Items

• 
  2020-10-14

  Reflections on Exchange and the Pandemic

  I wrote this article in October 2020, 7 months after I was forced to return home early from my university exchange semester in Edinburgh. Shared with my friends on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, the article put it into words thoughts and feelings that had been on my mind for the previous 7 months. In it, I tried to capture how my last few days in Edinburgh felt: the rapid pace of COVID closures, the sudden goodbyes, the panic about travel plans and illness. Writing the article was an enormously cathartic process, and helped me process the confusing mix of emotions that I'd felt since returning to Melbourne. It is, far and away, the most complete summary of my experience of the pandemic that I can offer.
• 
  2020-03-18

  Cancelled Flights

  This was a photo I took of the flight departures board at Heathrow Airport on the 18th March, as I waited for my flight home to Melbourne, Australia. It shows a crazy number of flights being cancelled, most of them, from what I could gather, with very little notice to the passengers. This photo sums up just how chaotic and stressful it was trying to get home during COVID border closures. Things were changing so rapidly that your flight could quite literally get cancelled at the last minute, and I remember worrying that my flight would as well.
• 
  2020-03-18

  Farewell to Edinburgh

  I was on exchange in Edinburgh in the first half of 2020, and was forced to return home to Melbourne 3 months early. This was an incredibly sad and confusing time, where so many of my plans and dreams for the rest of exchange were scuppered. Things moved at a breakneck pace. My first exchange friend decided to leave Edinburgh on the 12th March, and by the 18th March I was flying home to Melbourne, having made dozens of rushed goodbyes in the previous few days. This object is a farewell post I made on Instagram, with 10 photos with my friends in Edinburgh. It sums up the mixed emotions I felt in those days - sadness, fondness, nostalgia, gratitude.