“It brought me a lot of connections and brought me a lot of different people into my life. It made me realize how big mental health is.“
– Laurel Barbosa
Laurel Barbosa is a junior at Merrimack College from Seakonk, Massachusetts. She works both on campus in the Compass Program and off campus at a dance studio near her hometown. She is also a member of the Merrimack dance team.
In the interview, Laurel describes the disruptions caused by the arrival of the pandemic, including its impact on work, the dance team, and school–including the difficulties of rapidly transitioning to online learning in the spring of 2020. Laurel also describes her own bout with COVID, and the difficulty of being unable to see her family, friends, or even her dogs while quarantining.
Excerpt
Melanie Turano: And is there any advice that you would like to give to younger generations or future generations coming in? Is there any advice that you would like to share with them?
Laurel Barbosa: I don’t really know other than so just obviously be appreciative of everything, and also hold on to those relationships that you have and if something like this happens again you just kind of have to roll with it, because you really just don’t know what is going to happen, and I only can hope that we will find a better way to deal with a pandemic next time. Now it’s like okay there’s another variant like it’s getting a little bit more serious again and masks are becoming more of a thing again and I can just hope that we don’t have to go back to a full lockdown again.
Interview Details
The interview was conducted in North Andover, MA, on Sunday, November 21, 2021, by Melanie Turano.
Accession Number
2021.56.1
This interview is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.