A month ago, Tina Nguyen was in New York City attending her classes without difficulty. Nguyen could participate in class, had reliable access to the internet, and was able to have the proper equipment to do projects. Now, due to the pandemic, she occasionally has to try and stay awake while pulling all-nighters on Zoom. 

Like all New School students, Nguyen is taking classes remotely. However, both her journey back home to Vietnam and transition to remote classes have been anything but easy.

Nguyen, a Culture and Media major at Lang, returned to Vietnam in March to quarantine with her family. However, Nguyen’s experience once she arrived at the airport was vastly different from most New School students.

“I had to go through government quarantine. From a certain date onward people who arrived at the airport in Vietnam couldn’t leave the airport and had to be tested,” Nguyen, 20, said.  “And then, regardless of whether you tested positive or negative, you would have to go to a remote government quarantine center.” 

Nguyen says she often gets fevers while flying. Due to having a slight temperature when arriving, she was taken to “a hospital on an island an hour and a half away from Ho Chi Minh” where she was quarantined for 14 days. In one hall of the hospital, according to Nguyen, there were 14 to 15 rooms.

“There was no Wi-Fi; we were in this highly contagious area so no one could leave their rooms,” Nguyen said. 

The lack of WiFi made it difficult for her to communicate with her professors. Nguyen said that as she befriended the three other people in the room, “I was leeching off of this girl’s Wi-Fi — she had given me WiFi for like 30 minutes on her hotspot — but, obviously, that was not adequate to do any actual work.” 

She explains she mainly used the 30 minutes to send emails to her professors. Most of her professors were understanding of her situation. 

After testing negative for the virus at the end of the two weeks, Nguyen was allowed to leave the facility and is currently isolating in her family’s vacation house outside the Ho Chi Minh. 

“My mom just shipped me off with my dog because I live with my grandma, so my mom doesn’t want me anywhere near her even though we’ve got test results and everything,” Nguyen said. “It’s just for the risk factor; she shipped all the kids off to our house three hours away.” 

Nguyen is the oldest in the house of her, her younger brother and two cousins. Being the oldest, she has taken it upon herself to create a schedule for her and her younger siblings and cousins quarantining with her — the youngest being eight. 

“I’ve been assigning everyone work just because I sleep till one,” Nguyen said. “And then I have class at midnight, so I’ve given my siblings incentive to go do work since they have more free time; they only have their online classes for three hours a day.”

New York and Vietnam are eleven hours apart, so an afternoon class on campus takes place in the middle of the night for her. Nguyen says a typical day begins around 1 p.m. and ends anywhere between 1 and 7 a.m., depending on classes. 

Nguyen remarks she hasn’t had a consistent sleep schedule for three weeks. She either pulls all-nighters in order to participate in school or sleeps an extra 10 hours, waking up around noon to complete the assignments she can.  

“The last time I zoomed in for my cinematography class, which ends around 7 a.m., some people who are on local times weren’t there and my eyes could barely open at that point; I feel like I was just there.”