Interview with Callaway Lee, History 150H Spring 2020, Conducted by Anna Lee, April 29, 2020.

Biography:

I interviewed my 18 year old cousin Callaway Lee. She was born in April 2002 in Fauquier County and has lived there her entire life. She is currently a senior at Fauquier High School and next year she will be a first year at either the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, or the University of South Carolina.

Research:

In December 2019 there was news of a pneumonia-like illness sweeping China. The Coronavirus had begun. The Coronavirus is an illness that originated in Wuhan, China and causes sickness ranging from the common cold to Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. The Coronavirus first arrived in the United States in Washington state in January 2020. It did not amount to much during the month of February but then it ended up blowing out of proportion. In the middle of March 2020 all public schools in the state of Virginia were shut down and the governor began enforcing a stay at home order. As of now this stay at home order will be in tact until June 10, 2020 for a total of 72 days in quarantine.

Anna Lee: [00:00:00] This is Anna Lee conducting an interview with Callaway Lee. Do I have consent to conduct and post this interview online?

Callaway Lee: [00:00:06] Yes.

Anna Lee: [00:00:08] Can you introduce yourself?

Callaway Lee: [00:00:10] So my name is Callaway Lee. I’m Anna’s cousin and I’m 18 years old. I was born on April 18th, 2002 in Fauquier County and I’ve lived here my whole life and I’m a senior at Fauquier High School. Next year I will be going to college, but I don’t know where yet. So, we will have to wait to find out about that.

Anna Lee: [00:00:35] Can you briefly describe the Coronavirus pandemic and its effect on the world?

Callaway Lee: [00:00:40] So the Coronavirus pandemic originated in China I’m pretty sure. Whether it was from a bat or from a lab, I don’t know that information, but it’s affected pretty much everyone on the globe. In the United States, every state is on a stay at home warning, pretty much, and everyone’s been quarantining except for essential workers like doctors and bankers and grocery store people. So, a lot of people have died. I don’t know how many people have died. I know over a million cases in the United States as of recently. Last time I checked there was like, one hundred thousand deaths in the world or maybe that was in the United States. I don’t know.

Anna Lee: [00:01:26] Okay. When did you find out about quarantine and the stay at home orders for Virginia?

Callaway Lee: [00:01:35] Well the first time I had a stay at home order technically I guess was when they closed schools, but they only closed schools for two weeks for us, and I was actually still at my high school taking my Senior Softball pictures. I found out they were closing schools for two weeks and then I remember they, I think it was in the second week of that closing and they, actually, I don’t know. And then I remember when they officially closed schools for the rest of the year and the governor ordered a stay at home order. I was actually at the gym and I found out and I was so sad and I started crying and then I drove to my friend Lauren’s house.

Anna Lee: [00:02:23] How has the Coronavirus affected you more personally?

Callaway Lee: [00:02:27] Yeah, so the reason I was so upset about everything being canceled is because I am a senior in high school and I’ve been through 12 years of education. And all of a sudden all the best parts of high school so things like obviously my senior softball season, which we were gonna go to states, by the way, very upset about that. Like my prom, even my graduation, I never have a graduation and we have Gold Cup in Fauquier County, which is like a big horse race that everyone goes to. That was also postponed. And my birthday is actually also during this quarantine. I’m turning 18 and I didn’t think I was gonna be able to see any my friends. I was kind of alone which was also very depressing, so.

Anna Lee: [00:03:17] What has it been like missing all of these milestones?

Callaway Lee: [00:03:25] Hard I guess. Very sad because I think like all of us seniors are kind of in it together. We’re all very sad together. But it’s something that no one no other class can really relate to because like obviously it’s never happened before and it probably won’t happen for a while I don’t know.

Anna Lee: [00:03:47] So, you mentioned you turned 18 during quarantine. What was different about your birthday under the circumstances?

Callaway Lee: [00:03:54] It’s actually funny. So my 18th birthday is on a Saturday and it fell on the same day as prom. So I thought I was going to be celebrating my birthday at prom with all of my friends. Literally everyone at school, together. But no. I was home and I knew I probably was going to see my family and we were all going to come over for dinner, which we did and that was really nice. My friends actually also surprised me by having a little parade through my driveway, so like my softball team all got in their own cars and drove around and brought me balloons and candy, which was really nice and unexpected. So I know I wouldn’t have had that if it weren’t for the Coronavirus, so it was kind of nice. And then later that night, as I said, my family came over, we had a nice big meal, lots of desserts and we celebrated. And Anna, as you know, we tried on prom dresses, to celebrate not having prom so. It wasn’t that bad. We reused decorations for my fifth grade birthday party. So that was fun.

Anna Lee: [00:04:58] How did quarantine affect your college search?

Callaway Lee: [00:05:03] Oh gosh. It’s made it really difficult for my college search because I was really undecided. I applied to like five schools and it really came down to the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, and the University of South Carolina and I had tours lined up for all of those schools during these months and I wasn’t able to do any of them, which I’ve been to all the schools before, but I had never been there while students were there, which is really what I wanted to do this spring. So now that I can’t go it makes it even harder to make my decision. I really just have to go off like stuff that’s online, which I’ve already searched through like a thousand times over and it’s all the same material, and it’s all like what the school wants you to know. And I want to learn more about the school like what the students think of it and how they act around each other when they’re there and stuff, so.

Anna Lee: [00:05:53] What do you think the future looks like for you after the end of quarantine?

Callaway Lee: [00:05:59] Well hopefully quarantine ends soon but I feel like, I started doing school work again and like I feel like I’ve become like adjusted kind of to quarantine. And like once it’s over it’ll basically be summer. So honestly I’ll probably do. I don’t know. I hope I go on a lot of vacations, go to the beach, and not have to worry about anything. And I… yes, I want to see all my friends because I’ve never in my entire life wanted to be around like everyone at once. I miss everyone so. I want to spend as much time with them as possible before we all go off to college.

Anna Lee: [00:06:39] And what do you think the future of the world looks like?

Callaway Lee: [00:06:46] Honestly, I don’t know. I feel like some people are gonna keep probably wearing masks when they go out and stuff. For me personally I probably won’t. There could be like a second wave of Coronavirus. I don’t even know what that entails and I don’t even know what the government would do about that. It’s kind of crazy to think about. But I think most people will probably go back to their normal lives.

Anna Lee: [00:07:13] Okay, well, thank you for letting me interview you.

Callaway Lee: [00:07:16] You’re welcome.

Interview Process:

This interview was conducted in-person and recorded through Garage Band on my laptop. The interview was completed in my house when no one else was home so that we could be uninterrupted. I did not have to edit the recording because we stayed on topic the entire time. Before the interview we spoke briefly about the questions so there would be no surprises.

Conclusion:

Overall, I thought the interview went very well. I did not go off script because I did not give Callaway much time to prepare, so I wanted her to feel as comfortable as possible with the few notes that she had. It ended up being shorter than I expected. With nine questions I figured there would be enough material for at least ten minutes, but if I did this again I would probably ask more questions. Despite the brevity of the interview, I thought it went really smoothly and I was happy with the outcome.