Georgia O’Kane shares her personal story of how the pandemic impacted her

How do you reply when someone asks about the past year? Do you stick to the classic response? Good, grand, looking forward to normality. Are you honest? Are you even sure how to measure this past year? My family and I managed to avoid COVID and we’re coping well with being cooped up together. Does that mean good is the honest answer, or a selective account of the truth? I know I am more fortunate than many; COVID spared those close to me and I’ve had somewhere to sleep and something to eat every day of this past year – but I’m not sure I can classify it as good. 

I was in the second semester of a master’s degree which had already been impeded by two industrial strikes when COVID shifted the remainder of class online, into a new era of isolated education. When miraculously, enough of us found the strength to join an online class, there was no real discussion, and many of us ended up writing essays on topics we could only vaguely remember hearing about in the week one syllabus review. No relief was to be found at term’s end, as there was the small matter of a thesis to be written over the summer months. Between adjusting methodologies to ensure that the project could be carried out virtually, having little or no access to the library, and my motivation having long since disappeared, I trudged through several months, submitted, pushed my laptop away and refused to touch it for weeks. Not the triumphant end one expects to their degree, nor one worth the near six thousand pounds I spent on it. 

Aside from university, I was working in Belfast City Hospital when the pandemic landed. Deemed essential because of the location, our shop stayed open. I was promoted to supervisor and thought I was set to be one of the lucky few to make more money during the pandemic, but I was wrong – it’s a common theme. When the hospital was repurposed as a Nightingale centre it was no longer safe to work, and we were all placed on furlough. Thus ensued the only part of the pandemic I truly consider good. Yes, university was a nightmare, but I was getting paid to sit home and watch Netflix instead of dealing with the customers who refused to follow COVID protocols or those who criticised us for taking so much time to wash our hands between each order.  

The shop’s summer reopening coincided with possibilities of redundancy and the end of my student lease. With the retail sector floundering, and no assurance of continued income, I was forced to give up the independence which had shaped the last four years of my life and return home to a small village outside of Derry which, although only an hour and a half away from Belfast, felt like a thousand miles. Deemed unsustainable for me to travel so far to work during a pandemic, I sat in my childhood bedroom and was made redundant from a job to which I had given two years and what felt like every ounce of patience I had left for customer service. Twenty-two, back home with my parents, redundant from my first long-term job. Uncharacteristically stuck for words, I cannot accurately describe the deflation of that day. I felt like I’d been flattened, like I’d been run over and broke whatever part of the body makes you want to get up in the morning. I stress again that I was lucky to have parents to support me when others had nowhere to turn, but other’s experiences do not negate your own. For two months I wallowed in the feeling that the momentum which I had generated in Belfast had been halted and I didn’t know how to start again. Again, this time happily, I was wrong. After many applications and interviews in a job market teeming with over-qualified candidates, I eventually found a good job, with good people, at Holywell Trust; a place I probably wouldn’t have thought to apply to if I’d still been in Belfast. 

I’m still not clear how to explain how the last year has been. In an era when contact with others should be limited it wouldn’t be responsible to tell the above story, I’m aware I go on a bit. If you ask me, I’ll probably still say good. I fared better than others and have come out the other side. That does not mean it is the truth, or more precisely the whole truth, but it’s the one I’m sticking with; an uncharacteristically positive stance for me.