A Displaced Student

A Displaced Student

Frank Kalisik

On March 10, 2020, UW-Milwaukee was on spring break. With no classes scheduled for that week, many students left campus, returning to their homes. I was still living in my apartment in Murray Hill on the north side of Milwaukee when on March 10, I received various emails from the Provost and various professors the History Department that we would be going on an extended spring break due to the COVID-19 pandemic while the university assessed the situation. My situation had not changed much at that point, as I was still working on my own class projects during that week. However, on Friday March 13 I returned home to Joliet, Illinois to visit my parents for the weekend. Later that weekend, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker issued a “Stay at Home” order after crowds of people gathered in Chicago to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. It was this executive decision on Sunday March 15 that I realized the severity of the pandemic, and that UWM’s classes would more than likely be brought online. Since the quarantine order requested residents to remain in their homes, I returned to my Milwaukee apartment, gathered some clothes and my books, and went to live with my parents for the duration. I had been teaching an online course this semester, so I was not as affected as some of my students, who have expressed to me their concern and struggles with the transition to full-online classes. I remained at home with my parents until March 20, when my parents decided to move in with my mother’s dad, who is immunocompromised and lives alone in Steger, Illinois, not far from the Illinois-Indiana border. This also allowed my parents to begin to pack up their home, as the house is for sale. Since March 21, I have been doing most of my studying and teaching my online class from both homes, traveling back and forth between the two locations and my apartment in Milwaukee every week. Instead of utilizing the library or my office on campus in Holton Hall to do my work, I have been working on dining room folding tables. These tables turn into make-shift desks that are often more cluttered and unorganized than my typical workspaces. There has been little structure, no real schedule, or any consistency since UWM transferred the remainder of the semester online. Even though this has made projects difficult, the precautions and executive orders in both Wisconsin and Illinois are extremely important. After “Stay at Home” orders were extended in Illinois and Wisconsin in late April, I decided to return to my Wisconsin apartment on May 1 to regain some stability in my daily schedule for the remainder of the semester. Once the semester is over, I will more than likely return to Illinois and go back to travelling between various homes.