‘What’s Going to Happen to Me?’ Reflecting on a Pandemic College Year, Through the Words of Student Newspapers

Last year, University of Washington junior Jake Goldstein-Street wrote and published an article for his school newspaper about three students who had been tested for the coronavirus, just a week after the first known case was reported in the state.

Nine paragraphs down, he wrote that an assistant professor in the department of laboratory medicine told The Daily that “the risk for transmission here in Washington state is low currently.”

Now a senior and about a year after his published story, Goldstein-Street said in an interview with USA TODAY that he “never got the feeling, like, no one was very worried in mid-January.”