2020 Hindsight, Part 1: Adventures at Amazon

 With the year coming to an end, it's time to atone for seemingly dropping off the face of the earth for the last several months. This year has done a number on us all, as I'm sure you know too well, and most of us have felt as if we're trapped on our own little islands of isolation.

               

In a year like no other, it can be especially valuable to look back on our experiences to see what has changed and what we ought to learn--hindsight, after all, is 20/20, and even if all we've learned from 2020 is that there was no reason to complain back in 2019, we're still on to something.

With that, here's the beginning of my highlights reel for the year, and the lessons I've learned through the pandemic.

Back in April, I was searching for a summer job to cover the costs of the oncoming school year. The problem was that we were only a month into the pandemic and hadn't figured out how life was going to proceed, meaning most companies weren't taking on any new employees. The exception: Amazon, the one company doing better than ever with everybody staying at home.

If you've ever wondered how you're able to obtain your package within a day of ordering it, it's because there are people working around the clock to get it done--people like me. I was signed on for the weekend night shift, which paid better, but left me working 6:30 PM to 7:00 AM each week from Thursday night until Sunday morning. It was really like a 36-hour shift with two sleep breaks in the middle, since I had no time for anything but meals, showers and sleep between commutes.

Now, Amazon ain't a bad place to work. I met some very interesting characters, but everyone was nice, and the atmosphere was positive despite the stresses of fast-paced work. In the beginning, my body wasn't up to the strain of being on my feet for twelve hours a day, and the soreness hit me hard. At first I couldn't lift my arms above my head when I came home in the morning from the aching and weird muscle cramps I accumulated, but after a couple of months, things got better. I grew stronger and faster, and eventually I was pulling some of the best numbers on the entire floor.

Through this experience I learned all the ins and outs of the mysterious logistical machine that is Amazon, from the moment you click "place order" until your item arrives. Normally an employee would have to wait several months before getting trained in a second department, but due to a crazy mixture of circumstances I ended up learning seven different processes over the course of four months--almost every job an entry-level associate can do in that facility. The most entertaining part of the whole thing is seeing what strange combinations of products people are actually buying. Processing over seven hundred items per hour, I've seriously seen it all; here are some favorites:

• A box of fruit snacks, a teddy bear, and 300 razor blades
• four pounds of walnuts and 66 boxes of orange Jell-O
• nine high-quality water bottles and a matching nine copies of the PBS documentary College Behind Bars
• a dozen fantasy novels, a giant box of Airheads and a soap-making kit

Some of these combinations indicate people who really know how to throw a party, whereas others make you wonder just what kind of party they're putting on, or just raise general concern for all parties involved.

The four nights a week when I didn't work, I was still nocturnal--rather than flip back and forth every week, I determined it would be easier to stay on the same schedule, so I cut a piece of cardboard to black out my bedroom window and that became my life. I got up at about 4:00 PM and went to bed around 8:00 AM all week long, which meant I had plenty of time on my hands on those lonely nights off. Whether that meant painting, writing, refinishing car headlights or taking the deep dive into Korean dramas, I got very good at living stealthily, so as not to disturb everyone else's sleep.

Living the nocturnal life has its benefits, but it's hard to do long-term. Combined with strenuous, monotonous work, I could feel it wearing on me after two or three months. It's a difficult lifestyle to maintain, and I'm frankly impressed I did it as long as I did. In the end, it amounts to an interesting and valuable experience that I'd rather not repeat--but hey, all of 2020 fits that description, right?

Hic Manebimus Optime!

10 Great Things About Coronavirus

At this point everyone is well aware of the COVID-19 pandemic, so I won't bore you with statistics. I'm not a news outlet. This is, however, a record of me as a college student, which means some very interesting things have been happening--some good, some far less desirable.

When the pandemic reached the point where businesses began to close and universities started going online, everything changed all at once. All classes were suspended for three days while professors figured out how to conduct class through the internet, and all students were encouraged to return home to finish the semester if possible, though housing would still be available for those who wanted to stay. About twenty minutes after the email came through, I looked out the window and saw someone walking out of the adjacent building with suitcases in tow, and all I could think was well that was fast. Others followed suit, and for the next week it became commonplace to look out the window and see someone pushing a cart laden with boxes out toward the parking lot. At the time of this post, the initial twelve members of our squad (as described in the Dorm page) have been reduced to five, and I'll be making my journey home as well by the end of the week.

As you can see, my latest grocery trip went just great.

In such a time, with friends leaving across the country, nearly all special events canceled, employment uncertain, stores picked clean and group gatherings discouraged, it's easy to be depressed. Life has been turned upside-down in the blink of an eye, and we can't even find a single good roll of toilet paper to show for it. In my Positive Psychology class, however, we practice expressing gratitude for the good things that come out of any situation. With that in mind I thought it'd be fun to outline a few of the positives; or at least not-so-negatives. Your mileage may vary.

1. Spring Break! (Sort Of): Students have always complained about BYU's single-day spring break, and this year we got classes canceled for three whole days. Ask and ye shall receive!
2. Lenient Due Dates: With everything going on, the chaos has not been helped by the fact that the school's academic website, Learning Suite, has been crashing all the time under the unprecedented load. And school is literally entirely online now. That means late forgiveness!
3. Introverts Be Not Judged: It's socially acceptable to stay at home and never see anyone now, which is awesome!
4. You Can't Stop D&D: Most college students are using Zoom for online lectures now, but you know what else you can use it for? Dungeons & Dragons. A couple of our players are on total quarantine lockdown right now, but that doesn't stop nerds like us.
5. Pass/Fail? Yes Please: Due to the crazy circumstances, this semester we'll have the option to take either our final letter grade or convert it to a Pass/Fail, which gives you passing credit for anything C or above without affecting your GPA whatsoever. So my nasty electrical engineering class need no longer sink my grades!
6. Saving All That Transit Time: With school at home, I don't need to spend half the day tromping around from building to building. Have I used all that extra time effectively? No. Still working on that part.
7. No Lines: We went to the mall to get something to eat, and even though the tables are roped off and the place is virtually empty, about half the restaurants are still open. You can enjoy not waiting in line and even have a pleasant conversation with the employees while they prepare the first order they've had all day.
8. Going Outside is Meaningful: I could literally stay inside all day long if I wanted to, and that means that when I go outside, it's more for the sake of being outside than anything else. I've found it much easier to be mindful of the scenery and enjoy being outdoors, rather than just rushing by on my way to class.
9. Grooming Not Mandatory: If you're not going to see anybody all day, you don't necessarily have to look presentable, right? If you don't want to shave or change out of your pajamas or fix your hair, you can slack in that department! Let alone the fact that most haircut places are closed anyway.
10. Imagine the Stories: As a writer, this is a gold mine. People will be reminiscing about this whole escapade for decades. I've been trying to record as many details as I can, because not only will I tell my grandkids about the Great Toilet Paper War of 2020,  but there's a wealth of inspiration for other stories--what happens in a pandemic, what things disappear from stores first, how the world reacts and so on. 

That's my bright side list for the Coronapocalypse. Not all of these will apply directly to you, as everyone's situation is different, but I hope it helps you to consider some of the good things coming out of this incredibly confusing time. I mean, I'm literally eating pineapple out of a bag with chopsticks as I write this. Nothing makes sense anymore.

Wash your Hands and Hic Manebimus Optime!

One Reason to be Glad I Got Rejected

Quite a bit of news has surfaced recently about the mumps outbreak at our dear Harvard. In truth, the outbreak began back in February, but had not been publicized previously because precautions were being taken to isolate patients and prevent spread. With over forty confirmed cases up to this point, the university seems to have been unable to contain the outbreak, which means bad things for Harvard students.

Mumps has become a fairly rare problem in the United States because it is easily preventable with a vaccine. Now you're thinking 'okay, so those students weren't vaccinated, so what?'
The problem is, they were. All of the students currently affected were immunized, as per university regulation, and yet they contracted the virus anyway. So how is that even possible?

Since Harvard students come from all over the country (and the world), these students received their vaccines from many different locations, eliminating the possibility of a bad batch of vaccines. Thus, in my estimation, the only remaining possibility is that the strain of virus in this outbreak is resistant to the vaccine.

We interrupt this post to ask a very important question: why does the biohazard symbol look so darn cool? It's literally my favorite symbol in all the world of symbols. But I digress.

Now, before we all start jumping to conclusions, we should establish what the danger level is for this virus. I'm a bit of a disease junkie myself; I love movies like Contagion, I play games like Pandemic and Plague, Inc. and I have done multiple school projects on everything from cholera to the bubonic plague, so I'm personally fascinated by the logistics of this type of outbreak.

The virus is basically non-lethal, seeing as the symptoms consist of inflammation, fever, aches and pains and headache, and nearly all patients make a full recovery. So essentially life and limb are not at stake here, but it can make for a very unpleasant few weeks.

In order to minimize the number of students enduring those unpleasant few weeks, Harvard has admonished their students to take the outbreak seriously and to 'stop infecting each other.' The virus is transmitted through saliva, mucus and respiratory fluids/vapors (so it isn't exactly an airborne pathogen, but I wouldn't let anyone breathe on me if I were them), so as a word of warning to anyone who is actually at Harvard, do try to minimize contact with any of those fluids.

Returning to the title of the post. I'm not actually glad I got rejected, and I never will be, but I may have secured a unique benefit: I wasn't at Harvard for Admitted Students Weekend (refer to previous post). Cases began in February, meaning that anyone who has stepped onto the Harvard campus since February has been at some degree of risk. Theoretically anyone visiting the school on that weekend, including me if I had been accepted, could have been infected. And seeing as the virus is not currently contained and seems to ignore immunization, undocumented cases are roaming the campus at this very moment, infecting more unlucky souls. The threat is real.

So I suppose I get to count my blessings this time, since I'm currently at home, at precisely zero risk of mumps. But that could change, if the virus is indeed unaffected by vaccines (cue dramatic music)

In all seriousness, my sympathies go out to anyone unfortunate enough to be enduring the illness, and I hope those uninfected Harvard students will take measures to keep themselves healthy. I have full faith in the university's resources and ability to handle the outbreak, and I wish them the best, but frankly I'm glad it's one thing I don't have to worry about. So I guess I sort of won? Yeah, let's go with that.

Hic Manebimus Optime.