Explore the Archives
A Journal of the Plague Year Arizona Collection Australia Boston Bronx Community College New York Brooklyn College New York Canada Las Americas Lockdown Staten Island New Orleans Oral Histories Philippines Sacramento Community Based Organizations Southwest Stories Teaching the Pandemic The City College of New York

Collected Item: “Finishing my Undergraduate Degree during the Pandemic”

Give your story a title.

Finishing my Undergraduate Degree during the Pandemic

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

text story

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

I was starting the last semester of my undergraduate degree when the pandemic hit the globe. At this time (around March 2020) I was planing to work on my senior honors thesis and happy to start my master's degree in October 2020. But in order to finish my thesis, I had to do some intensive research first: my plan was to visit a big German archive in Berlin and also to do some research in a couple of libraries. But just before I could do so, all German institutions went into lockdown and closed for months due to health precautions. As somebody who studied History and had to visit an archive for my thesis, I felt like I was totally stuck in my academic studies. I felt like it was impossible to finish my studies in the scheduled time, and for months I didn't know how to continue my academic work. Luckily, my university was considerate enough to extend the submission date for my thesis. After a couple of months of not knowing if I could start my master's degree in time (and in general not knowing how my academic and financial future would look like if I didn't finish my undergraduate degree in time) the archives and libraries opened up again, and I could continue my research and finish my thesis.

Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?

#covidteaches, #exhausted, #uncertainty, #wastingtime, #precautions, #lockdown, #germany, #academia, #historymajor

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

Slađana Mileusnić

Give this story a date.

2020-04-01
Click here to view the corresponding item.