Hey everyone! My name is KayDee Pratt. I’m a Caucasian girl at a very diverse university. I am quite young compared to my classmates; I turned 18 in June. I currently attend the University of Kentucky, and this is my first year as a true college student. My major is Biology on the pre-medical track. My future plans are to attend medical school and become a trauma surgeon. I’m from Corbin, Kentucky which is an hour and a half south of Lexington. It is a very small town that is very different from this big city. I went to high school at Whitley County High School. While I was in high school, I took college classes, so I’m not completely clueless on what college is like.
When COVID hit my state, my life changed a lot more than what I had anticipated. In some ways bad, but in other ways good. The rest of my senior year had been cut short and was fully online. Prom and Graduation were both out of the picture. Spring sports were cancelled. It was pretty devastating to watch a virus take away a once-in-a-lifetime moment for me.
Even though it hurt my high school experience, for my family, it was a boost. I come from a divorced family and I live with my mother. Our house only has one income for me and her. When COVID hit the USA hard, this caused department stores to close which means the public had to order everything other than groceries online. My mom works at FedEx as a Customer Service Agent. She would have to work overtime at work to get packages delivered and questions answered. Financially, this was great for our family since I was about to leave for college in a couple months.
Even though this virus pretty much shut everything down, I was still able to have some fun. I’ve been to the beaches in Florida three times since COVID which is probably the closest I’ve ever been to the virus. I have luckily never had it even though I was in such a high risk place multiple times. I was very cautious of my health while I was on vacation. COVID has changed the way we lived over the past few months, but hopefully it’s not permanent.
