With the COVID-19 vaccine now being made available for everyone over the age of 16 in Georgia and the campus vaccination site picking up steam as it slowly adds more appointments we reached out to Georgia Southern students to ask why they chose to be vaccinated.

Some of the reasons included to protect themselves, such as Brayden Short who shared with us that, “I have autoimmune conditions and chose to do it to better my chances of not getting sick.”

Or to protect others like Bailey Yarbrough, “To help protect my fellow Eagles as well as my family and my community!”

And Rachel Moody who said, “I decided to get vaccinated so I can do my part to keep my community, family, as well as myself safe from COVID-19”.

And Mary Lynn Evans who shared this, “My mom and brother are immunosuppressed. My grandparents are also older. I did it for my family. The idea of putting them in danger of COVID scared me so bad.”

There were also those who have specific people in their lives who they got vaccinated for. Such as Josh Guettler who shared with us his reason, “My mom mostly, she has lupus, but also to help us get back to some sense of normalcy.”

As well as Logan Collins, “I just wanted to see my grandmother.” and Kristen Rappa, “To protect my 82 year old mother.”

There were also those who admitted that the allure of a normal not so distant future definitely crossed their mind such as Eric Zhang who simply put down, “So that life can get back to normal”.

As well as FeirraihSha’ Beal who shared that, “I decided to get vaccinated because I want to help stop the spread of COVID-19 so we can start getting our campus and other things back to normal. I miss being able to see everybody around on campus without a mask and interacting more with one another and COVID has put a cap on how much we can interact with one another on campus without the fear of catching COVID.”