Sophia Povedano - Pennsylvania, U.S.
Holland Tunnel, New York City - “Usually PACKED, standstill traffic but we flew right through”
Sophia seems glad to be home in Pennsylvania. Returning to her parents and her sister and her dogs and her cats wasn’t too jarring. Her term cut short from New York University wasn’t the end of her world. She tells me there are some things she regrets not doing in the city before the shutdown – museums she wishes she had visited or things she wishes she had seen, but seems halfhearted in the confession. Her gratitude for NYU seems nearly obligatory, a home-bird who gave it a shot but was only adjusting.
If anything, forced isolation seems to have relieved an expectancy and, while not relishing in the situation, Sophia seems cosy. She misses the gym, but she’s walking Sam and Honey (her dogs) twice a day – sometimes three. She brings them running through the local parks, highlighting that the outdoors and patio workouts were a good substitute.
She comes home and watches Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune with her family, and minds Pixie and Luna (her cats). She’s rereading Ready Player One and the Raven Cycle series, books she says that bring her comfort (“I have plenty of time to start new stuff – right now, I just want something nice and happy”). Yesterday they bought a badminton set and spent two hours in rally, back and forth.
Sophia is talking to me from her bedroom in the small town of Doylestown. The shops there are closed.Boarded up one at a time, there wasn’t the total sense of shutdown and panic as in other towns. The liquor store announced its closing the day before, and that night a long queue formed outside as people stocked up for the closure of unknown length. American capitalism working at its best, the store had found a workaround and has since launched a delivery service, not wanting to deprive people of their goods, or be deprived of people’s dollar.
Essentials are still available – grocery stores, pharmacies and petrol stations. The electronics store as well, which Sophia thinks probably isn’t an essential, but unless the National Guard come to enforce a lockdown, it’ll probably stay open for business.
She’s easy to talk to and articulate about what’s going on around her. She’s bubbly about her lecturers and subjects, seeming to miss them more than her classmates. Not much seems changed at home for her, apart from moving a desk into her room. Her father is working his financial sector job from the basement, their house is stocked with food, she has books and films and essays to amuse her. She is the student who has emailed her professor with her completed essay a month before it is due – eager to keep on working in the classes that inspired her.
As a result, she’s keenly aware of what’s going on around her, and this broader context is the source of her anxiety, “We’re getting information from four different places and it’s all conflicting. The WHO and CDC are saying one thing, and that’s great, and then Trump is saying something else, which I generally just don’t trust, and then the local governments are saying something else…”
This division is in her news, her governments and even her family. Speaking of her pro-Trump grandparents, she says she watched Fox News during the initial stages of the pandemic and was in disbelief to see a lack of coverage about the issue. Worse still, the coverage they did have painted it as a Democrat conspiracy to get Trump impeached. On the other end of the spectrum, the far left were blaming Trump’s incompetence as the sole reason for the issue. Sophia seems to lie somewhere in the middle, where she says the conversation revolves around staying calm, socially isolating and not panic-buying.
“It boils down to what do you believe and what source are you looking at. Even with Trump supporters though, they still know how bad it is. I think people are starting to wake up no matter what. Definitely though, the news sources have been all over the place.”
When I comment New York seemed to have been ahead of the curve in relation to the rest of the U.S., she disagrees “I’m not sure I would say New York is in front. It’s the general sentiment now, but they were very hesitant to do anything. Basically, last Monday they shut down all the schools and restaurants, but before that New York was like ‘We’re going to hold off’.”
Some signs had been present before. Returning from the winter break, classmates had increasingly worn masks and gloves. Sophia wonders if there were elements of racism (“It’s ridiculous…”) with the high number of international students at NYU. As with the political scene, students were equally polarised in their approach with some still attending bars, social gatherings and refusing to take it seriously. Politely commenting there was clearly a learning curve, with some further along than others, she says she’s hopeful that people are catching on.
Glad to be out of the city, she tells me that she has to return to finish packing her things and fully move out. She promises to take some photos for me on the Saturday (I’ll later find out she was packing for eight hours and would still manage to grab some gorgeous shots).
Photography being a hobby of hers, I’m looking forward to the pictures, but concerned about the stress she would be under. Anxious that the city would go into full lockdown, there were other issues to resolve “I wish I had sorted things with my roommate before we left”. The two are talking over text, Sophia in Pennsylvania and her roommate in California. The latter left for spring break before it was obvious how serious the pandemic would be, and now, she wanted to extend the lease so she could keep her things there. Complications neither had foreseen, and a difficult stress to sort out over the phone.
If she could have said anything to herself a month ago, that’s what she highlights “I’d tell myself to start packing”. Other than that, the economy is her worry (“I am a little worried, and by that I mean a lot worried”). Broadway closing jarred her. When South By Southwest, the music festival in Austin, Texas (one of her former homes) was cancelled, she knew something was really off. “That’s their main money maker, so…”.
With classmates entering the job market, with her own future in mind, with watching the stock market and seeing its crash, she is aware of the broader implications of the virus. In her bedroom though, she is hopeful things will improve, telling me they always have in the past, and in what is her own idyllic setting, she is content to wait it out.
Sam Cox