Cade Orchard Interview, May 29, 2020

SEGMENT SYNOPSIS: Cade Orchard discusses the impact of COVID on his life from Hot Springs, South Dakota, where he is completing an internship for the Mammoth Site. He shares that he lost his grandmother to COVID, and how that painful experience has personally connected him to the pandemic. SUBJECTS: COVID-19; (Hot Springs, South Dakota)

Hi, my name is Cade Orchard. I am currently in Hot Springs, South Dakota on internship for the Mammoth Site. I'm originally from Indiana, and I was invited to share a little bit by Maren Orchard.

So, talking about COVID-19, it's obviously not been great for a lot of reasons. Personally, number one thing that stands out to me, has affected me, is my grandma passed away last month from complications. She was pretty advanced in age, and we weren't expecting her to be around much longer, but it was still a pretty painful experience. And yeah, something I definitely feel personally connected to this pandemic by.

A lot of smaller things too, just normal life getting disrupted. I am attending Earlham College, next fall I'll be a junior. And we left kind of mid-March before spring break. And I was living at home for two months in quarantine with my mom and dad, which was pretty nice, all things considered. I'm really glad I had a place to go back to, that I enjoy. But it was really hard, mentally, missing all of your friends obviously, and I was supposed to finish, like, my track season. And all the little traditions that we have in our school, it's really hard letting go of. Luckily, our graduating seniors put together this really fast ceremony within 24 hours that was, you know, great for morale, especially going into, like, the two months of not really being able to see each other. But, uh, that was nice in some ways. I really think that's brought a lot of us together. But it's not ideal.

And our learning was affected a little bit by then. Being able to have our online classes was really nice, especially the ones that kind of kept on a consistent schedule and were synchronous, was really helpful just for keeping myself in that same mind frame. But, uh, the ones that weren't synchronous, ones were there were a lot of students that, we have a lot of international students, or ones that couldn't come at the same time, it was a little bit rougher in those classes. Sorry about my throat. I have been working in a bone bed all day, my throat is very dry. It's just dust everywhere.

But, uh, things that have kind of kept me going through all this. Definitely, my internship here not getting canceled was helpful. A lot of friends I have in the sciences who had research planned or internships got cancelled. And that's a, that's one nice thing about being out here, where people kind of want things to keep going as normal. It is a little bit scary on the health side, on like, should we continue to have an internship like this when people can be so easily infected? But it has been nice just mentally for me, keeping something stable going and being able to continue working towards my career.

Also, just the ability, a lot of my friends, both at home who I didn't really get to see while I was quarantined and from my college, being able to have chats online, where you're all together, is really nice. Being able to communicate with my family the same way, both my sisters, especially when I was with my parents at home, we would be able to talk all the time, which is really nice. So being able to be connected during that time, and having little things that still seem normal, has been very helpful.

But, uh, I hope people learn a lot from the crisis. I'm not totally sure if that's happening. We, on our door today when I was coming back for lunch to the house, got this, which, you know, is fun. There's a whole lot to unpack there. But I think the thing that I'm most worried about is the way that we, the public, communicate with scientists, and the effectiveness of their communication with us. Because, in a lot of ways, I think this crisis highlighted the strengths and the failings in the way we interact with the scientific community, with how we accept what facts are, based on what people would like to do versus what is probably best for everybody.

And I hope that there's some kind of newfound appreciation for the work that scientists do. It's especially apparent in the medical sciences, but in other areas as well. And as much as I hope that that happens, I'm not totally sure that is what's happening. And unfortunately, I think it will take some kind of huge catastrophe like this, in a worst case scenario, for people to listen to that. I'm hoping that's not the case, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. And letting me share a little bit of my perspective on that. And yeah, glad to be here.