My Transition

This is a short record of the changes in my life that took place due to the pandemic.

May 3, 2020

Dhanush Giriyan

Dhanush Giriyan

Text

English Education--Universities

English Online Learning

English Home & Family Life

Arizona State University

supplies

mask

spring break

transition

productive

05/05/2020 CJE, Duplicate of 3209, resource type moved from "email" to "text" as in the original post

05/03/2020

05/06/2020

12/02/2020

05/03/2020

As a student of Arizona State University (ASU), to me, the COVID 19 pandemic changed my way of life into two periods. I, and many of my friends, call them pre and post-spring break. The university announced the much-awaited stay-at-home order and shifted all our classes online at the end of the spring break. In the last few weeks of the pre-spring break period, a sense of tension was spreading in society. While a stay-at-home was not yet in place, most people looked to find a way to stock up on essentials like toilet-paper, sanitizers, disinfectants, masks, etc. Within weeks, most of the local supplies all across the country were depleted. This created more panic among people who hadn’t managed to stock up. Despite constant reminders from my parents, I still hadn’t got myself any masks, and as of today, May 3rd, I still don’t possess any. I figured the best way to keep myself safe was to simply not go out. But then, another problem came knocking at my door. My roommate (with whom I shared my room) had set out on a trip to California which was at the time, relatively way more affected than other places on the west coast. I feared that my roommate would definitely return with the virus and that I had to find myself a safer place to stay. After a few days of hunting for apartments in the neighbourhood, I finally found one and managed to shift on the last day of the pre-spring break period. In the end, to my pleasant surprise, it turned out that my roommate was completely alright. After moving to my new place, life finally started going back to normal. I mean, as normal as life could get in the middle of a pandemic. All my classes were online, I had to start cooking most of my food (I depended on the college dining halls until then) and I couldn’t go out and play basketball anymore. Among these, I was most concerned about the quality of the online classes. But, to be honest, I was fairly impressed by how smoothly the transition to online classes was. Kudos to the university and teaching staff! However, despite the transition being smooth, it was in no way as engaging as in-person classes. The whole transition did take a while to get adjusted to. I managed to fill in most of my extra time by reading novels and other books (I stocked up on books during the spring break) and working on personal projects apart from homework and exams from school. Overall, I did find myself being more productive during the lockdown. The post-spring break period was obviously challenging but I don’t think it was impossible to handle. I did learn many new things in the last couple of months. I learned to cook, manage time, keep myself engaged and most important of all, simply take good care of myself. All in all, I think despite it being a difficult time, I believe humanity will eventually come out of this stronger.

3210