Mask Culture

This paper defines care in a college context as well as discusses the topic of mask usage in the same setting. It addresses how people have adapted to the implementation of masks and how society has changed their daily routines in order to guarantee that their masks were now a part of it. It consists of various feedback from college students surrounding the topic of masks, as well as how they, as individuals, deal with the guidelines executed across the SUNY Geneseo campus. An ethnographic research process was used to understand the usage of masks in today’s society and if/how they have been implemented. Through field notes, interviews, and a coding and memoing process, it was found that the usage of masks had shifted people’s perceptions of others throughout the year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The interviewees expressed that they felt anger and frustration towards those who did not wear a mask in public. It was also found that people did not find the implementation of masks as much of an inconvenience as I expected they would before going into this research process. As well as people realizing that masks were no longer a temporary objective and more of a permanent one. After examination of all the findings, it was concluded that masks have played a vital role in society today, as well as becoming a permanent objective, more importantly throughout people’s daily lives