Fear, uncertainty, chaos, disbelief, and confusion were some of the predominant emotions that marked the first days and weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. No one could have imagined the enormous loss and life changes that were to come. At the University of Michigan-Dearborn, as more news came in day by day, we leaned on each other and worked together rising to the unprecedented challenge of finding ways to safely continue teaching and essential work. Exhibited here are voices and images reflecting the calm before the storm.

Not knowing how long we would be away from our offices, we rushed to make decisions about what to take home, and worked quickly as teams to establish new Covid-19 procedures in each of our departments.

Several months into the pandemic, we invited the campus community to pick up a camera or smartphone and examine their homes and communities in a new way. We asked participants to look for interesting methods for depicting mundane objects, photograph family members and elements of nature that bring joy, and document volunteer activities and other scenes in their communities to serve as historic documentation for the pandemic.

Classes were rapidly reimagined and reconfigured for digital learning, and faculty and staff worked long hours to create innumerable new methods of fulfilling our educational mission for the students as we all faced daunting challenges.

The pace of the news and the consequences were truly unprecedented. Huge decisions, affecting every aspect of our lives, were being made almost hourly in the first few weeks of the pandemic. Before all of us realized how serious the situation was, we transitioned to working from home.

Many parts of our community were deserted in eerie ways, and entire empty aisles in the grocery stores created panic. In the beginning, we made cautious trips to stores that felt unsafe not knowing what to buy, and we stocked our homes with canned and boxed foods.

All was not doom and gloom! Some of us faced the stark realities and constantly evolving circumstances with humor and good cheer.

In our home lives, we prepared for lockdown by cobbling together new home offices and teaching ourselves how to tutor our children and sew masks during those first months when the supply was low. In the face of unimagined shortages and uncertain safety, we reprioritized what was important to buy at the grocery store.

When we could not be close to those we loved, we innovated, embracing novel ways of connecting with loved ones through glass and started new traditions of birthday parties and family dinners over Zoom.