How has COVID-19 Isolation Impacted Scientists?

For Dr. Mike Gil, he works with colleagues he really admires and respects, and also likes on a personal level. So for him, it’s been super sad not being able to interact with those people face to face.

In the beginning, Dr. Jenan Kharbush was super stressed. She couldn’t sleep and was constantly worried. Everyone was worried.

Dr. Isaac Ligocki had to go about really evaluating how he goes about teaching. That in itself has been time consuming, stressful, and frustrating.

As a Sea Turtle Biologist, Dr. Joe Pfaller works on the beach in the summer and so COVID’s first big hit happened during his off season. In the off season, he does a lot of work from home and his computer. So, when COVID first popped up he was already isolating at home and things weren’t very different for him at that point. However, as he works for a Nonprofit the pandemic has effected their budget and end of year as paid volunteers weren’t allowed to come in.

Dr. Katlin Bowman was also really lucky when things hit the fan that she was in a phase of her work where she really needed to sit at home and write. She’d wrapped up lab work before March 2020, and was initially in a really good place with her work.

Dr. Kat Beheshti, was still a Ph.D. candidate at the time COVID hit and finished her doctorate during the pandemic. At the beginning of the pandemic she was finishing up the writing of her dissertation. So, she was working from home, writing, and stuck inside barely seeing the outside world for months already. However, once she didn’t have a choice and was forced into pandemic isolation it became really hard to focus.

Amelia Munson loves talking, and being excited. So, being alone has been hard especially when combined with being surrounded by everything in the news in the world that are sad, and hard to get excited about. It can be super draining. She’s been trying to find solace in her science. Getting to think things through and work on her papers, and have the time to move forward with that has helped. But it’s still super rough, for everyone.