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My first experiment is a personal essay written in the style of a timestamped journal entry. This is written in present tense over the course of a few weeks where there was COVID-19 positive residents at a group home for people with Traumatic Brain Injuries where I work. The goal of the piece is to give anyone who wants to read it the ability to feel how I felt as a young healthcare worker during the pandemic. It is intended to make the reader discomforted with the way things played out and make them question why the events happened and what could’ve prevented it. It is also a record for myself to hopefully remember in the future how vividly anxious and uncertain I felt. I chose to use this genre of writing to try something new, as I haven’t written anything about myself or in first person present tense for 5 years at least. I think that if I wrote this in past tense it wouldn’t be able to have the same impact or be as relevant to a reader. Additionally, I think the personal narrative will enable me to provide more detailed description, as well as thoughts and feelings, that will form an emotional connection with the reader and make the gravity of the situation resonate with them more. I think writing to a popular audience in this style will improve empathy and humanize this pandemic during a time where the news is often so frightening that you forget that the characters in play are real people like you or me. There will be my article of origin (an email I wrote with a coworker inquiring about PPE) at the beginning of the piece and an introduction to what the email is as well as an overview of people and places mentioned in the experiment in order to improve clarity for the reader.

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*** As a PSA, some things from this experiment, such as names, locations, and some details have been modified to comply with HIPPA. This is why it may have less background information than anticipated in the introduction, genre research, and outline.