How have students at Arapahoe Community College felt since the strong changes brought on by COVID-19? #COVIDDiariesOfACC is a mini-series composed of non-fiction diary entries from students at ACC. Thank you to the student contributing writers for these pieces to publish on the Arapahoe Pinnacle.

By Dalton Giesick

My COVID-19 life has been pretty hectic in the last few weeks. I work in the produce department of a grocery store. I have had to work harder than I have ever had and in different departments because of the impact of COVID-19. My store was insane the day after Colorado announced a stay at home order. I arrived at work around 5:50 am and I usually started at 6:00 am and by that time there were people lined up outside our doors waiting to get inside. When my store manager finally opened the doors at 7:00 am, people flooded the store and were loading their carts up with everything they could get their hands on. People were taking the items off the shelves as soon as we would fill them and this emptied out our stockroom. We tried to double in items to fill the shelves, but customers kept on taking everything. We looked like we were having a liquidation sale. There was one situation where a lady had a cart filled with cases of water and this other customer came in and took a case of water out of her cart and this ended up in an altercation and hair-pulling.

I think that staying at home and trying to follow the stay at home order is one of the biggest challenges right now. A friend and I were planning to go to a show at the Paramount theatre but It was canceled and rescheduled for August. Then a few days later I was planning on going to my friend’s house but they put the stay at home order, so it looks like we will have to text each other until we can hang. I was also looking forward to taking classes face-to-face to get me out of the house and my comfort zone since this is one of my biggest disappointments. I was finally making some new friends in school and I really liked my teachers.

I pray people are not hurt by this pandemic. I hope that people who are really suffering because of this pandemic find help and we are all able to get through this together.  Hopefully this virus gets under control and we are able to live life like we used to and able to go back to class and to other fun and exciting events.