- Corona , People
- 02/04/2020
TU/e alumni collect personal corona stories
The corona crisis is creating a great many casualties and plenty of uncertainty, but at the same time it is triggering a good many positives. TU/e alumni Sonja and David Rijlaarsdam are collecting personal stories from across the world, to ensure that when this is all over we don't instantly forget how we experienced this time and weathered its storms.
Sonja and David got to know each other as students; she was studying Architecture, he Mechanical Engineering, but they were living in the same student house. At the moment they are both working from home; she works at TU/e's Real Estate Management department, he is a manager Quality and Business Improvement for a large 3D-printing company. Not exactly occupations in which you can make an immediate difference to the lives of people in need during this corona crisis, says Sonja, “but we both felt the urgent question: so what can we do?”
At their kitchen table they came up with the idea of collecting personal stories. As David put it, there's a pandemic going on, lots of people are getting sick or dying, “but at the same time a great many uplifting things are also happening. People behave differently in a period like this. We want to record that. Because if you don't actively do that now, later on you'll have forgotten all those good things.”
Their website ourcoronastory.com (including related accounts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) has been live for the past ten days. No novel website artistry because “that's beyond us”, but with a couple of hours tinkering in Wix the couple made good progress. Their own networks were the first places they shared the site, including their contacts in the foreign countries where each of them spent time while at university; the first stories are now online.
More stories than infections
Sonja says, “My husband posted this recently, as a bit of a challenge actually: ‘It would be great if our site eventually has more stories than there are registered cases of corona. At that stage there was already five hundred thousand, I believe, so that was highly ambitious. But it's the thought that counts. I'd think it fantastic if more than a thousand stories are posted on the site.”
Read on under the picture.
The site has been set up in English but people keen to share their story can do so in whatever language they like. They can post their story themselves; site administrators Sonja and David can later take down any contributions that don't fit the concept. Contributions of a promotional nature from companies or institutions, for example, are definitely not what they are seeking, says Sonja.
What they do want are personal stories about how people are experiencing the corona crisis: how they are coping (people working from home with children, for example); how they are coping emotionally with loss or illness due to corona in their close circle; and news of any initiatives they may have taken to stay in contact with others.
They themselves are currently working from home in the full-time company of their son aged three-and-a-half and their daughter aged one. It is simply not possible to work with such young children at home, says Sonja, “so we are now working a little less than usual and in shifts: one of us takes care of the children while the other works in peace and quiet in the attic. At first that took plenty of coordination: who has the most important appointment? But now we are getting used to it.”
Reading aloud via Skype
The situation might be difficult at times, “but generally we are also experiencing this as a very special time. Precisely because you are together so much and doing so much together, you feel more connected than usual.” For the rest, the family is staying in close online contact with family and friends, “the grandpas and grandmas read aloud to the children every day via Skype. The children are still too young to spend a half hour calling grandpa and grandma by themselves, but when they are read to, they are glued to the laptop.”
Sonja counts herself lucky that her family is healthy, “we have no one in our immediate circle who has been affected by coronavirus. But we have some family members in the at-risk group, so I am certainly worried about them. And I know various people working in healthcare, so we hear their stories too. We ourselves can't do anything to help on the frontline but by sharing uplifting stories, we hope we can do our bit.”
The couple hopes that members of the TU/e community will also want to share their stories: “Expats who cannot get back to their home country, researchers with great ideas for new tools to help in this crisis, lecturers now teaching online, or the residents on campus who may feel the place is now a ghost town; we would love to hear their stories”.
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