Kit Richards

SPEAKERS: Makayla Rockhold, Kit Richards

ROCKHOLD: Hi, I'm Makayla Rockhold with the COVID Oral History Project at Wells College. Today's date is April 11 2022. I am in weld with Kit. Here's an unrehearsed recorded interview. Thank you for letting me interview you. So I would like to begin by getting to know about your background. Could you start by telling us about yourself like your full name, your date of birth and where you were born?

RICHARDS:I'm Kit Richards, you said date of birth?

ROCKHOLD:Mhmm

RICHARDS:Kit Richards I was born November 7 2002. I'm from Elmira, New York, I'm a sophomore here at Wells. That's pretty much it for background, I guess.

ROCKHOLD:Could you give us a little bit of what Elmira is like?

RICHARDS: All well kind of market ourselves as Mark Twain country, because he wrote a couple of books there and he's buried there. His wife and a couple of his kids were, like, died and were buried there for he was so he was like, Hey, might as well get buried there too.

ROCKHOLD:bunker down here.

RICHARDS:Might as well just do the same. So he's buried there as well. And it's kind of like, the main thing. There's the very first female astronaut is also from there, and very popular football players from there. Other than that, it's not, there's not much to it.

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:There's a lot of prisons there in New York City, and like a bunch of other cities, so a lot of prisoners get transferred between a bunch of the prisons. So for me, it's just like, a small town with a lot of crime

ROCKHOLD:Oop-

RICHARDS:And a lot of drugs. So that's, that's pretty much

ROCKHOLD:would you say it's similar to here or extremely different?

RICHARDS:Size wise, it's a little bit bigger than here.

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:stuff is a lot closer, but honestly, it's not that different driving from here to like, the nearest like Union Springs supermarket Yeah, about the same distance. So like driving 20 minutes to the nearest anything is pretty much the same. Like from here to like, the little market down the street is about how long it would take for me to walk to like a 711. So it's not that different. For me, it's about the same scale as what my high school was like. So that's why I came here in the first place was I wanted something that was small and comfortable.

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:And I would have the same like community feeling.

ROCKHOLD:I can't imagine living in a place like that. I mean, coming here was a huge it was like a culture shock. Because you've been to my my stomping ground.

RICHARDS:Mhm

ROCKHOLD:So you know, it's like a minute drive to the nearest gas station and I live in very Suburban. I don't know anything about those wordings. But I digress. So who would you consider to be your family?

RICHARDS:Well, my family is very not blood related on the only people that are blood related to me directly blood related is my mom. My sisters are technically my half sisters. I never met my biological father or my half brother. You already know my my father situation I have two other dads that are not biologically related to me but have raised me so I have a lot of adopted family. My stepdad is who I consider my my dad right now. I do have another dad but he's not really in my life right now. My sisters who I consider my whole sisters are technically half sisters. We don't share the same dad. I have three nephews and a, a another niece or nephew or whatever on the way

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:I have a very large extended family. That is like I would say like adopted family like my, my stepdad is Italian and Irish. So he has a very large family. And, surprisingly, with them being Italian, Irish are very accepting of me and my everything. And my mom's family, for the most part is very, like sweet and everything.

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:So, but a lot of my family I would say is here at wells with our friends. Because I do love my family, but they're Elmira people. They're red coated, upstate New Yorkers.

ROCKHOLD:Yup!

RICHARDS:So it's very hard to find people that you can that you can trust and that you can really connect with like that. So I would say that my family my people that I connect with are here.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah. I also agree with you, I, when if someone were to ask me the same question, I probably wouldn't even mention my blood related family, it would just be friends, it would be, you'd be Fred would be Nash. It's I, what I find here is a lot of mentally ill people who have family problems. And it's really comforting, because I didn't think that when I was coming here that I would relate to people in such in such a manner. So what people did you live with, when you were growing up,

RICHARDS:I kind of bounced back and forth. I lived with my mom, a majority of my life, but a I did live with my quote unquote dad, my adoptive father for a for on the weekends, which I thought was custody, but it was honestly just out of the goodness of my mom's heart because they fell in love with me, and I fell in love with them. And you know, in my little brain, that was custody

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:for me, but it wasn't, it was just because I fell in love with them. 00:03:00And I lived with my, my, my dad, and my grandparents, my adopted grandparents on the weekends. And they were my family. They were the people honestly, for the longest time that taught me that discipline wasn't spanking and discipline wasn't verbally abusing your kids and discipline could be, I'm disappointed in you.

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:And it could be gentle parenting. So that's where I kind of learned my temperament from, because my home when I went home was with my mom was very angry.

ROCKHOLD:Yup

RICHARDS:And I mean, you know, from what I've told you is that I don't remember a good portion of my childhood. And a lot of the time my mom was working because she was a single parent for a lot of my sister and my child, like my young childhood, was I lived with her family bouncing back and forth like, Gunga,

ROCKHOLD:yeah

RICHARDS:My grandma, and other family members that could take care of us.

ROCKHOLD:Yup

RICHARDS:So it was very bouncing around. But then, for a year, I lived with my grandparents, for when my mom like, for when I was having a really hard time when we had to move from the school I was used to. And then my dad got into drugs, and I could no longer safely stay with them anymore. So I had to move back with my mom. And I no longer stayed with my grandma. And my grandpa and my dad for long periods of time, because my dad ended up going to prison. So then I kind of became closer with my mom than I ever was. Because it was around that time that she had told me that my adoptive father wasn't my real dad. And I think she told me that out of like, trying to make me feel better about who my dad was. And like, I wasn't going to inherit that. But it didn't really make me feel any better.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah

RICHARDS:It just, you know, but I kind of bounced back and forth.

ROCKHOLD:With all that bouncing around. Did you have like, obviously, you were close with your mom at one point in your life like that good year. But would you say that you were especially close with her that entire time? Like did you have any one person that was that you were especially close with?

RICHARDS:I looking back my I was really close with my mom. And I was I was really close with all of my, like my parents, but I was really close with my mom. And I was really close to my grandma. But I do remember really disconnecting with some of them in some parts of my childhood.

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:Like when I would stay with certain like, when I would stay with them 00:06:00in certain parts. I remember, whenever I would switch back and forth, I just remember disconnecting. And I was specifically I was really close with my grandma that never wavered until recent years. I was always really close with her and talking with her was kind of like a like a breath of fresh air.

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:But like between my adoptive dad and my mom, I kind of would like disconnect from them separately. Like it was just hard to connect with either of them because they were never they could never be something stable. I was always like I had to choose which one was going to be the stable entity. And my grandma was always the one that had her shit together. So she was always the one that I could just kind of like rely on.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah. If one of your family members or your friends during that time, how would they describe you as a kid?

RICHARDS:I was very, I was very, I had a very big imagination I didn't need anybody to play with because I could have fun by myself, I, my sisters were very much older than me, we stayed, we were very, very close. Now, because we stayed in the same house for a very long time, like much longer than people who had that big of an age gap should have quote, unquote,

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:like my oldest sister is eight years older than me. And then my younger older sister is four years older than me. So there is quite a big age gap.

ROCKHOLD:Yup

RICHARDS:But I would have fun by myself, and I didn't have a lot of friends that would come over to my house or that I would go over to their houses. So I had a lot of toys, though. So I could just have fun by myself. And like, we create a bunch of like, like, worlds in my head. And it was, I was very, I was never bored, I can say that. And I never, there was never really a dull moment, like I loved being outside. And I, you kind of have to like pull me inside after a certain like, once it got dark.

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:So I was just always doing something. I was never just sitting there doing nothing.

ROCKHOLD:I was the exact same thing as a kid. And that's why my mom's favorite line, when she talks to me is You're so different than you were as a kid because I used to just be so joyful. And now I'm just a depressed college student.

RICHARDS:Yeah, an adult.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah an adult So because they like to rip that from you your creativity. Do you have one like specific special memory about you as a kid?

RICHARDS:Um, I used to bake a lot with my grandma. And there was this one apron that she had, that she had specifically made for me, because she was like the typical grandma that would bake. And so and, you know, stuff like that. And you know, there was just, I have a bunch of like, good memories from that time. But there, there's just like a bunch of stuff like that. One was when she made we made together it was the first thing that we ever made, you know, as a collaborative

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:thing was a blanket that I that is still at her house, but we made this blanket together. And you know, she was really proud of being after that. But the other one that I told you about, was when she told me that when women were in the kitchen, and they were baking with vanilla, they would dab that behind their ears.

ROCKHOLD:Yes

RICHARDS:their husbands would smell it and start nibbling behind it. And that always has stuck with me.

ROCKHOLD:Now I kind of want to try that. I don't ever have vanilla extract, but I think I'm gonna go to the Dollar Tree, just to buy it for that sole purpose.

RICHARDS:Whatever I like I smell it. I always debit behind like,

ROCKHOLD:Awww

RICHARDS:Oh, it smells so good.

ROCKHOLD:That's so sweet. Oh, so now we're gonna skip from childhood to more present tense. Well, no, it's a little bit in the past. So when did you first start to think about going to college?

RICHARDS:Um, I didn't think about college until I would say like, Junior year like I I was so scared of leaving, to be honest. Like, I was very much coddled my entire, my entire youth, and even until like my early adulthood,

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:or at my late adolescence, but I started thinking about it when my grandparents, the same grandparents started talking to me about it. And they're like, Hey, do you have any plans? And I was like, hell no. I don't. Well, I always knew that I wanted to go into psychology. That was never a question for me. Like, I always wanted to be a psychology major in something with criminal justice. Like that was never a question for me, but I just never really knew where when, how. Yeah,

ROCKHOLD:Did you have any preconceived notions of what college was going to be like before you even got here?

RICHARDS:I thought that every college was going to be ginormous, and I was going to be lost in that. I honestly thought that I was just gonna go to my community college,

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:which I didn't want to do because I fucking hated everyone in my school and I was just so miserable thinking about going to college and just the thought of like, having to be stuck with these people that I knew my entire life and honestly, it started some drama at my school because I had said like *burp*Excuse me-I has said like Oh my god, I hate Corning because it's all just 00:09:00the same people and stupid like, I don't want to do that. And apparently some Bitches were like, Oh, so you think people who go to Corning are stupid?

ROCKHOLD:Yes

RICHARDS:Yeah sure

ROCKHOLD:Yes. I had the same problem. Before I even got into wells. I applied for my local college, which I didn't want to go to because it's literally right across the street from my high school. Right across the street. It's like from me to like, the dining hall. No, and I knew a lot of my high fellow high schoolers we're gonna go there. No, no, babe, I hate you. I want to get out so bad. So when did you first start to hear about our beloved whilst college?

RICHARDS:So I, my grandparents.

ROCKHOLD, RICHARDS:*Together* My grandparents

RICHARDS:My great aunt actually lives in the area, like she lives in Aurora. And when I was younger, I didn't know this. But we used to go on the lake and on our boat, like we would go swimming in Cayuga lake. And I didn't know that. But my grandma was like, Hey, do you remember that area like Auburn, Aurora? And I was like, no, no. And she was like, Well, let me show you. Let me show you the area. And so like she Googled it, and she was like, Oh, here's like, here's Auburn. Here's Aurora. Here's wells college. And then she showed me the website. And I don't know how the hell she knew about this place. But like, she showed me everything. And I just fell in love with it.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah

RICHARDS:Because I want the architecture. Like I am in love with like, old. Just everything like old architecture. Like once I found out that it was like over 100 years old. I was like, of course, like I have to. And then my dad and I did our own research. Because my grandma's horrible with technology. We did our own research. And him and I are so into like creepy stuff. And then we found out it's in like the top 10 in New York, like haunted, haunted campuses. And I was like, okay, yeah, I have to

ROCKHOLD:Was that,was that like your deciding factor was?The haunted-ness?

RICHARDS:It was the haunted campus. It was a haunted campus. The size of the classrooms at that time was like 15 to one

ROCKHOLD:Yup.. mhmm

RICHARDS:with the professors. And then it was the the Hogwarts style. Hogwarts style dining hall. And granted I you know me, I don't give a shit about Harry Potter. But even in watching like the Harry Potter movies I have always loved like the style of what Hogwarts has looked like. And I don't care about like Harry Potter. I honestly hate it. And I hate the movies. But I still love how beautiful the building is.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah, the Hogwarts Castle. If that's what that's called. I think that's what it is. What experience were you hoping for when you came here? Like the Hogwarts experience?

RICHARDS:Well, we didn't get to come here and look at the campus until August, 00:12:00like no, like, on May, I think. And even then it was it was way too early for something like we couldn't look at the buildings or like the places where people it was like COVID Yeah,

ROCKHOLD:it was when COVID started

RICHARDS:At what we were going to live in.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah

RICHARDS:So I was hoping for more in terms of lodging

ROCKHOLD:things or you could always hope for more when it comes here.

RICHARDS:Yeah, dorming.

ROCKHOLD:Lodging

RICHARDS:I was also hoping for more in terms of diversity.

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:Granted, granted, the diversity is better than Elmira you have to take into account of where I come from where I could count on one hand, maybe two hands, give or take the amount of POC, that were in my school.

ROCKHOLD:Yep

RICHARDS:I come from a PWI. This is a PWI but a slightly less PWI from where I come from. But also, you have to think think we had Andre Lynch when I came here.

ROCKHOLD:Yes we did

RICHARDS:Andre Lynch was hyping it up to the max he was such a good PR for this place.

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:Like it was it was seeming so good from the way that he was like he was a motivational speaker.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah.

RICHARDS:And it was seeming like I just fell in love with the way that he was explaining it and I was expecting so much and nobody was saying the saying otherwise

ROCKHOLD:Yeah

RICHARDS:because like, you know who's gonna say anything if they don't know what's happening either. So I was just expecting everything that they were offering.

ROCKHOLD:So when you before you came here Did you have a different major in mind? Or did you already know what you wanted?

RICHARDS:Oh, no, I already knew what I wanted. I was a psychology major.

ROCKHOLD:Why did you decide on being a psychology major,

RICHARDS:I was always interested in the way people's minds works worked. I have a lot of mental health problems and my family.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah

RICHARDS:My entire family is mentally ill. I grew up with my mom being an alcoholic, and my father, every parent that I've had has a substance abuse problem, even the parent that I haven't met, was was addicted to substance abuse substances, sorry. And both my sisters have learning disabilities. So my nephew is also autistic.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah

RICHARDS:So I've always just been interested in psychology, but specifically 00:15:00because my father went to prison, specifically, criminal psychology, because of how him going to prison affected me, and how his crimes affected him and the people around him

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:because I was firsthand, experiencing everything that his crimes affected,

ROCKHOLD:Yup

RICHARDS:meaning how they affected me how they affected my grandmother, my grandfather, everything around them. And you also think at this time, I was the main person getting like, everything about that, because my mom didn't know that my dad was addicted to drugs. She didn't know everything that was going on in that house. And my grandma, my grandmother was telling her, so I was like, witnessing everything firsthand, and experiencing all of these crimes happening around me. And she, like I couldn't tell anyone and no one knew.

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:So that's why that's usually how it goes for a lot of psychology majors is that they experience the secondhand occurrences of mental health problems or crimes, and then they just, they want to figure out why that happens.

ROCKHOLD:What do you want to do specifically with your degree? Like, what is your top choice of what to do with it?

RICHARDS:My top choice is criminal profiling, or something within forensic psychology. So that's kind of like Renfrow will probably know. wink wonk.It's like, you know, it's kind of like, what I really am interested in is, I don't necessarily the sounds really bad in the way that I'm going to describe it, but I don't necessarily want to help them. Wanna help criminals, criminals, for lack of a better word, but um, you know, kind of issuing, like, what is the word? It's like, you know, psyche vows and just working in the court, basically. Yeah. Which is wondering, I also am thinking eventually down the road of getting like, a law, a law degree,

ROCKHOLD:Yup

RICHARDS:maybe, because I don't really want to work with like the police or anything.

ROCKHOLD:So time to get into the nitty gritty of why exactly, I'm interviewing you. So we are going to go pre COVID during COVID. And after question, Mark, because we're still in it, but stuff like that. So when was the first time that you heard about COVID?

RICHARDS:So I took a economics slash government class. And so it was like, the firsthand or not firsthand. First half slash second half of the year type of class.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah

RICHARDS:it was a it was a class that I took through our community college. And the first time we weren't, it was, you know, we're supposed to do government, or economic current events. And so in January of that year, December, January, 00:18:00somebody did, we all had to do current events, and then we would talk about it in the past. And then somebody did what was actually think it was me. Somebody had to do, or we were just talking about current events, and mine was Wuhan, China. And I was like, Hey, this is happening in China. There's a bunch of people that are getting sick with an unknown disease, and it's been traced back to this market. The seafood market and nobody really knows, like, what is happening. So that's the first time that kind of got a glimpse into what was going on.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah. What were people around you saying about COVID When it first started,

RICHARDS:So when it first started like, like when it like when people were first getting it, like when it touched down, or when it was still happening in China

ROCKHOLD:when it was still happening happening in China.

RICHARDS:So when that was happening, people weren't really concerned. Um, For me, I was I was like kind of paying close attention. Because I was in the government class and like, you know, we had to,

ROCKHOLD:Yeah

RICHARDS:but a lot of people weren't really concerned at the time. I don't really remember hearing a whole bout home a whole lot about it.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah.

RICHARDS:Besides me, Christina, my friend back home.

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:There wasn't a lot of people that were like talking about at the time,

ROCKHOLD:for me, the beginning of the pandemic when it first started, and it wasn't even a pandemic. But when it was in China, it made me realize how racist people were. Because they're like, oh, you know, the Chinese disease. It was awful. Especially like when the first case came here.

RICHARDS:Okay, so now I understand what you're saying. So when it first when the first case happened in the United States in January, because I remember when I remember when we talked about it in that class, when the first case, it was like January 12. I think it first occurred in America. Around January, February, from that picture I showed you, when my friends that I went to Philadelphia, Christina and I, Christina, I will clarify for whoever's listening was is Asian was Asian is Asian. And so we were in a CVS. And there were kids, and that were a Hispanic, some, some variation, I don't know specifically, but they did speak Spanish, and I'm assuming it was their first language or just a language that they spoke very well. And, you know, her and I, at the time, spoke very spoke and understood Spanish very well, because we were in college level Spanish. And they probably assumed that her and I didn't speak it. And so they looked at her and they said, the Asian has Coronavirus. And she literally looked at them and 00:21:00was like, like, just like what do you do in that situation? Like you don't. And that was like one of the first experiences that we have ever heard. That was the first time we didn't have even heard of someone like doing that to another person because of the Coronavirus, like, and she was just like so confused and appalled and hurt. Because, like at that time, there was nothing you could do about it. There was nothing you could do about there was no vaccine, there was not even masks.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah, yeah!

RICHARDS:Like, no masks are out. We didn't even know like, where people were being infected. Like there was nothing you could do. And so you were just being like, harassed in a public place for something that nobody was understanding.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah, I can't even begin to think about how much that hurt her.

RICHARDS:Even, like, it hurt me as like a second hand experience. Part like, I'm white, obviously.

ROCKHOLD:Mmm yeah

RICHARDS:Like to not understand how to help. And I, first of all, didn't even hear it. But to not understand how to how to not even know who they were because they left by the time she had come to me. And to like, just like have like so much anger into like, like I wanted to like fucking find them.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah,

RICHARDS:I was like, like, what do you? What do you do? Like it was so fucking frustrating?

ROCKHOLD:Yeah. When did you know that COVID was turning into something serious.

RICHARDS:So the day that a lot of that time was a blur. But I would say in February, because they started talking about possibly going into lockdown. Like at the end of February, in the beginning of March, because I remember I remember the exact day that we went into, because it's like a whole like vivid memory for me.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah. So obviously, were you a student at Wells when the pandemic began.

RICHARDS:Yeah no I wasin highschool

ROCKHOLD:So obviously, that does not apply. So now we are in the lockdown phases. So where were you when the lockdown started?

RICHARDS:So I was my senior year of high school. The date was Friday, March 13 2020. And it's not funny, but it was funny to me. And it's funny looking back because I was wearing my Friday the 13th shirt. I was in law in the library at my school for our study hall and I look out and we have our buildings marked on the side of the building on the side of the building, and the whole day we're all waiting for the school. to dictate if they're going to, because it was that 00:24:00Friday was the start of spring break, and they're going to dictate if they're going to add an extra two weeks to the spring break.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah,

RICHARDS:quote, unquote.

Unknown Speaker ROCKHOLD:Mhmmmm

RICHARDS:And I look out the window. And it's the end of the day. And I was kind of just asking myself, like, I like is this going to be like, just two more weeks, and I look up and I look at the building, or I look out the window, and on the side of the building was a 13. And I was like, this isn't going to be just two weeks,

ROCKHOLD:I was convinced that it was just going to be two weeks because I think I was a little bit not ignorant. I just had no idea that this was going to be more than two weeks, I took a picture on Snapchat, that that was a picture of me in front of my high school and said, two weeks, two week break. Thanks, COVID or something like that. Ha ha ha ha, well, how well that age?

RICHARDS:No I remember. We were leaving. One of the teachers, when we were leaving was like, have a good extra week of break. And I literally was like, Yeah,

ROCKHOLD:about that. So who did you spend lockdown with?

RICHARDS:I spend lockdown with my mom. And my stepdad. I also partially spent it with Christina because she just lived up the street. And her mom is not an essential worker. She is a nail technician. But her dad is an essential worker. *clears throat* Jesus.He works as like, like a welder who works at Hellions. My dad worked from home and my mom is a government worker. So we would like kind of go back and forth between each other's houses. And you know, just kind of spend our time that way, because there was literally nothing else to do. And it was summer basically.

ROCKHOLD:Mhm..this is a really loaded question. And you can take this however, whatever road you would like, how did your life change during the lockdown?

RICHARDS:well you see, school was still in session, then we still had finals and everything. We still have projects, and I was technically a college student at that time. So there was the academic struggle. Which honestly, I don't even remember most of

ROCKHOLD:Me neither.

RICHARDS:But I would say the most of the challenge came from being isolated with 00:27:00your own thoughts. And my mom is immunocompromised. So when most people were like, Hey, do you want to do this? Like, it's just COVID I was like, my mom has an immunodeficient disease. My mom has Hashimotos thyroid disorder, and she's also had multiple strokes. Like I can't just go hang out with you. The only person I was willing to just hang out with was Christina and it's because she lived up the street. Her parents literally, I don't mean to sound like this, but her parents are from another country. In Asia, they have moved, or they have gone to multiple countries multiple times. And Asian people usually are super clean.

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:Because they like especially when they travel all the time. So like they understand, you know what I mean?

ROCKHOLD:Yeah

Unknown Speaker RICHARDS:Like, clean everything. Like when I walked in, they had the hand sanitize. Like I took off my shoes like I was always clean. When I walked in.

ROCKHOLD:Yup

RICHARDS:They wiped down every food item that they had they cleaned every like food item that they don't they ate. So I never was at risk of having COVID When I went there

ROCKHOLD:with most like Asian countries, even if they have the flu. They wear a mask.

RICHARDS:Exactly.

ROCKHOLD:So there I would trust them with my life.

RICHARDS:The only person that was at risk in that house of getting it was the dad and they wore masks they double mask all the time at Hillier and you're not even near anyone because you're balding.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah.

RICHARDS:Also I before COVID I was a cis woman so I don't know when I started questioning. Well, I That's a lie I questioned my gender for a very, very long time. I questioned it ever since I hit puberty when I was like 13 I don't even questions when I was a kid. But during COVID During lockdown, it was a very hard time I guess to be like trapped with your own thoughts.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah.

RICHARDS:Because you don't have anything else to do besides just sit and think about your sin. Think about the stuff that like going out with your friends or like going to school would distract you about. But when you're just sittin in the house, and there's nothing else to do, but just look at yourself in the mirror, and think about everything that you've been putting on the backburner.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah

RICHARDS:there's nothing else. So eventually, I just had to come to terms with the fact that hey, I'm not a girl. This Sheena, you work in like that this is not right anymore. So I eventually just had to, like, stop lying to myself

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:Just come clean with it.

ROCKHOLD:COVID really did a number on people who are mentally ill. I had a lot of startling realizations, when the only thing that I had was my phone, and my room. My mom was at work at night all the time. I had no one. I had no brothers, no sisters, no one no friends, even at that time, even if I wanted to risk going out. It was that shit was awful. And I don't ever, I don't want to wish that on anyone else.

RICHARDS:The only solace I had at that time was little, because we had just gotten Lola like that may.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah.

RICHARDS:So it was such a godsend that we had her because she was always in my room. And I think that that lockdown was when she stopped like she had just gotten so she was always in my room. And I think that that time is when she had like, bonded with me.

ROCKHOLD:Mhm

RICHARDS:Because before then she was always like you know in her kitten phase like wanting to like fight and like whatever. But then after that, like she was always with me always in my room always snuggled up next to me sleeping with me. Like she was just always with me. After that.

ROCKHOLD:Shout out to Lola.

RICHARDS:Shout out to my cat

ROCKHOLD:shout out to kids cat. So if you had your own, like YouTube channel, and you were vlogging What was your typical day? Like? What? What would you do in a day?

RICHARDS:Oh, my god. Um, I would get up. I don't know what at what time but I would get up. I probably pretty early in the morning because its me and I would eat a bowl cereal every day. I would probably sit in the living room with my my mom and my dad. You know, my dad gets up pretty early, he would wait for my mom. He would wake my mom up and everything. I would wait for her to get a shower. Then I would take a shower after her. And then I would shoot the shit with them. I would wait for we would watch the news in the morning together. I probably have coffee with them because I'm fucking 65 He would take my mom to work. I would go into my room. And then honestly, I would just fuck around for the rest of the day. I could not tell you what happened in that day. Like I would probably do makeup. I would try and read something if my brain would allow me to because at this time I wasn't medicated for anything. I would test my gender.

ROCKHOLD:Drive my gender.

RICHARDS:I would just do whatever. That's when I started getting into tick tock and everything.

ROCKHOLD:Ohhhhh

RICHARDS:When I started making those videos.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah,

RICHARDS:there was nothing else to do. So

ROCKHOLD:it's amazing how creative we got it. No honestly if it weren't for tick tock I think I don't know what I would be doing half the time I couldn't I can't even think of what I did. I think I cried a lot. Over like not going back to 00:33:00school. I had bought my prom dress before actually know what came during lockdown. And just getting like my cap and gown. It was traumatic. Well speaking of like trauma. If you can like pinpoint what challenges did you face specifically

RICHARDS:Over like the whole like COVID?

ROCKHOLD:Yes.

RICHARDS:Well, it was you know, transitioning. Transitioning itself has not really been that hard. But I did lose a lot of people along the way. I we talked a lot about my grandparents like through this a lot more than I honestly thought because I didn't really think about how they were the people that got me here.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah,

RICHARDS:they introduced me to Wells They were the first people that drove me up here. And they're no longer in my life. My grandparents no longer talk to me because I'm trans.

ROCKHOLD:Yup

RICHARDS:And it's like, I don't talk about it like it's a big thing. But that's because I've talked about it so much. And it's, I've, I've cried about it a lot. And I've had so many people trying to justify it to me. I've had therapists tried to justify it to me, and there's, I'm just sick and tired of trying to have trying to justify someone else's ignorance in my own head. And have other people try to justify it to me like there's no, there's no reason for you to stop loving someone because of something they can't control.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah

RICHARDS:I've also had multiple, I mean, I've had COVID. And that was scary in and of itself, because I couldn't see my mom. I couldn't go home and see her. And then we, as a whole. It was scary because Fred almost died.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah.

RICHARDS:And that even. I was scared because I, when I woke up and Nash told me Fred's in the hospital was scared because you have that bit of guilt. Because I was the first one to get it. And I passed it to Fred and Fred is he was born prematurely, and he smokes, smoked. And, you know, I, I knew he would probably he fine because hes younger but if anything had happened I would feel like its my fault.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah.

RICHARDS:Because I didn't purposely get COVID. Obviously, no one does that on purpose. And it's not like I went to a massive party. I went to the hospital because I felt sick. And I got COVID.

Rockhold:Yeah

RICHARDS:I got COVID from a nurse. And that's what's even scarier is that I got COVID Because a nurse transmitted it to me. And then I gave it to my friend who has underdeveloped lungs, and then he had to go to the hospital.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah. And this wasn't even like a long time ago. This was, what, five 00:36:00months ago, this was in December.

RICHARDS:And it was it was something that like, we just joked about, and it's

ROCKHOLD:yeah,

RICHARDS:it was, we joke about him almost dying all the time. But that was one that like he legitimately like, if he had if he had, if anything had happened to him, I don't think I would have blinked that. Okay, like, I don't if he had like, more than happened to him, I don't think that I would have been okay.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah. A little a little sidebar. I spent a lot of money because Fred was in quarantine and dodge south. And I don't know how I didn't get COVID I took four COVID tests, and all of them came back negative. But I spent a lot I spent maybe $500 trying to get him food because the food here sucks. That was a really traumatic time, because I had no friends here. This was the last week of school, so no one was here. That sucks. So bad.

RICHARDS:It was also that time was when I realized I wasn't in love with Nash

ROCKHOLD:Yeah, that was

RICHARDS:that was that it was that time. And it was, it was when I realized that I was asexual or No, I was on the ace-spectrum. And I was like, I how do I keep doing this?

ROCKHOLD:Yeah. So how, if you you obviously have how have you overcome these obstacles?

RICHARDS:Therapy?

ROCKHOLD:Yeah, that's enough said . On the flip side, were there any unexpected benefits that came from Locked down itself

RICHARDS:So you mean Fred and Nash have bonded a lot over lockdown

ROCKHOLD:Yeah.

RICHARDS:Just like us being like, we I don't think we would have been as close if lockdown didn't happen, I think.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah. So our next little section is being a college student. So in what ways did the pandemic like impact you as a college student? And what challenges did you face because of the pandemic in college?

RICHARDS:Well, I have ADHD, so it's harder like with, I'm trying to make it look a lot online because balls is not an online campus.

ROCKHOLD:No

RICHARDS:So you have to be in person for it. And I think like a lot of professors try to just be like, Oh, well, this is what you have to do to go online to get it and then you're like, What the fuck am I supposed to be doing? Like I don't I don't, I don't understand. So trying to it's a good thing and a bad thing to be like pushing everything online. But like, for me, personally, I have migraines all the time. So like having everything online for me, is a negative

ROCKHOLD:Yeah.

RICHARDS:But itsway more accessible a lot of the time to have an online because 00:39:00the school does have like open access to like laptops and Wi Fi *inaudible*

ROCKHOLD:So, wells obviously has a lot of, sorry for the cut in the recording, we had to stop because I had an advising meeting. So now we're in a new location. Sorry if it's echoey. But we are we're going to pick back up on the traditions question. So do you know enough about the traditions to talk about it?

RICHARDS:Not really. When we came here, it was mid COVID. So we didn't really do a lot of traditions

ROCKHOLD:Yeah. So we could just breeze over that question. So did you notice differences in perception of the pandemic, between the community at Wells, and then the community that you had back home?

RICHARDS:A lot of people took a lot more seriously here than where I was. Like, when I go home, nobody really wears masks. I mean, granted, a lot of people here don't really wear them as much as they should, like, meaning like now people are starting to just take them off, which is fine. Like if you're, you know, boosters and everything back home. Even when people who weren't vaccinated or weren't booster and so on so forth. Nobody was really wanting to wear masks, people were kind of saying, like unmask the children and stuff like that. So it was it's kind of like a big COVID conspiracy town, red coded town. Now a lot of people really want to believe in science there. So

ROCKHOLD:yeah, I mean, Pennsylvania, and I think New York is also a swing state. So it really depends where, which city you're from. Because some towns near me are really liberal, especially here. Like I'd say Aurora is pretty liberal, but you go like 30 minutes. And then now you're in redneck, that country where everyone's voting for Trump in 2024. Sidebar, which he can't by the way because he was impeached twice. But I digress. But this kind of works with it, because now we're going with government responses, and then a little bit into political activism and advocacy. So as scientists learn more about the virus, government officials began to impose mandates. What did you think when the what did you think when the mask mandate began?

RICHARDS:So when the mask mandate first began, I actually wasn't outside as much I wasn't outside at all really, for any reason. So I wasn't really concerned. We bought one package of medical masks. Just because my mom was a government worker, she already had them. They already like gave them, you know, certainly 00:42:00how to package that she had got. And so we just had them. And we were concerned about like, people buying up a bunch of stuff. People were like overloading at the time, just like, you know, with any, like how they're doing now with a lot of things like when they're like when Biden said, hey, you know, you're going to see a food shortage, and so people decide that they're going to buy a shit ton of food.

ROCKHOLD:Yep.

RICHARDS:Which kind of like, negates the process. Like, that doesn't make sense. Like, stop buying everything.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah.

RICHARDS:So it was kind of like that type of thing. And so we started buying, like the reusable masks that you can wash and reuse. I didn't have a problem with it really, like, I think they're cute. You know, like, in Asian countries, they wear them all the time. And they're like, there's a lot less people that gets sick. They're just because they wear them all year round, especially when they have like, you know, common colds and flus and stuff. So i didnt really see a problem with it.

ROCKHOLD:So what were your thoughts when the vaccine was announced?

RICHARDS:I was honestly at first I was kind of nervous. Because at first, like, you know, as a common person, you're like, hey, you know, vaccines usually take a lot longer. But then I used to learn brain cells more than the average person and I looked up, like, how is this? You know, how did it become, you know, released faster than an average vaccine. And at the time, Trump was president. So he actually like explained, and Dr. Fauci I think it was explained that they had multiple different CDC workers around the country and around the globe working on different parts of the vaccine at once. Let's put it together. And that's how we have a vaccine. And that's how all vaccines should be working there. But specific, for this. For this disease, that's how they did it because it was killing people off so quickly. And we didn't have the same type of system for like AIDS or HIV back in the 80s.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah.

RICHARDS:So I like was like, Okay, so like, that makes sense. And it's in such a special circumstance, that they didn't really have time to kind of get it FDA approved. You know what I mean?

ROCKHOLD:Yeah,

RICHARDS:it was like, Okay, well, like, especially since like, I don't really believe in like conspiracy theories that they put microchips in it, because like we have we carry phones all the time. So like, yeah, if they wanted to track us, they are doing it every day. Like they have our IP address.

ROCKHOLD:Like, if they know where we are. We take the census.

RICHARDS:Exactly. We take the census, we have government issued IDs. Everyone 00:45:00has a, a security, whatever they call it a

ROCKHOLD:social security number

RICHARDS:Number, especially if you're in college, like they know where you are at all times

ROCKHOLD:Yeah

RICHARDS:it's not. It's not really believable

ROCKHOLD:Oh, so they tried to pull the oh, well, it's not FDA approved. There's a lot of things aren't FDA approved. That is not just the one thing. Also with it coming out like quickly, we had a COVID not a it was a COVID strain. That was back in like, I don't know, 2016. So they were just coming up with another with another strain, another vaccine strain the same that they're doing with delta. And the other one that came after it, I don't remember. But yeah, just it was Yeah. Omicron. So what did you think of the vaccine mandate?

RICHARDS:I, honestly, I'm very left, left wing. So I didn't really care. I'm very much for like, help your help your common man. So like, although I think that the government should like wash themselves a lot. I also do believe that they should step in when when a common good needs to be put in place. And that's what I think the vaccine mandate is. For people like my mom who is immunocompromised, I think it is very necessary for people to get the vaccine and to be mandated to get the vaccine, especially since in other countries, they didn't necessarily need to get a vaccine mandate. People were just getting it because they knew it was it what it was what was right. But for some reason, in our country, people don't have a moral compass. So they don't feel like they need to do what is right for the common man.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah I think with the vaccine mandate, along with a majority of the pandemic, it made me realize just where people stood, where it's all I'm not getting sick. My family members aren't dying. It's not happening to me. I'm young, it can't happen to me. I don't want to get vaccinated because X, Y and Z. Okay, well, your best friend's sister just died because of COVID-19 complications. But you don't want to believe it because she had pre existing disorders. Oh, what happened because of that it didn't happen because of COVID. This is real words from my mom. It's startling, to see that people really don't care about others. They won't get a vaccine for other people's health. It's a little bit a little scary. What did you make of the controversy? Oh, I already said it. Hold on. And then the next one. The government provided stimulus checks during this time. What did you think of that decision?

RICHARDS:I honestly for me, I did get I personally did not get stimulus. Because 00:48:00all of the money went to my parents.

ROCKHOLD:Yep.

RICHARDS:And now I and my parents are not for me. I didn't see any of it, which is fine for me because I wasn't working. And I am not necessarily supporting myself. My parents are supporting me. So like, I don't feel the need to see that money for other of my friends that are still technically dependent on their parents, but they're not living with their parents. They're not seeing any of that money. And I don't think that's fair. And the government is now trying to like claim back that money.

ROCKHOLD:Yep.

RICHARDS:And they didn't list it as like a loan that they needed to pay back to the government, which I think is bullshit. And I don't think that whenever they gave us money, it was ever going to be enough. Like my parents who make combined um, 115k a year. And technically we're both working, but for a little bit, my dad was out of work. So my mom was the sole proprietor and was making it would literally was half of the income for a little bit. We were only getting 6000 in a stimulus check. What the fuck is that going to do for when we were making 100k a year, and now you're giving us 6000? In a month like that, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, that doesn't, that's not going to help at all, that's probably going to give us a month worth of groceries, not like, you know what I mean? Yeah, like that. That's not going to add up to anything. And it's very, like they do calculate how much you make. And again, if that's how much you're getting a household, like us? How much have you given up to like, six kid household? One parent working? You know what I mean? Like you are calculating? So how much are you giving these people that are? Like, it's it's one one mother household has six kids and trying to feed six mouths and like how much you're giving her?

ROCKHOLD:Yeah,

RICHARDS:$50 $50 a month. Like you're not helping her.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah, it was hard for it was even hard for me because my mom's a single mom, and she only has to raise me. But she went on unemployment for a while because her job God cut inevitably because she works at the casino. So it's not a frontline worker. She's not a nurse, she's on the doctor. So eventually, she had to collect unemployment. She didn't make a lot from unemployment. That was scary for me because I couldn't get a job. So it was only her she had to come up with all of that money that originally she did on her own. So that was that was hard. And then her hours got cut. Also, I think like a year later, because of COVID coming up again, because they decided to lift the mask mandate shit got hard again. And they're like, Oh, well, we're cutting your hours in half. Sorry. And my mom makes a decent amount of money. I think she makes 55,000 a year.

RICHARDS:That's actually pretty good. Because my mom makes she's a government worker and makes like, 56 by herself, or my dad makes about like, 56. And my mom 00:51:00makes like, 60?

ROCKHOLD:Yeah, we'd be comfortable if she got married. But that's, that's, that's another problem for another time. Sorry for drama dumping. Sorry, this is this is about COVID not about my mom's relationship issues. So we're gonna go into political activism. Several political protests took place during this time. Many had to do with COVID. But others were associated with Black Lives Matter and other social movements like South Asian hate. Did you or others around you participate in these protests? And can you give us a little bit of what happened?

RICHARDS:So we had, it was a big thing for me. Well, it was a big thing for me. Because my part of some of the people that I grew up with, actually, a lot of the people I grew up with, were our black and my grandparents. And my dad and siblings and I grew up with like, I would consider leaving a very close family members are black, and I could see how much it was affecting them. And I was always like, when he first Black Lives Matter. protest happened back in 2016. When Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown was shot, I was still just a kid and I didn't quite understand what was going on. Like you, you still you understand at that point, like I was, I think we were around 12 or 13. Like you you understand that what happened was wrong, but you still don't quite get that. It's something injustice like to believe that the police are doing what they're supposed to be doing especially since they're still in school and getting all that explained. But this happened right when we graduated I mean for you and me specifically. So I have critical thinking skills. And I saw it on everyone saw it for the most part on Facebook or some other form of social media and to just see someone die online on like a main platform not like some obscure platform like Reddit or something like that. Like you see on Facebook, you see it on Instagram, Tik Tok, whatever, a man dying and you you see him die before your eyes. And I can't wait for me to as just like a white person that was traumatizing. And I can't even imagine how that must have been for some a person of color but let alone a black person, a black man, a black child to have seen a black person being killed by a police officers to people who are supposed to help you who are supposed to protect and serve you and they are the people who are killing these people. And it's still Up to this day is hard to hard to talk about without getting 00:54:00emotional. And no, it doesn't sound like it, but I'm really getting. I'm trying to compose myself for the sake of the interview. It actually kind of sent me into a depressive spiral for a little bit, because I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to help. And it was very scary for a bit because there was a time where people thought that there was gonna be a revolution. And I was prepared to be a part of that I needed to be. And there were Black Lives Matter protests in my town, and they were peaceful, but I was getting in arguments with people that I loved about what the protests were for, and the need for them. And my view of police changed. I don't trust the police. I never have trust the police. But my view on the police system changed my view on trusting any police officer officer changed, you know, which sucks because I do want to go into not law enforcement, but going to the law, the legal, legal firm,

ROCKHOLD:Mhm.. yeah

RICHARDS:to work with them. And it's, it's hard to like need to work with people you don't trust. And when I went to the to the Black Lives Matter protest, I was with Christina, she's a person of color, and I was with my godsister Arielle, and my godfather, Aidan. And it was Arielle Aidan, and then one of our friends growing up, do Vontae. And it was really hard to see them cry about people that we didn't even know that kind of to them felt like family. And I saw my godfather cry for the first time in my entire life. Again, for people that we never even knew, but I also cried. And we we got down on our knees around this man who was kind of doing like a slam poetry thing. And he was acting as a police officer. And he told us all to get down on our knees, and he started screaming at us. Stuff like, I don't like the skin of your color. I need you to get down to the ground the skin of your color scares me. Your body frightens me. And it was terrifying, honestly. And then when I got back in the car, later that day with my my dad, he said, it was nice of the police officers to block off the 00:57:00roads for you guys. And it was like, you kind of like, put things in perspective a little bit more for me, I was like, that's their job. And then it kind of like really put things more into perspective of me is that my dad is praising these people for doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing is not letting people riot against us, which they want it to do. People were like, some people were trying to be like disrespectful to us and wanted to throw stuff at us and they weren't letting them. And my dad was like, well, that's a nice of them for not letting them do that. It's not nice of them. It's their job. It's not nice of them to not hurt black people. It's their job to not hurt black people. It's their job to not be violent, or it's

ROCKHOLD,RICHARDS:*together*it's their job to protect and serve the

ROCKHOLD:Oh, that was camp.

RICHARDS:So that's when I kind of had a drastic shift in my thinking towards my entire political ideology.

ROCKHOLD:The amount of racist things that my mother and my grandmother have said, and that initial movement was frightening. was literally frightening that I heard with my own ears. I'm not going to say it for the sake of the language that they used. Because it was disgusting. I lost a lot of faith in them because they're the type of people that are like, people can be who they want to be. They could be black or white or Asian, or literally anything else or they could be gay, they could be straight, they could be trans whatever, I support them. But as soon as Black Lives Matter came out it was include racist speech here. You can't just say that You support someone, and then turn on them like a dime. That's not how that works. And then my mom calls me, like, Oh, she's like, oh, you know, my daughter is accepting of everyone, as it was a bad thing. If that's a bad thing, then lock me up, you need to me put me in the slammer.

RICHARDS:That's a weird thing to be like dissaproving of

ROCKHOLD:Yeah, it's, she's odd. She's, she's an odd one, as I have said multiple times in this entire interview. So were you engaged have any of these discussions and other ways outside of protesting,

RICHARDS:we would talk about it various times, like throughout. Throughout the first couple, like, it was still apparent in the fall semester of my freshman year here, we would talk about race. And, you know, like intersectionality, and 01:00:00stuff, when Andre Lynch was here, which was nice. I did appreciate being included in those spaces and having the chance to talk with other people. So we did talk about that a lot. And we also in my women's genders and queer studies my freshman year. I've also we talked about it a lot in my which I really do enjoy. In my forensic psychology class, my social psychology class, we talked about how race is a social construct, that unfortunately, has become a real, what is the word institutional problem. So race itself is not real, but the problems that we have caused by creating it are real. So thankfully, this school does include critical race theory, in a lot of the classes that I take, because I do take, you know, criminal justice classes, and criminology and psychology. And with that, you obviously have to take into account intersectionality and criminal intersectionality. And so I do talk about these things a lot in almost every single class that I have.

ROCKHOLD:And that's, that's great. That's why I love coming to like a liberal, a liberal arts college where we could actually have discussions like, like normal people, and then we could actually think outside the box for once. So now we're gonna get into the topic that I told you about prior to the, the recording of this, which was the illness and the grief. So if you do not want to answer these questions, let me know. And we can immediately skip to the next section. Now, I would like your personal experience with COVID. These questions will focus on illness and possibly bring up grief and other challenging topics. Remember that we could skip this if this makes you uncomfortable? Did illness impact you and your family during COVID?

RICHARDS:Yeah. I had COVID. In January, December ish. Fred obviously had it and had a very bad experience, but I don't really want to talk about that. I haven't lost any more than extremely close to me. Thankfully. My aunt did lose her dad, which was odd. Because I saw him. The first time I met him, he was at her wedding. And then just a month later, I was at his funeral. And it was just like an odd experience, because that month was just filled with funerals. Like it was just funeral after funeral after funeral. And just a lot of seeing like people 01:03:00that I loved crying, and it was just very, very odd. And seeing my sister. She also her best friend, got COVID and was hospitalized for like, half a year. And she was one of those people that were like, oh cope, it's not that big of a deal. And then soon after her best friend was hospitalized and COVID and has severe damage to her voicebox and it was actually like put in a medically induced coma because of COVID. So she had struggles with that and I have friends Nash that we're affected with loved ones who have passed from COVID So it's just everyone around me has been affected with COVID have lost people from COVID and people that can be affected by COVID. If I have a lot of ill family members, so I don't try to like take any of it lately.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah. How did this personal experiences with COVID impact your outlook on the pandemic?

RICHARDS:I try to be honestly like I'm, I'm very cautious now. Like I am very afraid to go out in public spaces. It's very rare that I go in like a very crowded area. And I used to love going into cities and like go in Philadelphia, and I've always wanted to go to New York and everything. But I'm very afraid of being surrounded by people, like I have severe social anxiety. I always have, like, I'm diagnosed with anxiety, but it's not social anxiety. It's like anticipatory anxiety. So like, severe anxiety when I have to go somewhere, you know, stupid shit like that. But like, now, if I'm in an area with a bunch of people, I just think like, I'm going to get COVID. Like, I'm going to get COVID. And I'm going to spread it. And it's like, it's severe. Because I, my mom has an autoimmune disorder. Sid has an autoimmune disorder. friend's mom has cancer. Like, it's just so many things could go wrong. And there's so many people I can affect, and it's, it's scary.

ROCKHOLD:Yeah, it's the, I don't want it to be me. I don't want to step outside my boundaries for one minute. Like, every time I step off this campus, it's always the lingering feeling in the back of my head that's like, what if I get COVID, and I spread it to everyone on this campus and everyone dies? It is, it's a real fear. But it's also extremely overdramatic, where it's like, I'm going to spread it to everyone, everyone's going to drop dead like flies, and it's all my fault. And that is such a very real fear that is now instilled in a lot of 01:06:00people. And it also makes me angry that some people don't have that sense of awareness. Like my mother, who is right back to my mom. She's currently in Florida, in Disney World, while the cases are rising, especially in Florida, and I'm going to go see her on Saturday. And that fear is extremely real. And as soon as I get home, I'm taking a COVID test and a week, I'm gonna take my own COVID test. Because if I come back positive, it's all my fault. It's not my mom's fault. It's not America's fault. It's my own. Well, any Huzi. Next one, so it's now this is in quotes, going back to normal, as we're gonna continue wrapping this up. So now that vaccines are available in cases are decreasing life is closer to how things were prior to the pandemic. How do you think that transition is going?

RICHARDS:Um, I think that people that it's way more normal than it actually is, I think that people are transitioning a little too fast. Because it's not like I mean, I know if you put it like, going back to normal in quotation marks, because I know that he knows it's not actually going back to normal. Like he, he's a criminologist. He is, he's a smart man. Dan I know youre a smart man. Um, people are transitioning a little too fast. People are not taking into account that people that are not being put into these statistics, they're not asking all those people they're not asking. There's, there's a big margin of error is what I'm trying to say. There's a lot of people that are being left out of this questionnaire, I guess. Like, if I were to go down to if I were to ask, like, who are the most effective people? Who are the who are being the most affected by COVID? It's people of color. It's how people without homes, it's older people, it's the ill, and we are not asking those people. How are you being affected by COVID? You know, why? Because they're dying. And these numbers are still rising, and we're ignoring it,

ROCKHOLD:as usual

RICHARDS:and the people that are getting sick and living are either not alerted that they're sick and passing it on to other people who are not when they're sick. Or you know, like, it's, it's kind of, because I did like a whole kind of paper on this and that's why it annoys me. Is that like a lot of people that are not getting the information that they need Eat are people that are like, you 01:09:00know, people that have been affected by the system before. So ready for the people of color who have been like, bipoc individuals, black indigenous people of color that have like, you know, women of color that have been sterilized by the past by letting doctors give them test drugs. So they're afraid that that's going to happen again, because they know how history works. And they don't want to be used as guinea pigs against black people in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. They don't want to be given COVID Just to see how it works. You know, like, they don't want to be used again. And it's not like, this isn't still happening, we know that this shit still happens, and people still get away with it. Because how would we know? You know, it could still be happening. So I thought that was kind of like a little ramble rant. But it's just like, I don't think that things are normal. And I think that people are trying to force it to be normal. But every other country is another country is still not normal. You know what I mean?Like,

ROCKHOLD:ya no

RICHARDS:they're still dealing with things in their own way. Like, granted, their cases are way lower than ours. But they're still not the way that they weren't before. There's so much trying to force them the way we're the only ones with like a super high COVID rate that are trying to force things into the way they were before. Like, they're still wearing masks, or like, you know, doing whatever they're still like, you know, having people tested and all the while bar, while we're anti mask and no tests, and no, you know, whatever.

ROCKHOLD:It's so frustrating. And now China is actually going back into a lockdown like full lockdown, you are not allowed to leave your house, you can leave your house during this cycle. And they are being tested every day, every single day. You cannot like order food, like off of a food delivery service. The government will bring it to you, they will put it on your door. If you test positive, you get tape over your door and told that you have COVID. And their cases are still rising.

RICHARDS:Yeah,

ROCKHOLD:and they don't they don't know how. Who knows, but the information is still coming out about that. But things will never be normal. They will never ever, ever, ever be normal. Even if we even if COVID becomes the flu, which eventually it will eventually and maybe 10 to 20 years. Yeah. But it's never going to be normal. It's never gonna happen.

RICHARDS:It's like the same trauma that happened with people in the Great Depression. Like they developed hoarding habits. And I have my great grandma. And then like I was with my group a little bit, so she was around for her secondary trauma. And she, like, you know, that reflected my grandparents. So 01:12:00they had that. But we're going to affect our children with whatever secondary trauma we have, whether it's people that are anti masking, whatever, like they're going to affect their children, however, and we're people who actually believe that this happened and people who are like, we're probably going to force our children to like, be super. Like, wear your masks and wash your hands. And, you know, do it ever, like, who knows what it's going to be like in the next generation?

ROCKHOLD:I feel like we're gonna Yeah, I feel like we're gonna establish like a small form of like germophobes

RICHARDS:Yeah

ROCKHOLD:like don't touch anything Lysol and after you touch it, wash your hands where hand sanitizer put your mask on, stay six feet apart. It sounds so dystopian. I mean, I do hope that we implement some of those things. Like if you're sick, stay away from people stay home. Stay away from people. Maybe we can implement something like Japan does or every like or Korea. put your mask on if you have the flu and you need to go out so you don't give it to other people. Because people will hear like oh, I didn't get the flu the entire time. Oh my God, that's because you have your mask on and you're not giving it to other people. That is so crazy. Anyway, so how will you make the like the decision to get rid of masks? So how will you make the decision? Because obviously we're still wearing masks and the masculine mandate has been lifted when will you make the for me like the decision just to be like okay, it's over. Let's like not wear it anymore. Oh,

RICHARDS:I don't think for a very long time. I will make that decision. Like I don't I honestly don't see anytime soon. Like I don't think anytime in college that I will take off my mask. Unless I'm like in a like Weren't we right now. In this like little room is just me and you unless it's like with people that I'm comfortable with that I know aren't As contagious or anything like in classrooms, if someone were to like, it doesn't matter if other people are wearing their masks, or they're not wearing their masks. I don't care if I were crazy. I am I still wear my mask in public in places where people aren't wearing their masks. Like I, I don't know when I'm going to stop wearing it. Like, I also just like the fact that people can't see my face in public.

Unknown Speaker ROCKHOLD:Yeah. It's become EU excuse me, it's become like a sense of security, because now I feel I feel safe when I have it on because we, we've allow with our masks all the time. And the New York State does not have an ask mandate. And I'm getting asked all the time, like, why are you wearing the mask? Or like when I go home to Pennsylvania, my mom's like, oh, it's funny that you're wearing your mask, like you live in New York. And I'm like, actually, they don't have a mask mandate. And she goes, Oh, my God asked me to why does it matter? You I'm having I'm making the same decision as you. You don't want to wear one? I do. I'm doing it for my safety, and as well as yours, but you don't 01:15:00give a shit. So what lessons or knowledge have you gained over the past three years of the pandemic that you will take with you into the future?

RICHARDS:I kind of gathered that the governance nobody else's opinion matters. But you're home as an individual. And you have to learn to carry the people with you, that matter to you. And like really stop caring about what other people think of you because it took a very long time for me to learn that.Because we talked about my grandparents briefly and it took a very long time for me to wonder like, why don't they love me anymore. And now I just don't give a shit. I mean, it was relatively easy to come to that conclusion for me, because I'm quite apathetic after a certain point, but over these past few years, it has become clear to me that just become an asshole. Just Just stop. Yeah, just stop caring. Just stop caring what other people think, just become a self absorbed asshole.

ROCKHOLD: Amen. And to say that you love people. You hate that you love. But I love the people, the people that I love, I love them because I do. So we're going to be closing the interview. As we conclude this interview. Are there any topics you expected or hoped that we would cover but we haven't addressed?

RICHARDS:No,

ROCKHOLD:Are there any topics in our conversations that you would like to revisit?

RICHARDS:No

ROCKHOLD:no? Okay. So thank you. It is an hour and 22 Oh, but we 23 minutes. So thank you for giving me your and very insightful input in the five pages of questions. Thank you

Transcribed by Makayla Rockhold on 5/6/22