write in about 150-200 words: my lockdown life
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Sunday 10/05/20
I got up at 8am so I could try and finish off both my essays. At the end of Hilary I had Mods - essentially two weeks of pretty intense exams. Since the beginning of Trinity I’ve started Greats (my finals options), which involves doing two units a term. This term I’m doing Latin core, a big literature paper, and Roman History 5 (RH5), which covers the Roman Republic from 146BC to 46 BC. This means that I’ve got ten essays this term - generally two due on odd weeks, and one on even. On even weeks I have a 2 hour reading class which replaces my normal Latin Core tutorial. By a twist of fate (and some over-zealous doodle polling on my part) both tutorials are on Tuesdays - and so are due Monday night. I quite like this though, as to means I’m quite flexible in my timetable the rest of the week. So far I’m about 1000 words into each - aiming for 2000 for Latin Core and 2500-3000 for RH5.
I spend most the day writing my essays, stopping for breakfast and lunch (and several coffees). The Latin Core one is about the power, function and history of poetry in Vergil’s Eclogues. I find the topic really interesting but struggle with identifying some of the intertextuality and allusions to Hellenistic poets like Callimachus and Theocritus. Tutors, librarians and my faculty have been really great about making the books we need available online - like the commentary’s which indicate specific interplay. This helps massively but it's still difficult to write my essay while referring back to the online books. I normally split my computer screen, which is okay for essay writing but more difficult in tutes.
I have the same issue with the RH5 one, where I keep needing to refer back to the primary texts. This week we’re looking at the popular politicians of the 2nd century, like the Gracchi. The history secondary reading was initially hard to get hold of, but my tutor has since made a lot of PDF's available on Canvas. Canvas is the online learning platform that my faculty is using. It's been a really useful way to share resources for both of my units
My lockdown experience
My experience of lockdown as a student has had its ups and downs as you would imagine. Being confined to our homes with no outside social interactions with fellow humans is tough and goes against our human nature. Nothing compares with going University and experiencing the full uni student life of interacting with friends and lecturers. While a global pandemic has brought this all to a halt, I have been lucky enough to have a family that continues to support me during these uncertain times, who are always allowing me the time and space I’ve needed over these past months to study independently.
I am currently in my second year of Sports and Exercise Science with ongoing final assessments which haven’t been all that bad for me during the lockdown. I like to think of myself as a hard-working grafter when it comes to essay writing. I have been able to quickly adapt to a remote learning platform (in which, the University has done a phenomenal job) by making the content easily accessible which has been essential in continuing my studies at an incredible speed with assessment deadlines hovering overhead.
My knowledge and experience in exercise and health has allowed me to continue to keep my health and well-being in check. Having trained many clients in home-based exercises in the past gave me the confidence and incentive to implement my own home routine while juggling my studies. However, keeping my mind actively engaged with sometimes arduous 1000+ repetition push-ups, sit-ups, and squats variations (per week) and half marathon runs on a whim was no easy task. Exercise has primarily been my lifeline through these times, keeping boredom and my belly size at bay. But don’t get me wrong I’ve had my binge eating and movie marathon days like most through these unprecedented times.
With all this said, I’ve kept a positive head, always looking towards the current challenge of lockdown as an adaptive learning experience that we’re all faced with. As my motto goes “always live to learn, to try and fail, but most of all, keeping it real”.
hopefully its helped u dear :)