Dublin Core
Title
Oral History Interview with Paul Orlowicz, a New Jersey Resident
Subject
Working from Home
Description
An oral history interview with Paul Orlowicz, a New Jersey resident and graduate student who had been working from home prior to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, but needed to relocate both his living and working space while his studies had to adapt to a remote environment.
Creator
Donald Koger
Source
Oral History Interview
Publisher
Rutgers University
Date
December 4, 2020
Oral History Item Type Metadata
Interviewer
Donald Koger
Interviewee
Paul Orlowicz
Location
East Rutherford, New Jersey
Transcription
DK: Today is December 4, 2020 and this begins an oral history interview. My name is Donald Koger and I am located in Piscataway, New Jersey. Please introduce yourself.
PO: My name is Paul Orlowicz, spelled O-R-L-O-W-I-C-Z and Donald you’re talking to me, I’m in my apartment in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
DK: The purpose of this interview is for a public class project and then it will get saved at the Rutgers University libraries, with your permission, where it will also be made publicly available. I just want to make sure that you’re okay with our conversation being recorded, used in my public class project and then handed over to the university libraries where it will also be available.
PO: Full permission, absolutely. I have no problem with participating and helping with the project.
DK: I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. It’s 2020, it’s December, so future historians should be aware that at this point, the pandemic has been raging for quite some time now.
PO: Mhmm.
DK: Can you give an overview of who you are, what you do, and how the pandemic has changed that?
PO: Well, I’ll go into it in a bit. In some ways the pandemic has changed very little for me, but not in every way. I’ll go into that a bit later. Again, my name is Paul. By profession, I am an ESL teacher, English as a Second Language. I have been an ESL teacher for eight or nine years now. Seven of those years, I actually lived in China. I moved there, I believe it was January of 2012. I moved back to the United States August, 2018, I want to say. So, I’ve now been back in the U.S. for a little over two years. I am currently a masters student at Rutgers University and I am studying history and education; basically, because I want to switch subjects. In a variety of ways, I’m actually a little tired of teaching ESL. It’s very repetitive. Every year, you teach the same thing. English doesn’t change. [laughter].
I really want to switch subjects and start teaching history, because I feel like it will be a bit more of an engaging career in terms of being able to do it for thirty or forty years without getting tired of it because there’s just, you can’t run out of history to teach. Right? Whereas in English, it’s like teaching algebra. Algebra doesn’t change, you teach the same thing every year. So, I’m an ESL teacher in the midst of a career change and getting my masters degree.
I grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey. I’m not living in East Rutherford. That, actually, is part of this pandemic story. I moved out of my parents’ house. I was living with my parents, most of the last two years, since I got back from China, because it was a good way to save money while I was getting my masters. When the pandemic hit, however, because my parents were older, and because they’re in a very strict quarantine bubble with my sister and nieces and nephew, I didn’t feel like it was sustainable for me to stay in that very tight bubble. I moved out with my friend Dan, because I felt like I couldn’t justify going on with my life and doing the things I need to do outside of the house, because it would be putting them at risk. I guess that’s about it. That’s a pretty decent introduction to who I am. [laughter].
Oh right, the pandemic, sorry! I said, I would say. The pandemic in many ways has not changed my life. I’m a masters student, mostly. Yes, the classes have shifted online, which is uh, a little annoying. It’s not the end of the world, right? I mean, I’m not a bio major who needs to go into labs or whatever. I’m a history major and most of my work is reading at the library, so yes it’s switched to online, but I hasn’t stopped or curtailed my education at all. Then, in terms, of the small revenue stream that I do have. Which, I teach online. I still teach Chinese children, even though I am now living back in the states. I teach online. Part of it is through a company where I work as an independent contractor and students sign up for my classes. I open up blocks of time and people sign up. The other part of my income stream is some private tutoring clients that I’ve maintained, in China.
That’s another thing, right? Because China’s economy as not been as severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, that income stream has not been affected. Yes, my classes are online now, but my education has not really been interrupted by the pandemic and my income stream hasn’t been interrupted either because I’m not dependent on the local economy. I’m dependent on a foreign economy for my income. In many respects, with of course exceptions: my social life, going out places, sort of being me in the world; that has changed of course. I am much more isolated. I stay home most of the time. But in terms of my professional and education life, very little has changed for me. I’m very privileged in that way.
DK: You’ve been working from home since you came back from China?
PO: Mhmm.
DK: That was, two years ago?
PO: Two years ago.
DK: What was that transition like? You’re changing where you live at the same time as changing the way you worked? I assume in China you were doing traditional classes?
PO: Very challenging. I honestly did not anticipate just how different it is between in person teaching, in person classes and teaching one-on-one virtual classes with video. It took me, god, I feel like it took me three months to really fully adjust to teaching online, as opposed to teaching in person. I didn’t even have, at that time, two years ago, I didn’t even have the extra stress of the pandemic. It was my own choice to transition into that. Yes, I felt like it was just so different than teaching in person that it took me quite a while to adjust to that medium for teaching.
DK: Did you have any issues finding space in the house to do your work? Did you have a space where you could say: this is my office? Or were you just clearing away dishes after dinner and taking over the kitchen table?
PO: I was lucky. I am the last child of four. The house that my parents have has five bedrooms. They’re small, because it’s an old house, but numerous. Of course, I’m the baby. All my sisters are out of the house. I was the last one to maintain a space in my parents’ house. Even when I was living in China, actually. The three rooms on the top floor were kind of always mine. While I was living in China, they were just storage, but because I’m the baby, my parents had plenty of extra space. When I set up my virtual classroom upon moving home from China, I had my own bedroom, my own living room, and my own study. On the third floor. I was very lucky in that regard. I didn’t have to fight for space, I just turned my study into a virtual classroom.
DK: Did you have any issues getting equipment?
PO: Getting equipment was not the problem. Figuring out the best way to set it up was. I had never done anything like that before. Lighting was a big problem. The way my office was, the window is to my right, in the study. So I would get this side light that would kind of cast awkward shadows on my face. I ended up, honestly, looking up on the internet how to improve lighting. Especially with the job where I do independent contractor work, I’m basically fighting other teachers. I’m in competition with other teachers on the platform for the clients, for the students. The move professional I am, the better I do; the easier it is to get regular clients who will book you every week or so. I wanted to make sure that it was going to present professionally, there wouldn’t be any awkward shadows, and honestly the figuring out the lighting was the biggest challenge. I ended up having to buy these ring lights, on these bendy, flexible sort of things. I have one light above and two lights to the side to illuminate under my chin so it all looks bright. I wear glasses, which was a huge problem! Because I couldn’t have any light directly at me otherwise it just looks like giant white lights in my glasses. The lighting was the biggest challenge, honestly. Getting the equipment? It was just a matter of buying it on Amazon or going to Staples, or whatever. But figuring out the best way to set it up and how to make myself look okay- I also have, in my digital classroom, I have a white board behind me. I also had to figure out how to position the lights to not reflect badly off the white board also. The lighting was the biggest challenge because in that platform, the nature of it, having to fight for clients; having to compete for clients, essentially. You want to be as professional and have as good of a digital presentation as possible.
DK: That’s all well beyond my abilities.
PO: I had to Google how to do all of that. [laughter]. There was a learning curve! [laughter].
DK: In contrast, just to compare this to current experiences. Your classes are now virtual, and I assume they are using video technology.
PO: Mhmm.
DK: Are you using any of those same lighting tricks now or is that mostly for the professional Paul?
PO: Once the pandemic hit and I decided to move out of my parents’ house, my mother and I initially compromised and said that I could still use the attic and still use my virtual classroom, as long as I don’t live there. Don’t use their bathroom or kitchen, obviously, just go up and down the stairs to the third floor with my mask on. Just walk up and down quickly, I only used the side door, so I didn’t have to worry about door knobs on the front or the back door, which is what my parents use. In the short-term, that was a great compromise. I would wake up in the morning, go to my parents’ house, go upstairs, teach and then leave. Because it’s on China time, it’s early morning for us in Eastern Standard Time. As time went by, that became a little bit less sustainable. I did put a little bit more focus into setting up this. It’s just my kitchen, but I have a small apartment. There’s not any other space for me to do it.
Actually, I don’t have it on right now, but now I just turned it on. It’s actually a therapy lamp. I don’t know if you’ve ever hard of a therapy lamp, but it’s for use in the winter to help keep your mood high because of the lack of sunlight.
DK: Vitamin D or E or something, right?
PO: It’s mostly because it enters in through your eyes, so it’ tricks your brain into thinking that it’s still summertime. I’m now using my light therapy and I ended up moving my television, or repurposing my television as a second monitor. There’s a second monitor here, so that I could work in two places. Honest to god, especially as a teacher, I can’t imagine people who are really doing work every day in this digital video format and not having two monitors. I just can’t imagine. I had a friend who does all their work on just one little laptop, and I’m like: “How do you get through the day with just one screen?” [laughter].
DK: Setting up this space where you’re living now, how much has that disrupted what normal life might have been like? Let’s say you made this move when there wasn’t a pandemic?
PO: Initially, like I said, the initial compromise, I was going to my parents’ every morning and then just realized that was not sustainable. Setting this up in my house, though [sigh]. It is problematic. For one, my finances are strained because of the pandemic. Now I’m paying rent. I wasn’t paying rent before. I didn’t feel like I could justify another fifty-dollar camera and more little circle lights like I set up back at my parents’ house. I didn’t want to dismantle the office at my parents’ house either because I still use it sometimes. It became, like repurposing my therapy lamp, right? Repurposing my television so I wouldn’t have to spend more money. The financial strain of the pandemic that disturbed this whole process. I had to figure out how I could set this up to be professional, but still not have to spend any more money on it. Then the second thing, of course, I live in a small apartment now. The only way I could afford to move out was to move in my friend. I live in the living room, essentially. It’s a very East-Asian sort of living situation. Small space, two people. The only choice was to set up in my kitchen, which is not the end of the world. Sometimes I use my dishwasher as a backdrop. I actually have a white board I can magnet onto the front of my dishwasher and that can be a small board.
One challenge of setting up the second post-pandemic setup here was finances. I didn’t want and I didn’t have the money to spend on new equipment like I did two years ago. Then, the other thing, like I said, of course, was just, where am I going to do it? Where it’s not going to get in the way of my roommate or get in the way, in general. The kitchen became the only place, which is complicated because it sucks away a third of the kitchen space. So, my kitchen, which is actually a pretty good size, is now kind of reduced in size, so to speak. [laughter].
DK: How has that changed cooking?
PO: I just have less space to work. Or, if I do need the extra space for cooking, I need to shift my laptop over, put the wireless keyboard away, etc. It requires a little bit more daily shifting. It is a permanent setup, but no so permanent. It’s more flexible than the setup at my parent’s house, because it has to be, because it’s in my kitchen. It effects cooking sometimes. It just adds time. If I’m doing something complicated in the kitchen and I have to partially dismantle my setup here, that’s an extra ten minutes to dismantle it and when I finish cooking, an extra ten minutes to put it back together. So it just sucks up time, mostly. I don’t have that permanent office space that I had at my parents’ house.
DK: Did you ever try and makeup as part of your presentation for your online teaching or just the lighting?
PO: Just the lighting. Although, I know people who do things like that. I think, if the teaching I was doing was different, because the teaching that I’m doing was chosen because of the flexibility. Because I’m focusing more on getting my masters than I am on making money right now. This business that I’m doing, or this platform that I’m using to make money, it’s really only semi-professional. Yes, I have to compete with other teachers for clients, but on the other hand, it’s not as serious of work as working at a normal school like I used to. Perhaps if I was doing more serious work, I would spend even more time on my image. For, I think the level at which I’m teaching, or the quality of the program that I’m teaching, just getting the lighting right was enough for me. I didn’t feel like I really needed to go the extra mile in other aspects of my presentation.
DK: It could be very easy to get lost in all those details.
PO: Mhmm. Just look at YouTube stars. I remember, and this is just a small anectdote. Towards the beginning of the pandemic, Stephen Colbert, who I watch pretty religiously, or maybe it was Seth Myers. One of the two of them. During one of their monologues, went into this whole thing about how, because they were suddenly not in a big studio, they were doing their shows from their home. They gave props to all these YouTube stars and YouTube influences and they were like: “God! You know, I never realized how much work it is to get everything right in your home and your own spaces because it’s not a professional studio.” They were just like: “To all those YouTube stars out there, I give you credit because you’re doing this all on your own, with no help.” I agree, it’s much more work and much more thought that you need to put into it than most people realize, when you shift into this video based at-home situation.
DK: What do you remember about the first days? When the pandemic first became real for you? For a lot of people, it became real the day the World Health Organization announced the pandemic.
PO: Mach 11, yes.
DK: When did become real for you, and what was that like?
PO: Earlier. My clients are all in China. They were in lockdown in January, February, March. My business was BOOMING because I’m the side school. I’m not the main classes they take in their normal day classes. I’m like their night classes. My business was booming while they were in their lockdown in January, February, and March. I was already hyper-aware of the whole situation, starting in January. I also have maintained both a professional and social network in China because I lived there for seven years, which is pretty significant. Of course, I also knew through my friends and former colleagues, the seriousness of everything. I was fully expecting it to come to the United States. Most of my peers and my parents and everyone was shocked that it got into America. I was like: “No, of course it’s coming.” So, I was ready.
DK: What changed? Did you stop doing anything or did you start doing anything differently?
PO: Good question. What changed? One, I took advantage of that boom in business that I just mentioned. In February and March, I probably made more money and booked more classes than I ever have. There was another change, actually, in the, I want to say late summer, early fall. Business was gone, it disappeared almost. I suspect, although I don’t know this for sure. I suspect it was because the people in China had become, sot of fatigued from this whole situation and decided just, “You know what? We’re taking a break from life.” [laughter]. Including booking classes with me. [laughter].
In the late summer and early fall, there was that change. Taking advantage of the business opportunities during the Chinese lockdown; losing the business opportunities in the end of the summer and beginning of the fall, when I think most Chinese people were like “We’re taking a break,” those were really the only big changes. Because I had started teaching online prior to the pandemic, my own life didn’t change much, as I mentioned before.
DK: When was it that you moved out of your parents house again?
PO: That was the beginning of July. March, April, May, June, four months. I was at my parents’ house still. We were in extremely deep quarantine. NO supermarket. Everything delivered. The only thing left my house for, for four months, was to go on bike rides, too keep myself from going crazy. That was it. For four months, I never left the house for ANY reason except to exercise. Then I moved here in the beginning of July, because I knew that wasn’t going to be sustainable for me and I wanted to make sure that I had myself set up in my new place by the time the fall semester started and I was going to start my new courses for my degree.
DK: How did that change? It sounds like you went into hermit-mode early on?
PO: Mhmm.
DK: What was that like? To go from being able to leave the house and go to the grocery store to-
PO: Right, right. On the one hand, like I said, there was no change. I had already been working online. Of course there was a huge change in my social life. One of my resolutions, New Years’ resolutions that is, in January was two things: One I was going to get myself in better shape again this year. I feel like it was really bad when I was having my reverse culture shock, when I moved back to the U.S. Culture shock is a serious thing and reverse culture shock is often worse than the initial culture shock when you move to a place. It took me a year and a half to truly get over my reverse culture shock, to be honest. My New Years’ resolution for 2020 was get back in shape, improve my diet and also visit friends, do some domestic travel. January and February, I was at the gym three or four times a week with my flat-mate; well who’s now my flat mate. We were really kind of going at it, and then March happened and that was it. That was it. All hope of being able to fulfill, I mean yes I was able to go for bike rides and whatever, but it’s just not the same. Being able to do things at home, it’s not the same as being able to go to a gym to a place where everyone around you is sort of doing the same kind of activity. My goals for 2020, my personal goals. Not so much professional, and not so much school, but my personal goals were completely detailed by this pandemic. Those first four months in that deep deep quarantine, with not even the supermarket or anything was very stressful mentally.
My mother struggled more than I was expecting her to. She’s always been kind of a rock in our family and I actually found myself being a bit more of the stabilizing factor in the household, more than I was expecting to be. My parents still, even to this day, still do not do any supermarket or anything. I now do, because I live on my own with my flat mate. I’ll just, honestly, going to the supermarket, or the Seven-Eleven, or to get a coffee at whatever, is one of the things that’s been keeping me mentally stable since I moved out. Because my social life is still- yes I’ve opened up enough to go run my errands, but I’m not willing to do other things. Right? Like a large amount of social life or whatever.
DK: Did you run into any issues when you were ordering your groceries online?
PO: [Groans]. I mean, okay, so yes and no. It depends on your perspective. One of the things that actually as a problem between my Mother and I – you have to understand, and I know I’m generalizing here, and this is probably going to make me sound like a dick, but- My mother is a Baby Boomer. As such, she is spoiled rotten, whether she realizes it or not. [laughter]. From my perspective, especially, living for many years in a developing country, the access that we had to food delivery and everything was fine. Right? Yes, it as a bit of a challenge to get a delivery time or whatever, but we got enough. T’s not like we were starving, plus we had basics in the house anyway. Because I saw this coming, as early as January, I had already fully prepped the house with basics. My mother sometimes has these things where like for example, “I’m having this particular meat dish, so I only have that with broccoli.” Or, she has these things in her head where certain main dishes have to go with certain side dishes.
So where I was at, my perspective, having lived abroad for so many years in a developing country: I was just like “Whatever, so we spend a few months not having the side dishes we want. Who caes?” But this really, this was hard for my mother. It was much harder for her. You know, not having, like “Oh my god, we don’t have sour cream! For this whatever.” And I’m like, “Okay, so we’ll make it different side dish.” “Oh but this side dish GOES with what we’re cooking!” So, yes it was a challenge getting food delivered. It didn’t bother me so much. Except for the time consumption, I guess, of having to spend so much time on your phone to get all this stuff done. It didn’t bother me so much, it bothered my mother a lot more, the sort of limited access, or oh maybe you’d get it this time but not next time. Trying to think ahead about everything I might need in the next week or two. It bothered her much more than it bothered me.
DK: Some stores offered substitutions. Some were better at it than others. Did you have any items substituted for a different brand or even a different item?
PO: [laughter]. At first, yes. They generally were substituted with things that we would not use or could not use and we just ended up giving them away, so then later, after a few times of that happening, we just set the app to “don’t replace.” If they don’t have it, then just take it off the order. After a few times where they would just give us something that we didn’t want, I just said, “Well, forget about it. If they don’t have it, they don’t have it. C’est la vie.” So, we changed the settings on the app.
DK: The big question. Did you make bread?
PO: NO! No. But, boy did it become popular, right? No, I did not. I did not increase my baking at all. It’s not really my thing to begin with. I’m more of a cook and less of a baker. My dad is more of a baker. But even him, they’re on a keto diet because of my mother’s very specific condition that my mother has. The keto diet is ideal for her condition to reduce inflammation. They don’t eat much bread, anyway. Or baked goods because a keto diet is a very low carb, I think maximum of fifteen grams of carbs a day, which is often covered by just vegetables. They don’t eat much bread to begin with, and I’m okay with sliced bead. During the pandemic, when we were getting things delivered, if they sent me the wrong bread, I was just like, “Whatever, I’m not starving. I’m not some starving farmer in Western China, I’m alright.”
DK: How long passed between you going into hermit-mode, and I want that to be the term future historians use, and having a cup of coffee that you did not brew at home?
PO: Ahh! It was like the first day, maybe the second day after I moved to this apartment that I’m in right now, in July. I went to my favorite coffee shop, Ara Coffee. I will totally say their name. For the record, it is the best coffee in the state! Those four months I was in hermit mode, I missed it! It is the best coffee you will find anywhere in New Jersey, I swear to god. It’s in Rutherford, New Jersey. Ara Coffee, A-R-A Ara Coffee. Run by a lovely South Korean family.
DK: When did you start doing take-out food?
PO: Take out food? My parents are, again they’re Baby Boomers, they’re relatively well-off. We went into that whole “Support local businesses” thing. It’s not something that I can really afford to do, now that I’m living on my own. But for my parents, it’s something that they’ve been really trying to do. They probably order-out maybe twice as much as they used to? Usually, it would be they would go out to eat maybe once a week. Now they’re probably ordering take-out twice a week. And they’ve been trying to go to different restaurants to kind of spread their money around locally.
DK: Can you compare what your spring semester was like versus your fall semester now?
PO: I’ll start with the fall semester. The fall semester has been pretty stable. I don’t really like going to class online, but I tolerate it. I don’t really like not being able to go to the library, but I tolerate it. The spring semester, though, because it was half in person and then right before spring break, Rutgers went on lockdown and everything shifted to online, it was chaos. It really was. It wasn’t just chaos because of the school. It was chaos because of my private life. Dealing with the emotional complications from my mother, or from myself as well. I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t have my own emotional issues when this whole thing first happened. Still do. I think we all have a lot of emotions.
The transition to digital mid-semester like that, in the spring semester, I ended up taking an incomplete in one of the two classes I was taking. I was able to get most of the work done except for one paper and I was just like, “Screw it. I have to focus on me right now. I have to focus on me, and I have to focus on my family. I have to focus on moving out. I have to focus on my mental health.” So I took an incomplete in one class and I managed to finish all the work in the other class. Being thrown into digital classrooms halfway through the semester, kind of all of the sudden, was not good for me. [laughter]. That’s one of the reasons I moved out, because I recognized it wasn’t going to be as sustainable living my parents.
I wanted to make sure that I was set up in a way that would be better for mental health and better for doing classes online, because even as early as May and June, even though it was before Rutgers official said that fall classes were online, the department head that I was talking to said: “Paul, it likely will be online, so prepare for it.” And I did. Part of me moving out, setting up the second digital space that I have here in the new apartment. All of that was that to prepare for the fall. I don’t like it, but I was able to spend the summer. I had the luxury, and the privilege, and the money to set myself up for the fall semester very well. A lot of people just didn’t have the time or the energy or the money to prepare for whatever was coming next, but I really took a solid three months to just make sure everything in my life was as ideal as possible so that when the semester started it would go smoothly.
Like I said, it’s so far been pretty smooth. Don’t like it, but smooth. Spring semester? Chaos. [laughter]. I’m not that happy that I have an incomplete. I have a year to finish it. Thankfully it’s just one paper, it’s one project, so it’s not the end of the world. It was chaotic enough in the Spring that I decided that taking the incomplete was the best route.
DK: We’ve covered a lot. I really appreciate you taking the time. Before we go, is there anything else you’d like to add?
PO: Not that I can think of. We really did cover a pretty broad range of things. I guess the only thing that I’d like to add is: for anyone out there who might be listening to this. Not in ten years, but maybe a bit sooner, if you don’t have a second monitor in whatever you’re at home set up is, invest in a second monitor. Repurpose an old TV or something, because having a second screen with whatever your home setup is, it makes such a difference. It really does. It makes it so much more user friendly, so much easier to deal with all of the situation if you have a second screen. That’s my advice for anyone who reads this.
DK: Thank you very much for talking with me.
PO: You’re very welcome.
----------------------------End of Transcript--------------------
PO: My name is Paul Orlowicz, spelled O-R-L-O-W-I-C-Z and Donald you’re talking to me, I’m in my apartment in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
DK: The purpose of this interview is for a public class project and then it will get saved at the Rutgers University libraries, with your permission, where it will also be made publicly available. I just want to make sure that you’re okay with our conversation being recorded, used in my public class project and then handed over to the university libraries where it will also be available.
PO: Full permission, absolutely. I have no problem with participating and helping with the project.
DK: I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. It’s 2020, it’s December, so future historians should be aware that at this point, the pandemic has been raging for quite some time now.
PO: Mhmm.
DK: Can you give an overview of who you are, what you do, and how the pandemic has changed that?
PO: Well, I’ll go into it in a bit. In some ways the pandemic has changed very little for me, but not in every way. I’ll go into that a bit later. Again, my name is Paul. By profession, I am an ESL teacher, English as a Second Language. I have been an ESL teacher for eight or nine years now. Seven of those years, I actually lived in China. I moved there, I believe it was January of 2012. I moved back to the United States August, 2018, I want to say. So, I’ve now been back in the U.S. for a little over two years. I am currently a masters student at Rutgers University and I am studying history and education; basically, because I want to switch subjects. In a variety of ways, I’m actually a little tired of teaching ESL. It’s very repetitive. Every year, you teach the same thing. English doesn’t change. [laughter].
I really want to switch subjects and start teaching history, because I feel like it will be a bit more of an engaging career in terms of being able to do it for thirty or forty years without getting tired of it because there’s just, you can’t run out of history to teach. Right? Whereas in English, it’s like teaching algebra. Algebra doesn’t change, you teach the same thing every year. So, I’m an ESL teacher in the midst of a career change and getting my masters degree.
I grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey. I’m not living in East Rutherford. That, actually, is part of this pandemic story. I moved out of my parents’ house. I was living with my parents, most of the last two years, since I got back from China, because it was a good way to save money while I was getting my masters. When the pandemic hit, however, because my parents were older, and because they’re in a very strict quarantine bubble with my sister and nieces and nephew, I didn’t feel like it was sustainable for me to stay in that very tight bubble. I moved out with my friend Dan, because I felt like I couldn’t justify going on with my life and doing the things I need to do outside of the house, because it would be putting them at risk. I guess that’s about it. That’s a pretty decent introduction to who I am. [laughter].
Oh right, the pandemic, sorry! I said, I would say. The pandemic in many ways has not changed my life. I’m a masters student, mostly. Yes, the classes have shifted online, which is uh, a little annoying. It’s not the end of the world, right? I mean, I’m not a bio major who needs to go into labs or whatever. I’m a history major and most of my work is reading at the library, so yes it’s switched to online, but I hasn’t stopped or curtailed my education at all. Then, in terms, of the small revenue stream that I do have. Which, I teach online. I still teach Chinese children, even though I am now living back in the states. I teach online. Part of it is through a company where I work as an independent contractor and students sign up for my classes. I open up blocks of time and people sign up. The other part of my income stream is some private tutoring clients that I’ve maintained, in China.
That’s another thing, right? Because China’s economy as not been as severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, that income stream has not been affected. Yes, my classes are online now, but my education has not really been interrupted by the pandemic and my income stream hasn’t been interrupted either because I’m not dependent on the local economy. I’m dependent on a foreign economy for my income. In many respects, with of course exceptions: my social life, going out places, sort of being me in the world; that has changed of course. I am much more isolated. I stay home most of the time. But in terms of my professional and education life, very little has changed for me. I’m very privileged in that way.
DK: You’ve been working from home since you came back from China?
PO: Mhmm.
DK: That was, two years ago?
PO: Two years ago.
DK: What was that transition like? You’re changing where you live at the same time as changing the way you worked? I assume in China you were doing traditional classes?
PO: Very challenging. I honestly did not anticipate just how different it is between in person teaching, in person classes and teaching one-on-one virtual classes with video. It took me, god, I feel like it took me three months to really fully adjust to teaching online, as opposed to teaching in person. I didn’t even have, at that time, two years ago, I didn’t even have the extra stress of the pandemic. It was my own choice to transition into that. Yes, I felt like it was just so different than teaching in person that it took me quite a while to adjust to that medium for teaching.
DK: Did you have any issues finding space in the house to do your work? Did you have a space where you could say: this is my office? Or were you just clearing away dishes after dinner and taking over the kitchen table?
PO: I was lucky. I am the last child of four. The house that my parents have has five bedrooms. They’re small, because it’s an old house, but numerous. Of course, I’m the baby. All my sisters are out of the house. I was the last one to maintain a space in my parents’ house. Even when I was living in China, actually. The three rooms on the top floor were kind of always mine. While I was living in China, they were just storage, but because I’m the baby, my parents had plenty of extra space. When I set up my virtual classroom upon moving home from China, I had my own bedroom, my own living room, and my own study. On the third floor. I was very lucky in that regard. I didn’t have to fight for space, I just turned my study into a virtual classroom.
DK: Did you have any issues getting equipment?
PO: Getting equipment was not the problem. Figuring out the best way to set it up was. I had never done anything like that before. Lighting was a big problem. The way my office was, the window is to my right, in the study. So I would get this side light that would kind of cast awkward shadows on my face. I ended up, honestly, looking up on the internet how to improve lighting. Especially with the job where I do independent contractor work, I’m basically fighting other teachers. I’m in competition with other teachers on the platform for the clients, for the students. The move professional I am, the better I do; the easier it is to get regular clients who will book you every week or so. I wanted to make sure that it was going to present professionally, there wouldn’t be any awkward shadows, and honestly the figuring out the lighting was the biggest challenge. I ended up having to buy these ring lights, on these bendy, flexible sort of things. I have one light above and two lights to the side to illuminate under my chin so it all looks bright. I wear glasses, which was a huge problem! Because I couldn’t have any light directly at me otherwise it just looks like giant white lights in my glasses. The lighting was the biggest challenge, honestly. Getting the equipment? It was just a matter of buying it on Amazon or going to Staples, or whatever. But figuring out the best way to set it up and how to make myself look okay- I also have, in my digital classroom, I have a white board behind me. I also had to figure out how to position the lights to not reflect badly off the white board also. The lighting was the biggest challenge because in that platform, the nature of it, having to fight for clients; having to compete for clients, essentially. You want to be as professional and have as good of a digital presentation as possible.
DK: That’s all well beyond my abilities.
PO: I had to Google how to do all of that. [laughter]. There was a learning curve! [laughter].
DK: In contrast, just to compare this to current experiences. Your classes are now virtual, and I assume they are using video technology.
PO: Mhmm.
DK: Are you using any of those same lighting tricks now or is that mostly for the professional Paul?
PO: Once the pandemic hit and I decided to move out of my parents’ house, my mother and I initially compromised and said that I could still use the attic and still use my virtual classroom, as long as I don’t live there. Don’t use their bathroom or kitchen, obviously, just go up and down the stairs to the third floor with my mask on. Just walk up and down quickly, I only used the side door, so I didn’t have to worry about door knobs on the front or the back door, which is what my parents use. In the short-term, that was a great compromise. I would wake up in the morning, go to my parents’ house, go upstairs, teach and then leave. Because it’s on China time, it’s early morning for us in Eastern Standard Time. As time went by, that became a little bit less sustainable. I did put a little bit more focus into setting up this. It’s just my kitchen, but I have a small apartment. There’s not any other space for me to do it.
Actually, I don’t have it on right now, but now I just turned it on. It’s actually a therapy lamp. I don’t know if you’ve ever hard of a therapy lamp, but it’s for use in the winter to help keep your mood high because of the lack of sunlight.
DK: Vitamin D or E or something, right?
PO: It’s mostly because it enters in through your eyes, so it’ tricks your brain into thinking that it’s still summertime. I’m now using my light therapy and I ended up moving my television, or repurposing my television as a second monitor. There’s a second monitor here, so that I could work in two places. Honest to god, especially as a teacher, I can’t imagine people who are really doing work every day in this digital video format and not having two monitors. I just can’t imagine. I had a friend who does all their work on just one little laptop, and I’m like: “How do you get through the day with just one screen?” [laughter].
DK: Setting up this space where you’re living now, how much has that disrupted what normal life might have been like? Let’s say you made this move when there wasn’t a pandemic?
PO: Initially, like I said, the initial compromise, I was going to my parents’ every morning and then just realized that was not sustainable. Setting this up in my house, though [sigh]. It is problematic. For one, my finances are strained because of the pandemic. Now I’m paying rent. I wasn’t paying rent before. I didn’t feel like I could justify another fifty-dollar camera and more little circle lights like I set up back at my parents’ house. I didn’t want to dismantle the office at my parents’ house either because I still use it sometimes. It became, like repurposing my therapy lamp, right? Repurposing my television so I wouldn’t have to spend more money. The financial strain of the pandemic that disturbed this whole process. I had to figure out how I could set this up to be professional, but still not have to spend any more money on it. Then the second thing, of course, I live in a small apartment now. The only way I could afford to move out was to move in my friend. I live in the living room, essentially. It’s a very East-Asian sort of living situation. Small space, two people. The only choice was to set up in my kitchen, which is not the end of the world. Sometimes I use my dishwasher as a backdrop. I actually have a white board I can magnet onto the front of my dishwasher and that can be a small board.
One challenge of setting up the second post-pandemic setup here was finances. I didn’t want and I didn’t have the money to spend on new equipment like I did two years ago. Then, the other thing, like I said, of course, was just, where am I going to do it? Where it’s not going to get in the way of my roommate or get in the way, in general. The kitchen became the only place, which is complicated because it sucks away a third of the kitchen space. So, my kitchen, which is actually a pretty good size, is now kind of reduced in size, so to speak. [laughter].
DK: How has that changed cooking?
PO: I just have less space to work. Or, if I do need the extra space for cooking, I need to shift my laptop over, put the wireless keyboard away, etc. It requires a little bit more daily shifting. It is a permanent setup, but no so permanent. It’s more flexible than the setup at my parent’s house, because it has to be, because it’s in my kitchen. It effects cooking sometimes. It just adds time. If I’m doing something complicated in the kitchen and I have to partially dismantle my setup here, that’s an extra ten minutes to dismantle it and when I finish cooking, an extra ten minutes to put it back together. So it just sucks up time, mostly. I don’t have that permanent office space that I had at my parents’ house.
DK: Did you ever try and makeup as part of your presentation for your online teaching or just the lighting?
PO: Just the lighting. Although, I know people who do things like that. I think, if the teaching I was doing was different, because the teaching that I’m doing was chosen because of the flexibility. Because I’m focusing more on getting my masters than I am on making money right now. This business that I’m doing, or this platform that I’m using to make money, it’s really only semi-professional. Yes, I have to compete with other teachers for clients, but on the other hand, it’s not as serious of work as working at a normal school like I used to. Perhaps if I was doing more serious work, I would spend even more time on my image. For, I think the level at which I’m teaching, or the quality of the program that I’m teaching, just getting the lighting right was enough for me. I didn’t feel like I really needed to go the extra mile in other aspects of my presentation.
DK: It could be very easy to get lost in all those details.
PO: Mhmm. Just look at YouTube stars. I remember, and this is just a small anectdote. Towards the beginning of the pandemic, Stephen Colbert, who I watch pretty religiously, or maybe it was Seth Myers. One of the two of them. During one of their monologues, went into this whole thing about how, because they were suddenly not in a big studio, they were doing their shows from their home. They gave props to all these YouTube stars and YouTube influences and they were like: “God! You know, I never realized how much work it is to get everything right in your home and your own spaces because it’s not a professional studio.” They were just like: “To all those YouTube stars out there, I give you credit because you’re doing this all on your own, with no help.” I agree, it’s much more work and much more thought that you need to put into it than most people realize, when you shift into this video based at-home situation.
DK: What do you remember about the first days? When the pandemic first became real for you? For a lot of people, it became real the day the World Health Organization announced the pandemic.
PO: Mach 11, yes.
DK: When did become real for you, and what was that like?
PO: Earlier. My clients are all in China. They were in lockdown in January, February, March. My business was BOOMING because I’m the side school. I’m not the main classes they take in their normal day classes. I’m like their night classes. My business was booming while they were in their lockdown in January, February, and March. I was already hyper-aware of the whole situation, starting in January. I also have maintained both a professional and social network in China because I lived there for seven years, which is pretty significant. Of course, I also knew through my friends and former colleagues, the seriousness of everything. I was fully expecting it to come to the United States. Most of my peers and my parents and everyone was shocked that it got into America. I was like: “No, of course it’s coming.” So, I was ready.
DK: What changed? Did you stop doing anything or did you start doing anything differently?
PO: Good question. What changed? One, I took advantage of that boom in business that I just mentioned. In February and March, I probably made more money and booked more classes than I ever have. There was another change, actually, in the, I want to say late summer, early fall. Business was gone, it disappeared almost. I suspect, although I don’t know this for sure. I suspect it was because the people in China had become, sot of fatigued from this whole situation and decided just, “You know what? We’re taking a break from life.” [laughter]. Including booking classes with me. [laughter].
In the late summer and early fall, there was that change. Taking advantage of the business opportunities during the Chinese lockdown; losing the business opportunities in the end of the summer and beginning of the fall, when I think most Chinese people were like “We’re taking a break,” those were really the only big changes. Because I had started teaching online prior to the pandemic, my own life didn’t change much, as I mentioned before.
DK: When was it that you moved out of your parents house again?
PO: That was the beginning of July. March, April, May, June, four months. I was at my parents’ house still. We were in extremely deep quarantine. NO supermarket. Everything delivered. The only thing left my house for, for four months, was to go on bike rides, too keep myself from going crazy. That was it. For four months, I never left the house for ANY reason except to exercise. Then I moved here in the beginning of July, because I knew that wasn’t going to be sustainable for me and I wanted to make sure that I had myself set up in my new place by the time the fall semester started and I was going to start my new courses for my degree.
DK: How did that change? It sounds like you went into hermit-mode early on?
PO: Mhmm.
DK: What was that like? To go from being able to leave the house and go to the grocery store to-
PO: Right, right. On the one hand, like I said, there was no change. I had already been working online. Of course there was a huge change in my social life. One of my resolutions, New Years’ resolutions that is, in January was two things: One I was going to get myself in better shape again this year. I feel like it was really bad when I was having my reverse culture shock, when I moved back to the U.S. Culture shock is a serious thing and reverse culture shock is often worse than the initial culture shock when you move to a place. It took me a year and a half to truly get over my reverse culture shock, to be honest. My New Years’ resolution for 2020 was get back in shape, improve my diet and also visit friends, do some domestic travel. January and February, I was at the gym three or four times a week with my flat-mate; well who’s now my flat mate. We were really kind of going at it, and then March happened and that was it. That was it. All hope of being able to fulfill, I mean yes I was able to go for bike rides and whatever, but it’s just not the same. Being able to do things at home, it’s not the same as being able to go to a gym to a place where everyone around you is sort of doing the same kind of activity. My goals for 2020, my personal goals. Not so much professional, and not so much school, but my personal goals were completely detailed by this pandemic. Those first four months in that deep deep quarantine, with not even the supermarket or anything was very stressful mentally.
My mother struggled more than I was expecting her to. She’s always been kind of a rock in our family and I actually found myself being a bit more of the stabilizing factor in the household, more than I was expecting to be. My parents still, even to this day, still do not do any supermarket or anything. I now do, because I live on my own with my flat mate. I’ll just, honestly, going to the supermarket, or the Seven-Eleven, or to get a coffee at whatever, is one of the things that’s been keeping me mentally stable since I moved out. Because my social life is still- yes I’ve opened up enough to go run my errands, but I’m not willing to do other things. Right? Like a large amount of social life or whatever.
DK: Did you run into any issues when you were ordering your groceries online?
PO: [Groans]. I mean, okay, so yes and no. It depends on your perspective. One of the things that actually as a problem between my Mother and I – you have to understand, and I know I’m generalizing here, and this is probably going to make me sound like a dick, but- My mother is a Baby Boomer. As such, she is spoiled rotten, whether she realizes it or not. [laughter]. From my perspective, especially, living for many years in a developing country, the access that we had to food delivery and everything was fine. Right? Yes, it as a bit of a challenge to get a delivery time or whatever, but we got enough. T’s not like we were starving, plus we had basics in the house anyway. Because I saw this coming, as early as January, I had already fully prepped the house with basics. My mother sometimes has these things where like for example, “I’m having this particular meat dish, so I only have that with broccoli.” Or, she has these things in her head where certain main dishes have to go with certain side dishes.
So where I was at, my perspective, having lived abroad for so many years in a developing country: I was just like “Whatever, so we spend a few months not having the side dishes we want. Who caes?” But this really, this was hard for my mother. It was much harder for her. You know, not having, like “Oh my god, we don’t have sour cream! For this whatever.” And I’m like, “Okay, so we’ll make it different side dish.” “Oh but this side dish GOES with what we’re cooking!” So, yes it was a challenge getting food delivered. It didn’t bother me so much. Except for the time consumption, I guess, of having to spend so much time on your phone to get all this stuff done. It didn’t bother me so much, it bothered my mother a lot more, the sort of limited access, or oh maybe you’d get it this time but not next time. Trying to think ahead about everything I might need in the next week or two. It bothered her much more than it bothered me.
DK: Some stores offered substitutions. Some were better at it than others. Did you have any items substituted for a different brand or even a different item?
PO: [laughter]. At first, yes. They generally were substituted with things that we would not use or could not use and we just ended up giving them away, so then later, after a few times of that happening, we just set the app to “don’t replace.” If they don’t have it, then just take it off the order. After a few times where they would just give us something that we didn’t want, I just said, “Well, forget about it. If they don’t have it, they don’t have it. C’est la vie.” So, we changed the settings on the app.
DK: The big question. Did you make bread?
PO: NO! No. But, boy did it become popular, right? No, I did not. I did not increase my baking at all. It’s not really my thing to begin with. I’m more of a cook and less of a baker. My dad is more of a baker. But even him, they’re on a keto diet because of my mother’s very specific condition that my mother has. The keto diet is ideal for her condition to reduce inflammation. They don’t eat much bread, anyway. Or baked goods because a keto diet is a very low carb, I think maximum of fifteen grams of carbs a day, which is often covered by just vegetables. They don’t eat much bread to begin with, and I’m okay with sliced bead. During the pandemic, when we were getting things delivered, if they sent me the wrong bread, I was just like, “Whatever, I’m not starving. I’m not some starving farmer in Western China, I’m alright.”
DK: How long passed between you going into hermit-mode, and I want that to be the term future historians use, and having a cup of coffee that you did not brew at home?
PO: Ahh! It was like the first day, maybe the second day after I moved to this apartment that I’m in right now, in July. I went to my favorite coffee shop, Ara Coffee. I will totally say their name. For the record, it is the best coffee in the state! Those four months I was in hermit mode, I missed it! It is the best coffee you will find anywhere in New Jersey, I swear to god. It’s in Rutherford, New Jersey. Ara Coffee, A-R-A Ara Coffee. Run by a lovely South Korean family.
DK: When did you start doing take-out food?
PO: Take out food? My parents are, again they’re Baby Boomers, they’re relatively well-off. We went into that whole “Support local businesses” thing. It’s not something that I can really afford to do, now that I’m living on my own. But for my parents, it’s something that they’ve been really trying to do. They probably order-out maybe twice as much as they used to? Usually, it would be they would go out to eat maybe once a week. Now they’re probably ordering take-out twice a week. And they’ve been trying to go to different restaurants to kind of spread their money around locally.
DK: Can you compare what your spring semester was like versus your fall semester now?
PO: I’ll start with the fall semester. The fall semester has been pretty stable. I don’t really like going to class online, but I tolerate it. I don’t really like not being able to go to the library, but I tolerate it. The spring semester, though, because it was half in person and then right before spring break, Rutgers went on lockdown and everything shifted to online, it was chaos. It really was. It wasn’t just chaos because of the school. It was chaos because of my private life. Dealing with the emotional complications from my mother, or from myself as well. I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t have my own emotional issues when this whole thing first happened. Still do. I think we all have a lot of emotions.
The transition to digital mid-semester like that, in the spring semester, I ended up taking an incomplete in one of the two classes I was taking. I was able to get most of the work done except for one paper and I was just like, “Screw it. I have to focus on me right now. I have to focus on me, and I have to focus on my family. I have to focus on moving out. I have to focus on my mental health.” So I took an incomplete in one class and I managed to finish all the work in the other class. Being thrown into digital classrooms halfway through the semester, kind of all of the sudden, was not good for me. [laughter]. That’s one of the reasons I moved out, because I recognized it wasn’t going to be as sustainable living my parents.
I wanted to make sure that I was set up in a way that would be better for mental health and better for doing classes online, because even as early as May and June, even though it was before Rutgers official said that fall classes were online, the department head that I was talking to said: “Paul, it likely will be online, so prepare for it.” And I did. Part of me moving out, setting up the second digital space that I have here in the new apartment. All of that was that to prepare for the fall. I don’t like it, but I was able to spend the summer. I had the luxury, and the privilege, and the money to set myself up for the fall semester very well. A lot of people just didn’t have the time or the energy or the money to prepare for whatever was coming next, but I really took a solid three months to just make sure everything in my life was as ideal as possible so that when the semester started it would go smoothly.
Like I said, it’s so far been pretty smooth. Don’t like it, but smooth. Spring semester? Chaos. [laughter]. I’m not that happy that I have an incomplete. I have a year to finish it. Thankfully it’s just one paper, it’s one project, so it’s not the end of the world. It was chaotic enough in the Spring that I decided that taking the incomplete was the best route.
DK: We’ve covered a lot. I really appreciate you taking the time. Before we go, is there anything else you’d like to add?
PO: Not that I can think of. We really did cover a pretty broad range of things. I guess the only thing that I’d like to add is: for anyone out there who might be listening to this. Not in ten years, but maybe a bit sooner, if you don’t have a second monitor in whatever you’re at home set up is, invest in a second monitor. Repurpose an old TV or something, because having a second screen with whatever your home setup is, it makes such a difference. It really does. It makes it so much more user friendly, so much easier to deal with all of the situation if you have a second screen. That’s my advice for anyone who reads this.
DK: Thank you very much for talking with me.
PO: You’re very welcome.
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