15 Clamoring Through COVID-19
Rania Wali
When COVID first hit in 2020, I was 18 years old and was in the fall term of my first year at McMaster University.
I did go into lockdown for the first few months, but due to changes in my life circumstances, I had to drop out of McMaster and get my first job shortly after COVID first struck. It was a food service position, and the restaurant was delivery-only due to in-person restrictions. I had always been reclusive, especially since moving to Hamilton to go to McMaster – since I didn’t really have much time to get to know anyone before restrictions were set. So, during my ‘complete lockdown’ months, not much had changed in my day-to-day routine. I would continue, even after finding work, to not really spend much time out and about outside of my working hours, but because I had to work long hours and was tired outside of work, staying home was okay with me, and life was relatively optimistic. I remember turning 19 under pandemic restrictions and humorously ordering my first alcoholic beverage, a Corona beer, from my coworker after my shift – “hold the virus.” It tasted horrible.
The greatest challenge I found during COVID was that I was working for the first time and had to navigate the strains on the workplace and job market that were caused by COVID. I’m not really referring to daily symptom check-ins on certain workplace platforms, or masking and regular sanitization – these things came quite easily – nor having to isolate, because that came naturally too for me at the time. Rather, to expand further on the job market I walked into, most places were looking to hire since a lot of people had quit around the start of the pandemic, but this also meant many places were crucially understaffed including the place I found work at. Moreover, I eventually switched jobs to work at a print shop, and it might surprise you how far and wide the lines reached as people sought to get their proof-of-vaccination printed and laminated, especially the elderly, who were less inclined to have it on their phone and wanted something sturdy and physical. This might seem simple enough, save for the traffic, but many people had no idea how to access their digital slip to begin with, so my coworkers and I had to learn how to instruct them on how to access what was essentially government-issued information. So that was fun, and people were quite impatient – but they were also very grateful, since this was important for them to have.
Several months into the pandemic, I attended an art program at an Oakville college which was delivered in a virtual format. My taking this program in the first place was ironically made easier by the pandemic, since I lived in Hamilton and could not afford to make the move to Oakville; remote learning meant I could try this out while staying where I was. I was also grateful for that experience, since all the materials and classes being online meant that for me, who has grown up with disabilities that often affect my physical attendance, things honestly felt more welcoming and accessible for me. It wasn’t really the best environment to be able to make friends and chat with people, but learning-wise I was able to stay ahead of my classes – and this was new to me!
Moreover, my life did not really change much due to COVID itself, but due to events that happened to coalesce around that time with the onset of COVID. I would say things that resulted from the pandemic, like openings in the service/retail industry (despite understaffing and precarious conditions, which were significant), and virtual learning plus changes to accessibility models really helped me during this time. I think that COVID revealed a lot of gaps in student accessibility, and a lot of vulnerabilities and organizational problems in institutions and the workforce. As a result, for the first time, disabled people weren’t the only ones who were regarded as able to benefit from making these models more accessible.
A core element that followed was the relief of stigma. For a short time, it felt like stigma was greatly reduced from things like asking for extensions, whether regarding illness or otherwise, staying at home for class (which was, albeit, enforced), and being given unlimited access to course materials. In terms of the government, stigma felt momentarily removed from receiving social assistance, which was administered to many people through CESB and CERB and received with relatively high enthusiasm. It also trickled into social services like Ontario Works for which a lot of communication was shifted to online-only. But, this is an example of a change that may not have benefitted vulnerable peoples, since many people on social services did not have access to the internet or phone appointments. Similarly, many students were without internet access, and COVID likely exacerbated obstacles between them and their learning.
A prominent example for me, as far as my bubble was concerned, was just the elation of being able to attend pretty much every class in the semester during my time in the illustration program – something I never really was able to do before COVID. Since everyone was inside, I didn’t feel ashamed about being inside myself. It felt the world was moving more at my pace, but it would be unfair to not admit that for many others, especially those who were touched by the disease or whose loved ones were lost, that the world had not moved either too slow or too fast, or both at once. But for the first time and for a short time, institutions responded to people who were grappling to keep up, regardless of where they fell on that spectrum.
