By Luis Ponce Pinon

Illustrated by Dannie Niu

For most, 2020 was not a great way to start the decade. With events such as the wildfires, social unrest and most notably the world-stopping Covid-19 pandemic, the year ended up being full of many challenges and sacrifices. Throughout the SCAD community, students were not exceptions to the effects of 2020. SCAD Atlanta freshmen, Anissa King, Caio Ferreira, Gabrielle Williams, Isabella Erazo and Jadyn Thompson share the tales of how they made it through the trials and tribulations of 2020. 

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the United States, life as we knew it disappeared.

Offices, schools and most public places began to shut down one by one. What we thought would only be a two-week setback turned into something that didn’t and still has no date of end, forcing many of us to make sacrifices for things we never thought we would have to. For those ending their high school journey to transition to college life at SCAD, it was especially difficult.

“I think my biggest challenge at the start of the pandemic was accepting the fact that I couldn’t finish out my senior year in high school,” said fashion major Jadyn Thompson. “Since I am a fashion major, I was designing my own prom dress. It was so heartbreaking looking at my half-finished prom dress when my high school announced that prom would be canceled. Missing out on memories from my youth was very disappointing.”

As time went on, the effects of the pandemic started to hit even more people. Through the deaths of loved ones, not being able to leave their house and financial struggles, the pandemic was beginning to reshape people’s lives.

“The biggest challenges I faced were financial issues,” said Interior Design major Isabella Erazo. “My house was hit by a tornado in the middle of lockdown and my family was already struggling because of work closing. Luckily, insurance was able to come in clutch. Financially, it hasn’t been easy, but luckily none of my loved ones were affected.” 

With challenges presenting themselves day by day, it was understandable that many had not stayed motivated artistically or even generally. But for first-year students taking their first steps in this new art-school life, artlessness was not an option. So what was it that had kept them going?

For sequential art major Caio Ferreira, it was “sheer bullheadedness and wanting to get things done.” 

For animation major Gabrielle Williams, it was looking forward to social interaction with people her age who liked similar things as her and knowing that the work she created would make her feel better at the end of the day. 

For film and television major Anissa King, her YouTube channel was what let her continue to create. College being around the corner also motivated her to keep up with life. 

For Erazo, it was “college and knowing that time and life keeps going on, no matter what.” 

And for Thompson, it was the fact that the entire world was in this together.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is shown that more than one-third of Americans say that the pandemic lockdown is having a serious impact on their mental health. It has been common for people to find or develop new or existing hobbies to help cope with the stress. Sources such as the World Health Organization have said that art and creative hobbies have been a great outlet, and our new SCAD students show that. Throughout the pandemic, these five first-years used this time to learn and develop new skills like playing the guitar and rollerskating or going back to old hobbies such as Perler bead art and playing the piano. 

“2020 made me spend a lot more time with myself. It taught me not to be so hard on myself. I learned to use my art as an escape and not to add my art on top of everything else I was stressing about. It really helped me get through most of 2020,” said Thompson.

King also had a similar experience in 2020 that not only helped her keep creating but also have her voice be heard during a very important part of the year: the summer of the Black Lives Matter protests, following the death of George Floyd. “During 2020 I was asked to create a film commission in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and the current racial injustice. It really helped open my eyes. I was glad that I could contribute to help end the injustice and amplify my voice,” said King.

As we moved through 2020, our eyes were opened to many things. People came out of 2020 knowing the importance of mental health and self-care, of having a back-up plan like Erazo, of learning to make the most out of what life gives us like Thompson. Many first-year students, at the age of eighteen, had their first big lesson in patience and understanding like King.

Making it through 2020 wasn’t an easy task. Many, unfortunately, didn’t. As we move on to the rest of this new Roaring Twenties, onto the possibilities and blank spaces of this next decade, it is important that we resist the temptation to forget. 2020 has brought pain and growth, has stirred up the good and bad parts of society, and has taken victims as much as it has left gifts. We come out the other side to a new normal, an abnormality, that we cannot ignore and suppress. 2020 is the kind of year that we keep in a glass box, the kind that we must re-examine and re-peruse in order to fix the problems we now see before us, to honor the people that were taken from us, to keep up the things that have helped and uplifted us. And we hope, as the new decade rolled in all around us, that it is up from here.