Psychological Science and Economics major and international student Yuange Zhou collected photographs to accompany her field diary. Here are a couple photos she captured for one of her field notes, “COVID-19 Pandemic Experience in California.”

“My quarantine anniversary candlelight dinner,” October 20th, 2020

As the epidemic situation in California began to lose control along with the “BLM” protest, most of my professors sent us e-mails about their concerns and course changes during the final week of last winter quarter and they decided to cancel final exams, adjust grading scales and policies. Many students around me also started to rumor about our entire Spring quarter would be implemented remotely—which became true, I did spend my 10 weeks of Spring quarter by quarantining myself and minimizing times of going out to public areas.

“My cat, Connor,” October 20th, 2020

I also had a very difficult time making myself and my cat, Connor, back to China. The regulations of civic flights between China and the U.S. changed rapidly during June, and even with a valid flight ticket, one was not allowed to board without a 14-day self-report of health conditions. For Connor, Chinese airlines have forbidden cats on their flight (but dogs are okay, why?), so I had to book him a flight from Los Angeles to Hong Kong, which worried me a lot at that time. Now, both Connor and I are in China in perfect health, and I donated most of my clothing and furniture to charities and my friends. I am also taking remote instruction well here, but I feel very regretful that I cannot take my graduation photos back on campus.

These are just a couple photographs from the collection Vanessa Avalos submitted to the archive, capturing the sunset at UCI and a Black Lives Matter protest in Santa Ana.

“An Empty Lot” May 14^th, 2020 

I remember taking this photo at 8 p.m. on an afternoon my boyfriend and I decided to visit an empty UC Irvine. This was the last time I stepped foot on campus. We took the elevator to the top of the Social Sciences Parking Structure and admired the sunset. I look down and see a rare sight: no cars in the lot. I remember thinking to myself how I didn’t know when I would ever go back to in person lecture, walk down to the Zot-n-Go, or browse through the Hill. I felt sad that after waiting two years for transfer, I really only had less than a year of the full college experience at UCI. You can faintly see the Target at University Town Center, where many students still go to get ShareTea or groceries from Trader Joe’s. I’m happy I got to see a beautiful sunset over Irvine that night.

“Say His Name” June 29th, 2020

I took this picture on June 29th, 2020 at around 8:00 p.m. while me and a crowd shouted “No justice, no peace” in solidarity with the black community. We had walked about an hour at this point and I remember feeling very sweaty under my mask. My friend Johana created her own little sign that says “Say His Name”. It was a very last minute project but she was happy to have something to hold up. The poster in the back says “And the trees were all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw.” These are lyrics from a song called Trees by a band called Rush. The song emphasizes the need for equality in an unrestful forest—the forest being society. I remember thinking it was a very fitting lyric and one I hadn’t seen in protests before that day. We marched through blocks in Santa Ana that night, shouting peacefully for the Black Lives Matter movement. There were other nights like this but this one was most memorable because it was in the city I was born and raised in.

Joshua is a a fourth-year Criminology, Law, and Society student. He photographed a collection of masks he had worn over the year and wrote about the significance of each mask.

“A Mask for Every Occasion,” November 26th, 2020

This picture displays several of the masks that I have worn throughout the year. I ordered the mask based on the order in which I received them, with the masks in bags being received at about the same time. The mask on the left is a homemade mask that was given to me from one of my mother’s friends. It consists of two overlapping cloths and a gap on the top that allows me to place a filter between the cloths. I use this mask in particular whenever I leave the house and interact with people in public. The more casual circumstances that I wear this mask in have led me to refer to it as my “casual mask.” I used my casual mask during the month-long household quarantine that I was in until I receive the next set of masks. I received the masks depicted in the bags during that same quarantine from my grandparents through the mail. The lower mask in the bag with the initials “JA” was the N95 mask that I wore the most during the household quarantine. When I began wearing the mask, it felt tight and filtered the air within the mask with a fragrance that I grew to disdain, because I began to associate it with the quarantine. I recall having particular difficulties putting the mask on due to the straps that I had never previously encountered. As time passed throughout the household quarantine, I began to notice the scent less and the mask itself began to fit better, because the elastic within the straps began to stretch more to fit my head. I had grown accustomed to putting on the mask whenever I left my room for any reason and even grew fond of the mask until the household quarantine was over. The masks within the bag above the N95 mask were sent near the end of our quarantine and remain currently unused. The mask on the far right is the Harry Potter themed mask that I wore on the day before Halloween for a community event and on the day of Halloween itself. I was unfamiliar with this type of mask and realized that I preferred masks with straps. With the exception of the bagged masks at the top of the image, each mask was used in vastly different circumstances and are associated with distinct memories that I have had from the beginning of the year to the months approaching the year’s end.