Public Health in a Pandemic--Guest Blogger Laura Gulizia

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Laura Gulizia and daughter.jpg

“Seriously?” I say to myself as I hear that word on my television: pandemic.

Oh, sure I know what that means since my major at Cal State Northridge is Public Health and as a student, I am taught and tested on the different disease outbreaks pretty much every semester. Yep, I chose to be in Public Health about a year before the global pandemic that is called COVID 19 decided to spread like wildfire throughout this world.

So, what does this mean for me? Well, it could mean many things. First, since in-person classes were canceled in the Spring of 2020, it means that I will be spending a lot of time at home, and I am emphasizing the words “a lot” because I have a toddler and her daycare closed, so I will literally not leave my house.

Second, many of my class topics will focus on topics related to the pandemic, so that is cool, right? I can learn about the pandemic through reading 38-page journal articles with terms like, “quantitative immune responses” and “infectiousness timing and intensity”. So, all this forefront experience dealing with the pandemic personally and then trying to study it academically seems like a blessing. Or is it?

So, this could hurt my professional career too. I am set to graduate this coming December 2020, and in the final semester at my college, public health majors need to be involved in an internship where they provide their time and serve one of the local community businesses, organizations, or what have you. Normally, a graduating senior would dedicate approximately ten hours a week to their chosen internship, but due to the pandemic, everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is online now.

I am honored to say that my educational institution has been able to allow its public health students to graduate on time by creating an exclusive online internship course, otherwise, I would have not graduated this semester and probably would have just about lost my mind. However, when I do graduate, how will it look to my prospective employers when I tell them that I never received real “field training” through my internship and just did everything, again EVERYTHING, online? These are the things that run through my mind daily. I feel that even though the pandemic has been around since March, I have lost so many skills. Although I have increased my knowledge of all things public health related, I believe many of my people skills have decreased.

Do others feel the same way? Perhaps. This makes me nervous when it comes time to interview and I find my people skills are immature to the point where it sounds like I have never had a job. This pandemic has and will change the way we go about our daily lives. The future looks bleak and seems there is no end in sight for COVID. What will the future hold for us newbie public health professionals? Who knows?

For now, though, I will finish this semester in front of my laptop, at my home, and only know my fellow students, and instructors from a virtual communication platform and a bright screen.