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 12-13 months to study independently.
Before all this madness, I had such a busy schedule with my university and getting out with my friends. But now unfortunately, being at home 24/7 with no distractions has given me headache. I am currently in my second year of my degree with ongoing final assessments which haven’t been all that bad for me during the lockdown. Our university introduced MS Teams for our classes. I have been able to quickly adapt to a remote learning platform. Once I got used to using Microsoft Teams. During lockdown, I teamed up with two of my course mates and we created a small group where we would set goals to complete at the end of each week. I used to virtually meet up with my university friends through MS Teams and Zoom.
In terms of social life, I think that it is important to wind down and do activities other than work. So, to keep myself busy, I made digital illustrations and portraits. I also had one or two daily calls with school friends which helped keep me sane!
The best thing about lockdown was that I could interact with my family especially my little brother. The fact that we are all home together provides me a safe calm environment
Moreover the online exams during the lockdown helped me a lot to bring up my CGPA. Still there are some negative effects of the lockdown for example it made me lazy due to which my father always insulted me that I was sitting in my room whole day doing nothing. One of the big effect of online classes was that I got totally distracted from my studies. Now my CGPA is good but I have no idea what I have studied in this semester and the previous one and sometimes I even forget the names of my courses.
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. Overall, I have found lockdown a lot better than I thought it was going to be because I managed to keep connected with all my friends and family.
Muhammad Akif Majeed
Reg. No 190301011
Mat-12(B)