Dora X.'s Senior Project Blog!

For the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has devastated millions of lives in the US, and despite the recent vaccinations being administered, continues to cause detriments to physical health, mental health, employment, and overall productivity in every sector of society. Particularly for Generation Z students, the switch to remote learning or socially distanced classes has undoubtedly raised education as another major area of concern for America’s youth. Considering the already high rates of anxiety and depression among students, as well as the increasing social pressures for high achievement and acceptance into prestigious universities, the additional stress of the COVID-19 pandemic will most definitely have lingering impacts on Gen Z and their future transition into the workforce. To highlight the ways Gen Z has been affected by the pandemic and further analyze the severity of its consequences, I will be creating a website with various graphs to explain the statistics behind COVID-19’s physical, psychological, and social effects on Gen Z. By learning programming languages such as Rstudio at the University of Maryland, I will apply data analysis techniques to study specific COVID-19 data and provide more in-depth information on my website. Through conducting this research, I hope to highlight the catastrophic repercussions of the pandemic so that profound reminders of our struggles can motivate us to better understand infectious diseases and develop ways to spur recovery as the country heals.