Covid-19 Disclaimer

I felt like with other assignments receiving this same sort of acknowledgment, I thought this final assignment also deserved personal context for the content and the quality or lack thereof of the work. What I ended up writing about and what I started writing about were two very different things. There was a lot I wanted to write about, but didn’t like, or couldn’t, or just didn’t. I was severely depressed for most of this term. I was barraged with terrible anxiety, made worse by the encroaching public health crisis that no one, especially not any of the institutions/people responsible for me, seemed to care about. I had problems with my own body, suffering from disordered eating and ADD and a host of other psychiatric problems whose presence are important to understand but the specifics are not. I fled London on the night Trump announced the travel restrictions to Europe, my family and I fearing the turn of events that then continued to transpire with travel opportunities grinding to a halt and the health risk of that travel rising. There were a lot of topics I was interested in and a lot of topics I planned to write about that now only exist as decorations on forgotten Post-It notes. I posted my cover sheet, just so you could understand a little more about what I was working with after I came home. The Cliffs-Notes version being: I don’t have a great relationship with my parents. I moved out at 16. This is the longest I will have resided with my immediate family in 5 years. I am responsible for fully homeschooling my youngest sister and assisting my two other younger siblings with their schoolwork. My father has a rare form of cancer and is immunocompromised so we are on the fullest lockdown we can manage. I live in a semi-rural place in the American South, so my access to resources is not the best. I don’t really have contact with anyone in my classes, department, or even another student at a UK university. I help with shopping and chores in my own house and anything my elderly grandfather needs. I live in a house with 6 other people and, like basically everyone else, I cannot leave and even if I could there is nowhere to go. I’m not asking for sympathy, but I am asking for an acknowledgment of context which I understand the professors are attempting their best to give. I’m trying. I just can’t really manage much more than that right now. Thank you for a wonderful term and I immensely enjoyed this class.