Baruch Students Reflect on Life During Covid-19 for Personal Essay Contest

Alumnus David Shulman (’64) created the idea for “The COVID Diaries” Project

June 15, 2021

In March, Baruch’s Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions launched an essay contest for undergraduates challenging students to reflect on their personal experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic and share them with the community.

With a $1,500 top prize funded by alumnus David Shulman (‘64) and a student body with a rich diversity of experiences from the past year, three dozen entries poured in, and there are already plans in place (and funding from Shulman’s family foundation confirmed) to run another personal essay contest – with a new theme – next year.

“As I read the dozens of submissions, I saw clearly that each student’s story was rich in specificity, yet all were beautiful reflections of our universal human condition,” says Professor Bridgett Davis. “Their essays embodied the themes made resonant for us throughout the pandemic – hope amidst fear, trust amidst challenge, love amidst loss.”

As they reviewed the essays, Davis and her fellow judge, Professor Gisele Regatao, decided that limiting the top entries to three was an impossible task. The judging panel ended up naming three honorable mentions that further captured the breadth and depth of the students’ and their families’ lives and experiences under Covid-19.

Ultimately, however, some responses stood out from the rest. In first place, winning a $1,500 prize, was Rosa Guevara’s (’22) “La Casa de Cupones | The House of Stamps,” which starts with her family getting “an ugly look” in Trader Joe’s for using their SNAP benefits and ends by ruminating on the unfulfilled promise of the American Dream. “The pandemic ruined us,” she says. It “helped us starve, helped us lie, helped us be ashamed of our food insecurities.”

Guevara writes poignantly about her mother, who “wouldn’t dare tell us about the pain she feels,” for whom the American dream “is only a wish she wants to grant.” She finishes her essay by pointing to the challenge of enduring the unendurable: “For now, we will all bite down on our lips. Como nos duele en la casa de cupones.”

Reflections On the Pandemic

Taken as a whole, the group of essays paint a picture of Baruch students’ lives during the pandemic –– they are at times a harsh and unflinching account of the challenges, including accounts of racism, the trauma of isolation, and alienation from friends and family.

In “Covid Diaries -Sole Entry,” Andrea Blanco (’21) shares her experience after she caught the virus. She hid it from friends and family, and she skipped a Christmas holiday dinner. But Blanco also shares the revelation she had in the middle of it all, one that allows her account to hit the same bittersweet but optimistic note that many of the other essays do: “It dawned on me that 2020 wasn’t a simulation or a bad dream…I couldn’t help the tears…at how fortunate I was to have lived through it all.”

Caitlin Cacciatore’s (’21) “The Arithmetic of Compassion: Reflections on COVID-19” explores the limit of humanity’s ability to count the dead and fully understand what the number means. Cacciatore acknowledges that “words cannot do justice to our dead…there will never be a memorial large enough,” but ultimately chooses optimism over despair, calling on the reader to commit the dead to memory nonetheless. She writes, “we must move on, and yes, we will dance and drink and be merry, but we shall do so only after pouring a libation to our dearly departed; and when we dance and sing out for all the world to hear, it shall be in their names.”

The Winning Essays: How to Read or Listen

Some of the students read their essays aloud to a virtual audience at a Zoom event in May. Event participants included Baruch alumnus David Shulman (’64), who came up with the idea for the contest after reading Davis’ memoir about her mother, The World According to Fannie Davis. Shulman’s family foundation provided prize money for the top three winners and Davis funded three honorable mention prizes in her mother’s honor.

* WATCH: The COVID Diaries Essay Contest: A Reading, Celebration, and Q-and-A*

The winning essays have been published in full by student-run magazine Dollars & Sense.

WINNERS

First Place: ($1,500)
Rosa Guevara (’22) – “La Casa De Capones” (“The House of Stamps”)

Second Place: ($1,000)
Caitlin Cacciatore (’21) – “The Arithmetic of Compassion”

Third Place: ($500)
Lylia Saurel (’22) – “Side Effects”

Honorable Mentions: ($200 each)
Maria A. Jacome (’21) – “Our Covid Story”
Andrea Blanco (’21) – “Covid Diaries – Sole Entry”
Trinity Hollis (’23) – “Breathing Machine”

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