Bella Capellino-Escobedo, the point of view of a current Whittier College student..
Bella Capellino is a current senior at Whittier college, who is majoring in Kinesiology with an emphasis in pre-physical therapy and a minor in Spanish. Before COVID-19, she was a prominent figure on the Whittier Women’s soccer team who made the Deans list in 2019.
The first question I asked Capellino was,
“How have you personally been affected by COVID-19?”
In which she responds, “Personally a couple of my family members got COVID so that was really scary to hear because of hearing about it on the news. It felt like they had the worst disease on earth. Another thing COVID affected was my mental state. I was stripped away from a lot of what I’ve been known as. I’ve identified with being a student and an athlete so with COVID taking these things away, it really made me question who I am and who I want to be without those things in my life.”
The second being,
“How do you feel this will affect you once you join the workforce after college?”
In which she stated “ I think COVID is going to make things harder because there may be fewer opportunities that I’ll have. Also, it may make the process of getting a job even slower.”
The statement of fewer opportunities is something that is brought up a lot from current college students as we all continue our education through this Nationwide pandemic.
The third standard question asked was,
“Has these set of events affected potential plans you had throughout your college career?”
Capellino replied, “It definitely did. For one, I wanted to enjoy my last soccer season. Soccer has been in my life for so long and for it to just have been stripped away was hard to adjust. Another thing that I was planning on doing was studying abroad with my best friends. I was really looking forward to that. And lastly enjoying my last year of undergrad. I was looking forward to spending it with my friends and teammates and trying to savor it all.”
The last hard hitting question,
“How has Whittier College supported you during this period of difficulty, (if at all) throughout this time?”
Capelino’s feedback being, “I feel like they’ve sent good emails to everyone. I’m not sure how they really affected me. If anything the professors really helped throughout this whole process. They are the ones that should be getting all the credit.”
As I continue with these profiles and the number of varied responses received, the more I come to realize that we are all living through the same Pandemic but have all had different experiences throughout. As always, stay safe.
