crowded as I have ever seen it. We were packed like sardines in there. Maybe a couple of people were wearing a mask. I don’t remember. I didn’t pay attention to that back then. Most likely, no one had a mask on. I know I didn’t. David Harvey didn’t.
Then I ran a 10K on March 7th, beating my previous personal record by 42 seconds despite being the heaviest that I have ever been. All of the runners were huffing and puffing into the air. After the race, we all sought refuge in the park shelter to warm up. Probably not a single one of us donned a mask. We were packed like sardines in there.
Then the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11th. That same day, the university announced that in-person activities were to be terminated two days later. My friends packed up and left, and then I did the same on March 20th.
My sketch map summarizes my activities after March 20th fairly well. It is a good practice to designate different places for different purposes, and that’s what I did.
For the sketch map, I wanted my apartment to look like a sketch. Some features, like walls, were rather defined. Other features, like doors and clothes, were fuzzier to evoke a sense of dynamism. I didn’t draw any people because I’m not an artist.
You can see the social aspects of my life in each room’s activity list. In my bedroom, I spent a lot of quality time with grandma. In my mom’s room, I took classes, talked with friends over the phone, and made the sketch map. I watched movies with my parents, watched church services, and played with our two cats in the living room. I sketched an icon for each activity to give them some kind of graphical representation. I circled my two workspaces to specify where in the apartment I was spending most of my waking hours.
This sketch was definitely a documentation of my pandemic experiences. But was it a map? Is it a map? Certainly. If I would’ve told you that I read National Geographic in my mom’s room and explained to you where the room was relative to the other rooms, that wouldn’t be a map in my opinion.
In this case, I drafted a visual representation of my apartment. Just as my mom’s bedroom was between my room and the living room in real life, so it is in the sketch. It is a visual metaphor in which the elements are spatially arranged and scaled based on their arrangements and relative sizes in real life.
I don’t know what the University Archives and Records Management will do with my map, but it’s there if anyone wants to know what happened in my small corner of the world. I was stuck inside, and I went to school. I happened to make a map about it. I hope we don’t forget about the stories of those who passed away during these difficult times. We wouldn’t be here without many of them. We wouldn’t have certain memories without them.
I also hope we acknowledge each other, those of us who are still here. The pandemic is changing us, and it is wise to listen to each other and lift each other up. This outbreak had several anthropogenic factors contributing to its origin, and has several anthropogenic factors contributing to its perpetuation. People are pointing fingers at each other and wondering who is going to step up.
Some people have stepped up. The decline of this disease will have anthropogenic origins. It is people that you probably turn to for comfort and support. You are probably driven on a daily basis to see somebody in person again. We are worth the effort, and I am trying my best to be a positive agent in this.
To those of you who are working to keep society going, those of you who take care of others, and those of you who made somebody’s day, thank you. Make sure we remember these people when the pandemic subsides.
Tragedies always strike. When they do, it helps to remember the good that comes from people. It helps to remember their stories, and it helps to remember what they did to cope with uncertainty. Among other things, I dealt with my uncertainty by making a map. I can’t wait to look back and remember the small things that I did while I was stuck inside. I was making a big difference, and I will never forget that. I will never forget COVID-19.
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