By Sydney Hergan, Contributing Writer
My name is Sydney, I’m a junior currently in COVID-19 isolation at the Holiday Inn after being contact traced. I’ve been here since Thursday, Feb. 25 and am scheduled to stay in quarantine until March 5, assuming I don’t test positive for COVID-19. It’s certainly interesting to stay here, although there’s absolutely nothing to do and I’m extremely bored. What makes it more difficult is that the almost complete isolation means it’s hard to find a break in my day or motivate myself to do work. It truly is almost total isolation. My friends have dropped off things for me a handful of times, but other than that, I sit in my room and scroll TikTok or paint. I am certainly not doing homework.
I know it can be really difficult to figure out what’s going on in the hotels, especially if you don’t have friends here. I had no idea what it was like until I got here. With so many students being sent here, I hope a “day in my life” writeup about my experience here will be helpful and perhaps reassuring. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions! (hergan@susqu.edu)
Friday, Feb. 26
8 a.m.: I wake up and, honestly, scroll through social media for 45 minutes or so before doing anything productive. Then I get up and make breakfast. Since I’m vegan, I was really concerned about the food they’d be providing me while I was here, so I brought a lot of snacks and friends have also dropped things off for me. Today I had a Panera bagel with avocado. I can’t really recommend an untoasted Panera bagel, but it was all I had since I couldn’t eat the breakfast that Dining Services dropped off for me because it had dairy and eggs in it. When I got here Thursday, Dean Kracker sent me a Doordash gift card because I didn’t get to eat lunch. That’s where the Panera bagels came from, and if she hadn’t sent it I wouldn’t have had anything to eat for lunch and dinner Thursday or breakfast today.
9:15 a.m.: I clean up my room a bit and make myself a tea latte. The school said bring essentials and I decided my milk frother for lattes is an essential. Honestly, if you’re sent to the hotel, I highly recommend bringing one or two things that are a little extra but will vastly improve your life. You’re here for 10 days and you can’t go outside much, if at all. It’s worth it to have these things.
9:45 a.m.: I consider doing my homework for French class and decide against it. Instead, I get dressed, do my skincare routine and stretch a bit. I’m really bad at sitting still and don’t particularly enjoy watching TV and movies, so I spend a lot of time here pacing in my room. The hotel provided a spinning desk chair, which at this point is a source of great entertainment.
10:30 a.m.: The staff member who lives in the hotel with us emails me to ask if I want to go outside today. We’re allowed, on some days but not all days, to walk around the parking lot for a few minutes. It’s exactly as strange to experience as it sounds. But I do want to go outside, so I schedule myself for a 1:30 p.m. slot after I get out of class. I also send emails to all my professors and my job to tell them what’s going on.
10:45 a.m.: It’s now time to check in on all my friends who are here to see if anyone is feeling sick or needs anything. The university basically drops us off here and says “good luck,” so everyone in the hotel checks on everyone else. I give one friend the breakfast I couldn’t eat and then make it back to my room in time for class. Whenever we see each other, we wear two masks and stay socially distanced. Nobody wants COVID-19, obviously.
11:05 a.m.: Class with Dr. Holobetz! He tells us No Bad Fridays. While this is usually my favorite part of his classes, this is kind of a bad Friday. Sorry, Dr. Holobetz.
11:30 a.m.: My COVID Care Coordinator texts me. These are Susquehanna staff who volunteer to check in on students in case we need anything. While they’re doing their best, from what I know they’re unpaid and have no medical training. Mine is very sweet. I just wish we also had actual nurses reach out to us daily. Although you might know people who have COVID-19 and are not very sick, it can get bad really, really quickly and it’s scary that we’re just left in this hotel to wait.
12:45 p.m.: Dining Services delivers our lunches. I get vegan nachos, which are surprisingly pretty good. So far, the vegan food I’ve gotten here has been on par with or a bit better than what we get at the vegan station in Evert, which is nice. I’ve heard from others that the non-vegan meals aren’t great, though, and it’s still Susquehanna food. We’re certainly not eating that well.
1:30 p.m.: I’m done with classes for the day, and I am mentally exhausted. Being isolated like this is not fun. Since I still have workouts to do for my team, I put on leggings and sneakers before I go out. All we can do is walk around the parking lot and since I want to keep my KN95 on, I very quickly realize actually working out is not going to happen. Instead I speed-walk around the parking lot for an hour or so. It’s really lovely, between the giant hotel, dirty snow and hundreds of cars and trucks driving along US11-15.
2:30 p.m.: I have to call Public Safety to get them to let my best friend, who lives in my suite, into my room so she can pick up a few things to bring them to me. Then I take a nap for an hour or so, even though I told myself I would get homework done. I’m normally a pretty motivated person but this hotel is really not conducive to productivity for me.
4:30 p.m.: I wake up to my best friend calling me because she’s ordering us Thai food for dinner. We stay on the phone for an hour while she orders, drives to pick it up and then drives here. You can have friends drop things off for you and they’re allowed to walk into the lobby.
5:45 p.m.: She’s here! Because my best friend is an actual angel, she drops off Thai food, bread from my favorite bakery and a teddy bear. We eat dinner on Facetime and then watch a movie.
6:15 p.m.: Dining Services drops off dinner and breakfast for the next day. I just stick it in the fridge in my hotel room. Will I actually eat it at any point? Probably not. It came with a brownie though and I love those, so that was nice.
9:30 p.m.: Once we finish our movie, we both get off the phone and get ready for bed. It’s a little sad to be going to bed at 10 p.m. on a Friday but what else is there to do?
11:30 p.m.: Okay, so I said I went to bed. What I meant was I sat on my phone for another hour and half. Time isn’t real anymore.
That’s basically the extent of a day in the hotel! Living in Aikens is a bit different, but as I haven’t been there yet and hopefully won’t have to be, I can’t speak to that. My main concern here is that no medical staff call to check in on us and there’s nobody in charge of physically making sure we’re still alive and well. There are cameras in the halls watching us all the time, which is pretty weird, I won’t lie. We also have a supply room at the end of the hall which has cough drops, some snacks, toilet paper and so on, but that’s about it. If you do get sent to the hotel, I would advise you to bring something fun to do and don’t be afraid to email administration, your care coordinator or whoever else to get what you need. Stay safe!
