Featured Episodes

When I first started preparing for COVID Stories, I went online, to LinkedIn, and started searching hashtags, looking for people who had been laid off due to COVID. This was back in June and July of 2020, and it wasn’t hard.

Every time I searched terms like laid off, unemployed, or furloughed, I found the site was full of people sharing their stories. Emotionally raw posts about being laid off had hundreds of reactions and empathetic comments.

COVID-19 has affected the way all of us work, and for many people the dominant experience of COVID-19 has been months spent working from home. Work from home wasn’t a widely available option before COVID, so for most this is their first long term experience working from home.

Working from home is hard, and it can have serious consequences for someone’s mental health. But working from home existed before COVID-19. For some it was a long dreamt of ideal work environment, but for others working from home was isolating, with limited opportunities for long term growth and career advancement. And that’s especially true if you’re someone who already faces systemic challenges pursuing those goals in the first place.

It’s wild to think that fall is here already, and school is back in session. I always loved back to school season, with fresh pencils and new classes, but this year of course brings more challenges than ever.

With COVID-19 still a major threat, school districts have adopted a wide variety of policies to prevent any spread of the virus among their students. In some districts this includes remote learning, in others in-person classes, and still other districts have opted for complex hybrid systems.