UTSoC Publications Executive Melanie Wong reflects on what life looks like as a university student during a pandemic.
It is a blessed 8am when my alarm clock rings for the first time. Considering the usual one-and-a-half hour commute required for anything at uni, the shift to online classes has found multiple silver linings for 9am classes. Despite this, I still don’t actually get out of bed until 8:45am, changing my shirt, grabbing a slice of toast and making sure my room (or what my Zoom audience can see of my room) is acceptable.
It’s a weird new normal that I and many other university students have found ourselves in.
There is no longer a morning commute, no stumbling out of bed in panic to make the absolute latest train. Instead, lockdown has called for sleep-ins and inverted sleep schedules, business on the top and party on the bottom outfits, and the constant anxiety that your microphone is not on mute. Now, my lectures consist of recorded PowerPoint slides, the disembodied voice of my lecturer coaxing me awake as I take bites of breakfast in between note-typing.
This semester, my Wednesdays are the worst. I have class from 9am until 3pm - two one-hour lectures followed by two two-hour tutorials. When I made the timetable for myself sometime last year, I admit I was a little foolish in hoping for the best; surely I could find time in between my classes to eat some sushi, or buy a coffee. In retrospect, that would have been absolutely impossible if uni had progressed as normal. Between classes inadvertently ending late and running from one side of campus to the other, I would have been lucky to get to class on time. In all honesty, classes shifting online has probably saved me a lot of stress (and a lot of cardio).
On a good, sunny day, I can even sit in a sunny patch of my parent’s verandah - I have finally understood why cats always sunbathe on the windowsill.
I am lucky enough to live with my parents, lucky enough not to fear that my loss of shifts will mean I have no place to stay next month.
Despite all the perks of learning-from-home, sitting at a table for six hours straight is also not the best strategy. With my lectures often lasting 45 to 50 minutes, the 10 minute break before the next class is much needed — a stretch, a walk to the fridge for some snacks, a bathroom break, or lying on my bed not working my brain for a while.
When my classes end, I give myself half an hour to nap in the remaining sunlight. It sometimes feels like I have not done anything productive at all, sitting at my desk and listening for so long, but when my friend asks me what she missed in class, I’m surprised to be able to summarise the main points from the lesson.
Then, I force myself to do exercise.
As an introvert who has not been regularly ‘sporty’ for various reasons in the last three years, this is something I resisted passionately at the beginning of lockdown. Stay at home all day, every day? Easy! But the listlessness of staying in my room all day (it was a great day if my step count hit four digits) soon caught up with me and forced me to go on walks around the block or, when particularly motivated, to do YouTube exercise videos. Go figure.
Wednesday nights are sometimes BOLO nights (standing for Big Orange Little Orange — a UTSoC mentoring program you should check out here). Talking to both mentors and mentees puts into perspective the change in first year university experiences from 2018, when I started, to 2020. It’s a pleasant surprise to find that despite all the challenges and roadblocks in their way, the first years have still been able to find their people, or those who might become their people.
Considering how hard I found this when there was no lockdown, I count that as an absolute win for them.
Online uni is not an ideal learning environment. In fact, many of my friends have struggled with motivation, concentration and sometimes simply functioning in this new world. But everyone understands that online classes are an ideal compromise in an ever changing situation relating to public health, an ideal compromise that prioritises community safety over all else. So I go to my classes and answer questions when prompted (sometimes it might take an extra prod from the patient tutor) and try to finish my assignments before they’re due, as usual.