All posts by Finbarr Arsenault, Correspondent

Opinion

The ups and downs of COVID-19

and  
Around three months ago, the first COVID-19 case was announced in the United States. Since then, it has affected all of us. I remember looking through various articles on the virus as early as mid-January, reading from sources such as NHK Japan, a news outlet closer to the epicenter of the outbreak. I brought them up in conversation as passing remarks over dinner, where I’d get responses such as “It’s probably not that dangerous,” or “There’s no way it could come here.”
Now, looking back at the different ways that everyone has been affected by this virus, and looking forward to the end of the semester, I look back at the different ways that I have coped with the virus, and the multiple lessons it has taught me.  
My family, before the virus, was very distant, with me and my sister having a passive animosity to our stepsiblings and their mother. We, too, had been growing further apart, from each other, and our own parents. Both of our birth parents wound up as essential workers, and our stepparent, working from home, so our chances to connect with our own parents decreased, as our chances to connect with our stepparent increased. 
One would assume this amount of forced compatibility would result in days of fighting and hostility, but instead, we quickly accepted our fate, and wound up conversing and interacting with our family more. 
I, personally, wound up connecting with my youngest stepbrother and playing many video games with him that I would otherwise find menial. It turned out to be quite fun and time-consuming where there was nothing else to do. I also connected more with my sister in a similar way, she wound up showing me a few recipes as we did some cooking and baking together.
With the rest of my family, I still wound up connecting in these small, unique ways, and ultimately learning a plethora of new skills.  
This quarantine has been a perfect time for self-reflection and learning. I found the chance to look inward at my personal goals, flaws, and potential improvements. Many of these were found in everyday tasks, sometimes as simple as remembering to do my laundry as to keep my room from growing messy. 
This self-reflection also let me see just how much I missed the outdoors. While I have always had a draw to the outdoors and exercise, I typically stay inside, keeping safe and playing video games, even when not in quarantine.
Now that human interaction has been reduced both for myself and the people around me, I have found myself missing this interaction now more than ever, and longing to go outside with friends, even if it’s just a quick bike ride or jog.
It also brought me the realization that I am an extreme procrastinator, especially if I constantly am working from home. With this being a huge part of community college for the time being, I seriously need to re-evaluate how I do my work and my ethics behind it. 
No matter how long this virus continues to rage on, and whatever it takes to stop it, we have learned valuable lessons; from being brought closer together to family, being torn from them, or our workplaces, and stripped of our everyday lives. Whether it be someone you know, or someone that you have merely interacted with once, we all know somebody that has been lost to this virus.
I hope that this virus does not continue on at its current state, where we are forced inside to repel the chance of infection. I am hopeful for our future, for the state of all people, and a positive result from this virus. 
Opinion, Slider, Uncategorized

Opening my eyes: A student’s experience in quarantine

and  

Being required to stay under quarantine has opened my eyes as to everything I took for granted outside of my house. Typically, I strain myself by playing PC games late at night, with friends, until the early morning and then sleep through the day. The concept of day and night is fleeting, as even my younger sister and stepbrother have been staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning.

The grim feeling of obedience to stay inside has me craving the outdoors. Any kind of change involving usually despised exercise, would bring hope to the idea that quarantine is soon over and that I can see my friends again in real-life. Until then, I need to fight eye strain, find something to occupy myself, and motivate myself to continue with my education.

The most difficult part of this quarantine hasn’t been the strain to stay inside, but the strain to stop neglecting my schoolwork. If I have in-person classes, at least I have a sort of constant reminder every time I go to campus. This wouldn’t be an issue if my PC served as only a work PC, as every time that I log on, I get bombarded with messages from eager friends, awaiting the next day’s worth of video games.

Just the other day, I had several friends ask to play at once. There was a new update for “Battlefront II”. My friend who is currently deployed in Japan just got sent on a week’s leave due the pandemic and I had my daily crew of online friends (friends who also, unfortunately, have been neglecting schoolwork) that I always play with.

The virus also has me toying with many more creative ways to occupy my time. Several friends and I have looked into the creation of a YouTube channel.

I myself have been speaking more commonly with my online friends from Europe, as I have no reason to be awake too early or too late. They have gotten me more into plastic modelling and doing more research about history. Just the other week, I looked through the entire Norwegian archives regarding Infantry during Operation Weserübung, over 10,000 individual photos, last week. It caused so much eye strain that I had to turn my computer to night mode during just the daytime so that I could view even more. I still have over 30,000 images to look through, they will all likely take me a week each, so I will most likely get them done after the semester is over.

My hunt through the Norwegian archives was however, triggered by unfortunate circumstances; a friend of over 4 years recently broke things off with me due to an argument about historical accuracy. It got really heated and we got into a massive fight that wound up with him cutting me off completely from his life, and a bit of the New England Reenactment community. This was an event I saw coming, as we typically would have confrontations such as this one. I think that COVID-19 has brought the bad side out in a great many of us, but the good side in many others as well.

My parents and stepparent are all currently working, with two of them considered essential, my mother, a child psychiatric counselor, and my father, a lineman working for Verizon. I am very grateful that they are all able to still work from home or in-person and provide a place of shelter for myself and the rest of my family.

My mother has been beyond careful to make sure that herself and the apartment are as clean as possible, especially after returning from work, where there is currently a breakout of the virus among staff on the other side of the hospital.

Whatever this quarantine results with, and whenever it ends are both irrelevant to me. I just simply want it to end and I want to go back to normal life. I want to go back outside, go for a bike ride, or just longboard at night again with my life-long friend. I want to resume my education without any online constraints, and to not live in fear with either of my parents bringing home the virus to me and the rest of my family, as they continue to make society operate as it should. If there are any lessons for me to learn, they involve thankfulness to my family, an increase in work ethic for myself, a higher appreciation for the outdoors, and the many skills that I have re-learned.

Arts and Entertainment

Books: Not just for boomers

and  
Student battles boredom with war stories

As the weekly hunt for activities around the house continues, many of us are still left empty-handed and bored. I managed to find refuge this week in books.

It seems like a rather obvious solution to boredom, but in a modern era, where one can simply go on the internet and find many quicker alternatives to kill time, it can be hard to find reading entertaining.

While I was sitting at my desk, I had to go back and check one of my reference books, when I stumbled across a pile of unread memoirs from both the First and Second World Wars. These are books that I had bought, expecting to read, but wound up untouched due to favorable online research.

Picking through them, I was able to find a book that held my interest, “Storm of Steel” by Ernst Jünger. It is a gritty war memoir that reads like a historical fiction. There are so many stories that it almost feels unreal. I was vigorously flipping through every page until I was done. It took me almost three days and was a very good read. 

I still have many, many books that I have yet to get through. I’ve also been considering switching them to a verbal format just for efficiency. Most books are also available in audio format, on Amazon, YouTube and other sites.

Even just to find a research book has been beneficial for me. If the book relates to a topic that I enjoy, it becomes so much easier to read. I also managed to get through hundreds of pages worth of research material that I otherwise would have never learned from because of how reliant I was on the digital world.

While our computers and smartphones offer us a world of information to a myriad of topics, there is still information and research missing.

Being in quarantine and finally picking up old books again has taught me that the internet is not always the first place to look when I need a question answered, or a good, healthy source of entertainment.

I believe that reading, whether it be an audiobook, or a physical book, is a good way to spend your time during quarantine. It can be very relaxing to ignore the fast-moving outside world and get lost in a story.

Arts and Entertainment

Quarantine crafts: Extrovert rediscovers old habits to keep busy

and  
During the outbreak of COVID-19, many of us have been affected, journalists included. We are required to change our lifestyles, both at home and out in public. Some introverts may be overjoyed at the idea of self-quarantine, while many extroverts, having been forced into introverting, may be looking for things to do.

Now, as a journalist stuck inside, there are few things to report on, and as an extrovert, I have been looking for things to do. As a result, I fell back to older hobbies that I had fallen out of when I was younger. These hobbies will be my focus as I attempt to search for things to do during this quarantine time.

Last week I got back into scale modeling. This is a hobby that is very much inclusive of anyone. As long as you have the desire to create, you can build anything your mind desires. With my added interest in military history, I decided on an old unfinished project I found in my storage.

One could easily recreate this diorama with minimal spending. The plastic model ran me only around five dollars. I used a circular foam base, painted brown with green faux grass sprinkled over it. To mimic trees, I used small sticks off the ground with faux fall leaves stuck onto them. 

The plastic model itself was layered several times starting with green paint and interchanging between various browns to replicate pitting, then dry brushed green colors over the pitting and meticulously removed it over and over again until the result was satisfactory. This technique was not entirely effective as the paint took away detail from the plastic model.

I highly suggest this hobby to keep yourself busy during the quarantine. The kind of models you can build also vary greatly, from figures of your favorite superheroes, to just about any kind of vehicle, past to present. Building plastic models is a form of arts & crafts that could suit anyone, and as you search for a hobby to keep yourself busy during this pandemic, I suggest trying out plastic modeling.