Quote:
Originally Posted by rjolley
First team All-SAA! Congrats Bear!
Breeze, how are Brett and Bailey doing? How have they been navigating the restrictions of the pandemic?
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rjolley,
Hey, thanks for asking.
Bailey is going to University of South Carolina studying for a Cardiovascular Technologist degree, and is doing well and having fun. She actually got Covid about a month after arriving on campus, but sickness only lasted about 4 days, the bigger issue for her was fatigue, and that lasted much longer. Beyond that her biggest impacts have been restrictions at school that prevent gatherings, which makes it tough to interact and meet people. However, during rush her freshman year, the school broke the girls up into small groups to limit exposure and Bailey made 2 great friends from that experience. They get along so well they are planning to room together next year. She also got into a sorority and though there has been very little provided in the way of interaction she really likes her big sister. So at the end of the day, she's made some very good friends, which is what I was hoping would happen. Her swim "friends" growing up showed that they were far from loyal to Bailey, and I was really hoping that she'd meet a better group of girls at school.
Brett's had a harder time with the impact of the pandemic. Not sure if you recall, but he was coaching for Gold swimming when the pandemic hit. The initial flight to isolation caused the team to shut down, which caused Brett to be laid off. When the team ramped back up, Brett wasn't invited to return, as they were going to proceed with a skeleton crew. That ended up being a long drawn out story, where the owner didn't want Brett, then they wanted him but the owner wouldn't ask so he had another young coach do it which contradicted what the owner had said previously. This of course confused Brett as he felt the young coach was wanting him to return but hadn't cleared it with the owner, so when he didn't jump at the chance to return the owner sent a long nasty email criticizing him. At this point Brett washed his hands of that job.
From there he floundered for quite a while. Sleeping in really late, moping around, and generally acting bored and maybe a little depressed. He got a bit motivated and starting using my access to CBT Nuggets to work on IT training. In fact, he took the certification test for Network+ and was pretty close to passing with no practical experience. I urged him to look for an entry level IT job to get some experience before trying to take the test again, and he did. Eventually, he started working for a small IT group that does managed services for small clients, but also has a public facing retail shop for repairs. Brett currently works in the repair area, where he's fixing phones, computers, TVs, you name it, and he really enjoys it. He enjoys it so much that he is always working overtime, especially now when they are behind because he was absent for a couple of weeks due to Covid (he had almost no symptoms but the owner didn't want him around until he had two negative tests and that took a while). Over the last 3 weeks, and scheduled for the foreseeable future, Brett is working 6 days a week and logging around 55 hours. Having a more serious job has really helped, Brett now gets himself up for work, takes care of business, and is generally much happier.