Week 9: A Weekend.
In the dystopian fashion of 2020, I logged onto Zoom Saturday afternoon to watch my virtual graduation. Four years of college bookended by Trump’s election and a pandemic. Different people will have differing opinions on that first one, but if you know me then you know my opinion. If you don’t know me, I think that Trump is as bad for my health as the pandemic – and I’m immunocompromised.
To add another pinch of pessimism to this post, I decided to document where I was this weekend to compare it to where I would have been if there were no pandemic (unfortunately, Trump is still president in this scenario). Here’s how the weekend was supposed to go:
My family, grandparents and all, planned to come up for the weekend. There were brunches and dinners planned and, of course, my graduation ceremony. My roommates and I were excited to have our families all meeting each other, there would be graduation parties and Senior Week, and it would be a time of happiness and celebration. Not exactly the way things turned out. At the end of the weekend, my family would drive some of my stuff home for me, and later in the month I would drive the rest of it back, and hopefully go on to start my first job out of college.
Here’s how things actually went:
On Friday, I was in my room most of the day while everyone in my house either worked or was in class. I had dinner with my family, so I suppose that’s similar.
On Saturday, we sold my car to Carmax. We watched both my graduation and CNN’s star-studded, impersonal, umbrella graduation for high school and college graduates where everyone said “sorry this sucks. Here’s some promotional content.” Obama’s speech was nice. I FaceTimed with my roommates. I had dinner with my family. I ate too much ice cream.
On Sunday I had a stomach ache from the ice cream. I hung out with my mom. I napped a lot. I made dinner and ate it with my family.
Sprinkle in some Netflix/Hulu in there and you’ve got a pretty clear picture of my weekend. Which is not unlike my week days.
I spent roughly 95% of my time inside the house. I hate pie charts (even though I love pie), but I made a pie chart that I consider slightly less offensive than most pie charts because it’s meant not to give you real numbers, but instead a depression-inducing glimpse into the amount of time I spent in my bedroom this weekend.
A quick note about the data: minutes were rounded to multiples of 5, I didn’t count the bathroom, and I didn’t count time asleep.
Pretty disturbing, right? I thought so too. I was even shocked about how much of my time I spent in my room. So I broke it down to try to see if there was any way to make it less sad.
Here’s what I found:
Please excuse the Barney colors. I couldn’t find any pens. If you can see beyond that, you’ll notice most of the time comes from Friday and Sunday. I can rationalize some of that. On weekdays (Friday), every room in my house is occupied by people who are working or in class. This means that if I’m not in my room, I can’t make noise. My only excuse for Sunday is that I took a nap. Still, that’s a lot of time to be in my room. Especially on a weekend where I was meant to be celebrating and having fun with my family and friends.
It’s not all tragic. My uncle just brought us pies and breads that my aunt made (buy some here if you’re in/near Chicago). In about a week I’ll be back in Minnesota with my girlfriend. Hopefully I’ll be walking around outside more and writing more positive posts. I’ll let you know.
This is the eighth in a series of posts From Quarantine. Most posts from quarantine are prompted by Aisling Quigley’s Data Storytelling class at Macalester College. This is one not of those posts.