my life during pandemic long essay 5000 words
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my life during panda
Erasmus life
I moved to Gothenburg in September, 2019. Erasmus was everything I had hoped it would be and more. Many had warned me that I would find it hard at the start, and would feel homesick and lonely, but none of that happened. I settled in quickly, met friends almost immediately, and adjusted to my new life. I was enrolled to take an entire year (60 credits) worth of gender studies courses, an option that was not afforded to me anywhere else, which would enable me to pursue a masters in gender studies. At that point, two years into my degree, I always joked that while my classmates were doing a degree in International Relations, I was doing a degree in Feminism with an IR perspective. The majority of my essays at that point had been through a feminist perspective, so to actually be taught with that feminist lense, rather than having to seek it out myself, was incredible. Classes were small and interactive, which enabled an amazing amount of group discussion, with people from all over the world contributing their stories. I was excited to go to class every day, and would call my mam as soon as I got home so I could tell her what we had spoken about. It sounds cliche, but time truly did fly because I was having so much fun.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic
‘This once in a lifetime opportunity, that had motivated me to take my education seriously, was over so quickly.’
However, by the end of February it became clear that something unusual was happening. COVID-19 had been mentioned in passing for a month or so at that point over drinks with friends, or at our biweekly fajita nights. We would downplay the issue, saying it was “just a flu” and reassuring each other that we would all be fine. None of us wanted to leave, and we were all adamant that we would stay until the very end, which we all doubted would come. It was easy to live in our little bubble when most news was reported in a language we could barely understand and, as would grow apparent, the government was taking a very blasé approach to the whole situation. At that point I had received two emails from DCU reassuring Erasmus students that all was well, and that should there be any updates we would be notified. As the week went on, I was also contacted by friends who were worried about my health. I am known to have a weak immune system, and have been hospitalised for regular viruses before, so many of them were concerned and urged me to be careful.
The following week is when the situation very suddenly changed. On a Saturday night, students in our building began leaving in droves, and by Sunday morning it seemed as though there would be nobody left. By Wednesday, it truly seemed as though me and my friends were the only people remaining. On the 12th of March, a Thursday morning, I was on the tram on the way to a highly anticipated seminar, when an email informed me that it had been cancelled. It was the first time I had left the apartment in a few days due to COVID-19 concerns, so I was a bit disappointed. I got on the next tram back to my apartment, which is when I got the first of what would be many successive emails from DCU over the next couple of days. By Monday night, I had come to the conclusion that it was imperative that I leave by Thursday the 19th. However, due to the fact that Ryanair was my only direct option, and they only flew to Dublin from my city twice a week, I had to decide whether I could pack up my life in twelve hours or five days. At that point I realised that I had an assignment that would be given to me on Wednesday, which would be due the next Wednesday. This was common in the Swedish education system, which did take a bit of getting used to, as I usually have my essays finished two weeks before the due date, but as we only had one module at a time it was manageable. What this system did not take into account, however, was a pandemic suddenly impacting the lives and living situations of thousands of students. Suddenly, not only was I faced with uphauling my entire life, one that I had built for seven months, and saying goodbye to friends that I likely would not see again for a long time. And I would also have to find time to complete a 5000 word essay in the middle of it! This crushing realisation caused the first of many crying fits on the phone to my mam, who at that point had been urging me to come home for about two weeks. I could tell she was relieved that I had finally decided to do so, but also that she was incredibly upset that this once in a lifetime opportunity, that had motivated me to take my education seriously, was over so quickly and without warning, and completely outside of our control.
Answer:
I had a dream come true last weekend, quite literally. For the first time in about six months, I was able to browse in a bookstore (one in my neighborhood that's reopened with sanitary and social distancing protocols clearly posted) while wide-awake. In the past, leaving the store without buying anything had felt like a triumph of willpower, but this time it involved some guilt. Only one other person was in the store during my visit, a clerk, and it only seemed fair to her to purchase something. Next time, for sure.
To be clear, I am not exactly wanting for reading material, but the element of wish fulfillment is intense even so. Likewise with my spouse, who reports having theater dreams. She has attended at least one play a week, on the most conservative estimate, throughout her entire adult life -- or did until this spring. Performances by excellent companies are livestreamed now, and she has been able to take theater classes online. But there’s more to going to theater than seeing a play -- a ritual-like aspect that can’t be broadcast. Browsing indulges curiosity and involves a degree of chance. The hunger is not for content but for certain qualities of experience, in part communal, that are lost or on hold for the duration.
The possibility of turning crisis into opportunity comes up in one of the essays on working from home that appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Scholarly Publishing. “How many of you,” asks Erika Dyck, a history professor at the University of Saskatchewan, “have dreamed of pressing pause on the work treadmill? I am talking about a genuine freeze-frame, reset, and rethink, or a chance to read something that isn’t directly related to a task with a deadline.”
But think again: “Let’s not kid ourselves; working from home during a pandemic is not that.” Before the pandemic, Dyck had what seemed like a modus vivendi that balanced parental responsibilities and academic work, including her role as a co-editor of the Canadian Bulletin for Medical History. “Now,” she writes, “despite being relatively isolated or even hiding in a home office, I consistently feel tired and am unable to focus on anything, especially when it comes to writing … My mind has constantly wandered, whether drifting toward the contents of the fridge and the looming prospect of dinner, or more often enveloping me in a fog of wondering whether any of the work we do as academics really matters, or whether we will still have academic institutions in a post-COVID world.”
Dyck’s is the most confessional of the essays and, no doubt for that reason, the one that made the most impression on me. At some point her trouble writing it became integral to what she had to say -- in particular, to acknowledging the trouble with “feeling like we need to be productive while people are dying, losing jobs, hungry and scared.”
The other four contributors to “A Compilation of Short Takes on Working from Home” recount different levels of difficulty in adjusting to the disruption. Bryan Birchmeier, an intellectual property coordinator at Michigan Publishing and the University of Michigan Press, frames it as a less physically grueling version of the phase known as “tear-down” or “total control” that he went through as in boot camp: “It’s meant to break down any barriers recruits may have to adjusting to a military schedule and to military procedures.We have had to create or adjust to a new schedule and new procedures because so much about our daily routine is different …”
At the other extreme is the experience of Olivier Lebert, the manager for two Canadian journals for 15 years, who has telecommuted for 11 of them -- and from France for the past 10. It sounds like the pandemic has not called for that much change in routine, and he can sum up best practices very clearly: establish a schedule. Stick to it. Meet deadlines. Outside your set working hours, relax: “stop responding to professional calls or emails.”
Lebert’s recommendations are sensible, and they line up closely with the advice offered in the same symposium by Sarah Buhler, an associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law, and by Kathie Porta Baker, described as “a self-employed manuscript editor, proofreader, and production assistant living and working in Northern Virginia.” But for Lebert, the boot camp-like transformation took place quite a while ago. Work at home has become second nature, though he does not indicate how long that took.
We are coming up on six months since the familiar broke. Marking the anniversary of a change sometimes helps to put it in perspective. In this case no commonly accepted date is available to punctuate time into before and after. (March 10 seems a little early, while March 15 is probably too late.) The turn was sudden, sharp, yet a blur. We make adjustments that seem to nudge things a little closer to normal, but with an uneasy awareness that there is so much more loss still to come.
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