WELCOME

Santa Clara, we are living through uncertain times. The unfolding of the COVID-19 pandemic over the past year has brought forth unprecedented challenges and extraordinary change. We have witnessed unimaginable loss—of life, jobs, resources, and relationships—but also remarkable achievement. A vaccine for a once-in-a-lifetime virus was developed at record speed. A cultural, historic reckoning over racism converged in protests that spanned the globe. Here in the U.S., our democratic values were tested like never before. And in the midst of it all, life marched on: in new babies and marriages, in countless video calls and Zoom meetings, in distance learning, and in board games, books, and so many TV shows. 

We want to chronicle it all, from the ordinary to the amazing. Help Santa Clara Magazine, in partnership with University Library Archives & Special Collections, record history. Submit your story—in text, audio, or photo form—to this digital time capsule, which will be housed in perpetuity in University Archives and provide future generations of historians firsthand accounts of how we got through this time, together yet apart.

What to share

Whether your story is deeply personal and heartfelt or an abstract musing on your day-to-day life, it will help form a clearer picture of how the greater Santa Clara community has endured the pandemic. In order to help archivists better categorize entries for future research, we ask that you answer one of the following five questions. 

1. Did you or anyone close to you contract COVID-19? Reflect on your/their experience with the virus.
2. What has it been like to conduct the majority of your day online? If you’re a student, think about how learning has changed over remote instruction. Faculty, how has teaching changed? Staff, what is it like to conduct your entire day online, whether it be on Zoom, email, Google docs, etc.? Parents, what has it been like to homeschool your children online?
3. Consider a particular injustice and/or inequality in your community or society at large exposed by the pandemic. Tell the story of how it affected you. 
4. How has this extended period of isolation—necessitated by a virus that forces us to socially distance and wear masks while outside in order to keep ourselves and each other safe—affected you?
5. Share a specific story about your life over the last year of the pandemic.

How to share

Submissions are accepted on an individual basis. Current students, staff, and faculty may upload their story on the submission page. Additionally, to encourage student participation, individual faculty are welcome to include this project in their course syllabus as an assignment, class exercise, or for extra credit. To do so, simply have participants upload their entry and click the box at the end indicating they’d like a copy of their story emailed to them as proof of submission, which may then be turned in for credit.

Review our Submission Tips for how-to guides on recording stellar audio or writing effective short essays.