From the class of 2021 to 2025, The Daily Tar Heel spoke to UNC students who reflected on their experiences throughout the last two years of the pandemic.
Chapter 2: 'That's what the rest of your face looks like?'
There was a curtain in the middle of Kayla Dang’s room.
Held up by the strongest Command hooks her family could find, it split the second bedroom in her Chapel Hill apartment in two during most of the fall 2020 semester — one half for Dang and one half for her younger sister, a first-year at the time.
Dang's sister had moved into her apartment after residence halls closed a few weeks into the semester due to rising COVID-19 cases on campus.
“I remember sometimes she just ripped the curtain open,” Dang said. “And with the way my Zoom was positioned, you could see her walking around in the background, or she just laid on her bed, and her foot would be popping out and I'm like, ‘Hey, put your foot away, everyone can see!’”
During fully remote semesters, like the fall of 2020, Dang said she didn’t venture out of her apartment much, other than when she went to her job at a local daycare center, KinderCare.
She said the kids were great with social distancing and masking, but it was hard at first when they wanted physical interactions, like hugs.
“They really understood that they had to do what they needed to do to keep themselves safe and others safe,” Dang said. “And it was so weird to see when a kid would take off their masks at lunch or something — I was like, 'That's what the rest of your face looks like?'”
