Get to know me! 8/21/2020

Hello! I am Jenna Gottfried, a current freshman at the University of Kentucky. I am from Lake in the Hills, Illinois which is an hour northwest of Chicago. I am an 18-year-old Caucasian female and I have been raised by a family in the working/middle class. I am 40% German, 20% French, 20% Italian, and 20% a mixture of other European countries. My mom is an insurance coordinator for a dentist's office and my dad is a foreman electrician. All of these factors have shaped how Covid-19 has affected my family and me. 

With my mom working in a health-care facility, she was considered an essential employee and was not able to work from home. Additionally, the state of Illinois deemed construction/electrical workers as essential which meant my dad was also not able to stay home. Both of my parents are considered high-risk to Covid-19 because they both have asthma and my mom has heart disease. Knowing this and having to see them go to work every day terrified me and made me even more cautious about what I would do and who I would see. Besides my parents, my grandparents on both sides of my family are also all immunocompromised for a variety of reasons including heart disease, being on dialysis, etc. This has put a huge strain on our family because before COVID, my family was constantly with each other. Not being able to see my extended family as regularly as I'm used to has changed my communication with my grandparents. My mom and I actually went out and bought my grandparents' iPhones so they can use the FaceTime app as well as text us faster. 

Additionally, the financial burden that Covid-19 has presented has put stress on my academic career. I was working as a part-time employee for my local elementary school when COVID shut my work down in March. Little did I know, I would not be returning to work until early July. Being out of work for nearly 4 months resulted in a huge loss of money that would have gone towards my college tuition. This has put extra stress on my family to make up for the money lost. As a result, I almost considered taking a gap-year from school in order to give my family a break.

Speaking of school, I can now say that I was one of many who graduated high school in the midst of a global pandemic. Not being able to have the traditional graduation I dreamed of my whole life was heartbreaking, but my district rose to the occasion and made graduation special for all of the 2020 seniors. My graduation ceremony took place in late July in a large parking lot. Half of the alphabet had the morning ceremony and the other half had the afternoon ceremony.  There was a large stage set up at the back of the parking lot and cars filed in and parked facing the stage. Each graduate was allowed 1 car so my immediate family and my four grandparents all packed in. I was able to walk across the stage with my mask on and receive my diploma. The picture above is right before I was set to walk across the stage. Although a mask was required, I am so fortunate that my school prioritized some "normalcy" for seniors and made sure we were able to walk across the stage. The class of 2020 will really never be forgotten!

Although my family has definitely not had it easy since COVID, the overall impact for us has been less than others around us. For example, up until I left for college in mid-August, no one in my family had known of anyone who had Covid-19. We were very fortunate to not see the effects of Covid-19 firsthand. Since I am a pre-nursing major, being able to follow how Covid-19 has impacted the medical field has made me even more eager to eventually be apart of the medical field myself. Seeing how all the health-care providers have stepped up and put their lives at risk every day just to be able to save someone else's has truly sparked a fire in me to one day do the same and to give back to all those risking their lives today.