I STILL REMEMBER: Reflections from Aguascalientes on the days of the pandemic

This work is the result of a project that addresses a phenomenon occurring during the COVID-19 health crisis, which suffers from the problems experienced at that time: it involved working with six different research assistants, some of whom never visited the facilities of the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes (UAA), and others with whom the author never met in person, using atypical schedules and very diverse conditions. The same happened with the scholarship holders; some completed their collaboration periods without having been personally known by him. That, without a doubt, had repercussions on each person's productivity. As a result of hearing the stories of the students who completed their sociology degree during that semester (December 2022), the author realized how difficult it was for them to continue learning during the pandemic years and, from personal experience, to talk about how hard it was to teach.
The issue presented here was discussed in the semesters that Maza taught, as there was no other topic to talk about; just like in countless conversations with colleagues, mostly virtual, as well as many dialogues with local media. Especially in his classes with students from various semesters, they were asked about the topics that became more relevant due to these changes, and the answers from those difficult classes were: violence, information overload, there is free time that was neither sought nor desired, this leads to a new relationship with time, the role of the State and the need to rethink our relationship with public health, the relationship of new forms of capitalism and their institutions, and working conditions. That list of topics already represents a guide to everything that needed to be reflected upon.

The results presented in this text reflect a long methodological process aimed at explaining what was happening. A storytelling contest was held to understand the subjects' experiences during quarantine, and a survey was conducted among the faculty and students of the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes to inquire about their online education experiences, all accompanied by a review of the indicators of the situation being experienced. In the first chapter, titled "What happened during that period?", the indicators that were considered most relevant in terms of health impact, both economically and socially, that is, in people's lives, are presented. This sets the context for the second chapter where the results of the surveys applied to students and faculty are presented, addressing how distance education was experienced and its effects on the academic, social, and professional lives of the community. For this, different ways of presenting the information were tried, with dynamic graphs or word clouds, which help to understand the complex information presented. In the third chapter, a recap of what the informants expressed in the stories of the contest called "Pandemic Stories" is provided. The stories were organized and processed to present a coherent text that shows the reader a small part of that experience.
If the reader needs to know what they will find in this book that is not already in many of those published on the subject, it could be said that this is a perspective from a medium-sized city in Mexico, with the lens focused on the university community, in which various data collection strategies were applied, such as gathering subjects' narratives or asking them about the emotions that were part of their daily lives at that time.