Unlocked under Lockdown
Well, the year 2020 started off really well for me and many others. New Year’s Celebrations were a blast with picnics on the beach, barbecues in the desert — the whole shebang. While I continued to live life the only way I knew how, Miss Corona was slowly but surely taking over the planet by capturing our travel industry, spreading from person to person, city to city, and country to country; to a point where the World Health Organization called this a pandemic. This led to a chain reaction of countrywide lockdowns, quarantines and a large number of restrictions of public movement. A completely new lifestyle was enforced upon all of us.
In my case, I had received a break for two weeks from my university so that they could re-plan the course for the months to come. For the first few days I was devastated by the gravity of the situation, but, on the 5thday, I woke up and decided that this was it and that I would use this time to metamorphose. Due to the lockdown, our cleaning help and cook were laid off, hence I started off by accompanying my mother in cooking, learnt her ways and began cooking almost full meals for my family. This became a norm and soon I was making smoothies for my family and cooking breakfasts at weekends making sure they stay healthy during this time; helping clean around the house and organizing my cupboards.
While doing so, I found some white spray paint and used glass bottles and decided to use them as plant holder for money plants, which grow very well in water.
I spray-painted around 9 of them and combined four with a wood project from first semester. I think it looks pretty cool.
Once the break ended, my classes began online. This was a completely new experience for me and frankly I found it pretty comical. Especially because we used Microsoft Teams and it was only the professor who would turn on his camera and speak, the students on the other hand were almost completely free to fall asleep, browse Instagram or eat food!
But, since my classes started pretty late in the day and did not require me to commute anywhere, it allowed me to change my working schedule in a way that was best suited to me. This was one of the best outcomes of the pandemic and I think it has helped me increase my productivity. For example, in one of my courses, my group was required to create a 2-minute video for the proposal of an idea. We were left with just 8 hours to make this video and this time slot matched perfectly with my working schedule. We were on an MS Teams call for almost 6 hours and finally after tons of yelling, laughing, ‘After Effects’ rendering and breaking down we were able to submit our video a little before the deadline that night.
All in all, this period has been super productive for me with extended learning opportunities that I could have never imagined.
By Arnav Bavishi
