"Two weeks ago, I got tested for the first time. I was nervous and didn’t know what to expect, so when the Telegraph class was asked what we wanted to write about, I figured this might be a good idea." -- Isaiah Kahn, 6th grade
After school on August 19th, my parents brought me to a testing station about 6 to 7 minutes away from OSA to, well, get tested.
The testing place I went to was a drive-through testing spot called Renegade Bio on Aileen Street in Berkeley, nearby It’s All Good Bakery.
When our car was about third in line, I asked the testing person (who was getting our IDs and documents) about what type of test was best. My parents and I had been planning to get the saliva test, since somebody sticking a Q-tip up our brains doesn’t exactly sound pleasant, to say the least.
He told us that he thought the easiest test was the nasal test, since they had recently changed to the less Q-tip-up-your-brain version of the test.
I asked why he didn’t like the saliva test. To me it sounded least uncomfortable. “It’s basically just spitting into a cup for about ten minutes,” the technician said.
When we finally got the test, we decided to get the nasal one. It wasn’t exactly Q-tip-up-your-brain style, but it was still Q-tip-unnaturally-deep-into-your-nose. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant feeling, but it’s better than wondering and worrying about Covid-19, or unknowingly giving it to someone else. Or ending up in the hospital because the worst has happened.
Testing has become a normal way of life for many students, as in-campus instruction commenced this fall. Raffi Ponet is a 6th grader at OSA. He has been tested for Covid about 8 times with no positive results.
Ponet got a nasal test at Berkeley Adult School. “You take a Q-tip out of a plastic bag, stick it up your nose and then swirl it around ten times on each nostril,” Ponet said when I asked him about his experience with the test. “It felt really weird and uncomfortable.”
This is similar to my experience too, except a volunteer stuck the Q-tip up my nose instead of myself. It could be kind of cool to have more of a do-it-yourself kind of test, but it would take some self control not to pull it out immediately when the swab stabs deep into your nostrils.
When I asked Ponet about how it compares to other tests he’s gotten, he said, “I’ve gotten the mouth swab one before which I like better because you can’t really feel anything and it just makes you want to spit.”
Finally, I asked Ponet what he would do to improve his experience. “It would have been nice if the line was shorter, even though the test only took about a minute,” he said.
The testing place I went to was a drive-through testing spot called Renegade Bio on Aileen Street in Berkeley, nearby It’s All Good Bakery.
When our car was about third in line, I asked the testing person (who was getting our IDs and documents) about what type of test was best. My parents and I had been planning to get the saliva test, since somebody sticking a Q-tip up our brains doesn’t exactly sound pleasant, to say the least.
He told us that he thought the easiest test was the nasal test, since they had recently changed to the less Q-tip-up-your-brain version of the test.
I asked why he didn’t like the saliva test. To me it sounded least uncomfortable. “It’s basically just spitting into a cup for about ten minutes,” the technician said.
When we finally got the test, we decided to get the nasal one. It wasn’t exactly Q-tip-up-your-brain style, but it was still Q-tip-unnaturally-deep-into-your-nose. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant feeling, but it’s better than wondering and worrying about Covid-19, or unknowingly giving it to someone else. Or ending up in the hospital because the worst has happened.
Testing has become a normal way of life for many students, as in-campus instruction commenced this fall. Raffi Ponet is a 6th grader at OSA. He has been tested for Covid about 8 times with no positive results.
Ponet got a nasal test at Berkeley Adult School. “You take a Q-tip out of a plastic bag, stick it up your nose and then swirl it around ten times on each nostril,” Ponet said when I asked him about his experience with the test. “It felt really weird and uncomfortable.”
This is similar to my experience too, except a volunteer stuck the Q-tip up my nose instead of myself. It could be kind of cool to have more of a do-it-yourself kind of test, but it would take some self control not to pull it out immediately when the swab stabs deep into your nostrils.
When I asked Ponet about how it compares to other tests he’s gotten, he said, “I’ve gotten the mouth swab one before which I like better because you can’t really feel anything and it just makes you want to spit.”
Finally, I asked Ponet what he would do to improve his experience. “It would have been nice if the line was shorter, even though the test only took about a minute,” he said.
