This spring, The Buzz on City Tech’s OpenLab will provide a space for students to write and share their stories about life during conditions and restrictions of the current COVID-19 Pandemic. This pandemic, and its current severity in New York City, has affected everyone in different ways and to different degrees.

You are invited to share your story on this site, offering others a glimpse into your experience. You might share a story about yourself or your loved ones who are grappling with distress or describe how your everyday life and routines have changed due to health concerns and requirements for physical distancing. You might also write about ways that you have managed to find a sense of contentment or learned new strengths or skills you didn’t know you had. You are also encouraged to read and comment on the posts written by others within this OpenLab community.

Do remember, that after you join the project, your stories and comments posted will be visible to users on the OpenLab, who we hope will be encouraged by your participation and also join in the conversation. We hope this writing project will help you and others reflect on this experience and feel less isolated during this challenging time.

To post:

If you have not created a post on the OpenLab, the directions are as follows:

• Join The Buzz project site
• Click the plus (+) sign at the top of the site
• A fillable box should appear for you to enter a title for your story and a text box to tell your story.
• Press “Save” when you’re done, and a moderator will review your post, give it the appropriate tags, and publish! 

Note: If you wish to add an image to your post, there are several ways to do it, but we recommend hosting your image on an external site like Flickr or Imgur, and embedded it into your post from there. This helps us save storage space on The Buzz. Directions for how to do this can be found about halfway down on this page in our Help documentation.

If you prefer, you can also upload your writing as a file using the form below.

If you have questions, feel free to contact the organizers of this project:

• Professor Jennifer Sears, English Department: jsears@citytech.cuny.edu
• Olivia Wood, OpenLab Digital Pedagogy Fellow: OpenLab@citytech.cuny.edu