For our time capsule project, we wanted to ensure that we recorded certain experiences of UChicago students during COVID in a way that would not necessarily be retained by the more formal creations of history. Slang and in-group references are often forgotten, so we are taking this rare opportunity to attempt to preserve the terms we have been using to talk about COVID-19. In order to capture these words, we have created a small glossary of fifteen words and terms that we deem significant to the experience of a UChicago student during this past year. In order to choose the terms, we asked friends and consulted an online forum to make sure our glossary is representative of a broader group of students, not just the four of us. We pooled these suggestions from peers and our personal proposals and met to whittle it down to 15 terms that we thought represent a wide range of groups and experiences from the university community. The terms are designed to capture student voices and personal experiences amidst the global tragedy of the pandemic.

Along with conducting an online poll of our peers on what words they thought were most essential to the student COVID experience, we also worked together as a group to come up with words that we thought dominated or summarized our ordeals in quarantine. Some of the words, like 14-day quarantine, are related to regional policies and disease management

protocols. Others, like #girlboss, reflect broader social changes that picked up during quarantine, both due to the effects of the pandemic exacerbating already existing social issues, as well as people having more time to consume media and reflect on these issues. While we considered adding larger movements like #BLM that became particularly significant in recent times, we decided that since the movement had been going on for almost a decade and was much larger than the specifics of COVID, it was not appropriate to include it in the glossary. #girlboss, on the other hand, a meme birthed during quarantine that we believe will be quickly forgotten. Furthermore, we tried to include terms specific to UChicago, such as “Paris/China kids”, since these terms would almost certainly be lost to history (even in a couple of years) without this record. Other

experiences, like how international students had to deal with the travel ban, were also restricted to a smaller portion of students and less widespread, thus more easily lost to time.

Ultimately, while we tried to encapsulate as much of our specific experiences into this pamphlet, the definitions written here are not meant to be perfectly straightforward; some are instead written to express the character of the entry as we interact with it as UChicago students. This glossary is not politically neutral: we found it important to convey how we as students felt about the events of the pandemic and how they were handled by both the U.S. government and UChicago administration. In addition, we included hand-drawn illustrations from each group member to add an extra human touch to the glossary. Moreover, by including illustrations from all four of us, we aim to represent the diverse perspectives upon these terms.