- I feel like research in general has been greatly impacted by COVID-19 because it halted everything. Especially in the social sciences, where you interview people, interact with people, definitely everything was at a stop. It was like, "What are we doing next? "How are we reaching out to people? "What now?" And I feel like the Gutchess lab took a turn for a while to be more data analysis focused. And so then we looked at COVID rates and COVID deaths, et cetera. Versus before, we would bring people in, college students, older adults, and interview them, talk with them. So definitely, research as a whole just stopped. And I know definitely, it's not just the social sciences but the hard sciences. You can't have that many people in the lab anymore, and you can't really have face-to-face meetings anymore. So everything had to be transferred online. So that was one negative thing is that everything was at a halt, and we had to rearrange everything and figure things out. However, with rearranging things and figuring things out, I feel like it made labs more resilient, more strong, and more adaptable because if people can't go into the lab that day, they can go online. And it really allowed people to reach a new way of interacting, communicating, and figure things out 'cause then now we can't really see people in person, but now we do it online via Zoom, and we have those meetings. And we reach out via email and versus in-person stuff. So definitely it really expanded the capacities of labs. So that was a different thing from the pandemic that I felt. And also just interacting with professors. Like Emma said before, not communicating via email or via Zoom. For me, that was great because I'm not really a talking in person type of person 'cause I'm very awkward at just dull moments. And so definitely with emails, it allowed me to say what I had to say. I revised it. I asked friends to revise it. So with that, I found it easier to communicate versus other people who wouldn't. And so there's a upside and a downside, but yeah.

- Yeah, I agree with Ariel on everything she said. But in addition to that, I feel like there's kind of a silver lining for me during the pandemic. I felt like I was able to take on a little bit more responsibility in the lab with data collection. I remember over the summer, yeah, the summer COVID happened, Professor Gutchess sent me an email and was like, "I know you do a lot, "but do you wanna start another project?" 'Cause I'm very interested in health and 'cause I'm an HSSP major and I wanna go into medicine. She was like, "This is a great opportunity for you." I was like, "Okay, awesome." And she actually... We Zoom chatted over the break, over the summer. And even my dad popped in into one of the meetings. So I guess a silver lining for it is getting more meetings with Professor Gutchess and with the PIs, just sending a Zoom link. That's been a quicker way. But I think something that was definitely lost a little bit was the dynamic of our lab, just coming in and being able to talk to people. But I think we've adapted a lot. We do lab meetings, and then in the beginning, we go into breakout rooms and we kind of just check in and talk to the people in our breakout room and then go back. So as Ariel said, our lab has adapted, and we've become more resilient, and we've all pushed through. And I think it's just amazing seeing the lab presentations and seeing what people were able to do during the pandemic. Like, how was this person able to get that many surveys through email and do that? So just being able to do all those things have been amazing for me to see as an undergraduate student because hopefully the pandemic will end soon, but I know probably throughout my life, there are gonna be other obstacles. And being able to see Professor Gutchess push through and all the graduate students push through and finish their research even though there's this huge obstacle in the way kind of inspired me and showed me that even if something's blocking you in a sense, there are ways to push through and you have to keep going. So having so many great examples of that has been a silver lining of the pandemic.

- More specifically to my research, I felt that it was extremely difficult with COVID to pursue my interviews with the 13 women that I interviewed, who, some were bilingual; some only spoke Spanish, and some could speak English. And also as people who probably don't have the knowledge or complete experience handling things like Zoom. Things like that. So it was very difficult for me to explain to people over the phone how to download the app and how simple the process would be because sometimes they would get frustrated or overwhelmed with the process and then we would just have to do a call and I wouldn't be able to record, and parts of the research or the interview would be missing because of it. Also, some people don't have access to Wifi. Some people don't have access to a computer. So we were doing things on a small phone at times, and it would be really hard because sometimes they would get calls in the middle of our interviews, or... Yeah, these people, they have busy lives too. So they can't dedicate a full hour of their time to the phone or the computer and not be distracted by things happening around their home. So that was for sure an obstacle, but it was really... It wasn't hard for me to get around. I am very understanding. I know the hardships and also that everyday life is just part of it, especially coming in to it very well aware that these are mothers and that some of them are also students and that they are taking part of their day to speak to me and making it work for me and want me to pursue this research and want me to write about it. So that was what made it more valuable of an experience during COVID because these women went above and beyond to ensure that I was getting the information I needed to write about it.