Student life during lockdown
2020: the year we all got hit by the pandemic. What we thought to be a mere two-week lockdown soon stretched to being in place for much of the year. Since last March, a lot has changed. We have all been constantly tested by boredom, trapped in our homes, but students have also faced other challenges.
As an undergraduate, I have a strong perspective on what we as students are going through. Though I can’t speak for everyone, I am able to see the lives of students through the screen on my phone as they try their best to cope during these toughest of times.
Having been used to commuting to university, I now spend my days on my PlayStation, or go out with my friends once in a while to erase the boredom. However, my life as a university student stuck at home is completely different to those living away. I am constantly seeing parties and “seshes” (a term for sessions of getting drunk) through my Snapchat and Instagram. Life doesn’t seem so boring for them from my perspective, but is it what it seems?
A close friend of mine studying in Manchester tells me how her life there has been a “wonderful experience” and how she feels “happy with her decision to move out during a pandemic” something which I wish myself to have done as it does look like a genuinely fun experience.
But at the same time, I have actually enjoyed my time during this lockdown. A lot of new experiences and memories I created even if I breached lockdown rules, I have no regrets. Me and my friends would become innovative in finding things to do, enjoying our teenage years. We didn’t allow a virus to stop us from creating new memories.
Lockdown has made me enjoy and appreciate the simple things, for example, we would go out make fires in some random hills, enjoy the view and have a couple of drinks: that was enough for me to have a good day. But a year on, it feels like life is getting repetitive and the hype for everything to go back to normal is becoming stronger as the days go by. I now countdown as we get closer to the end of the third lockdown – hopefully our last.
This isn’t the case for everyone studying at home. Some have taken increasingly to drugs use to erase the boredom. A friend of mine who commutes to university has told me how he has “started to do more and different drugs”. Bear in my mind that this guy before lockdown has never even touched marijuana, now he has tried a whole range of narcotics.
His use of LSD became consistent as he felt “it took me away to a different planet and took me away from this repetitive cycle I’ve been living in, I can sit at home and pop a tab and it would be fun”. LSD is a psychedelic which impacts your senses to an extreme length. So, I see why drugs like these could become regular use for people stuck at home. But it isn’t good for one’s health. It drains your body of the hormones which stabilise your mood.
Will life ever return to the normality we once knew or is this the new normal? For certain people, life has changed for the better, presenting them with opportunities which weren’t previously available. For others have found themselves in destructive cycles without seeing the harm in what they’re doing. This pandemic has changed a lot, from ourselves to the things we do in our day-to-day lives. We can only wait patiently for the normality we once knew to be restored.
I like that you included that some people found it quite hard while others found some positives in the situation. It’s also interesting how confessional it is, the fact that you for example admitted that you broke the rules. The point about drugs is actually something I’m investigating now, so that really resonated with me. I’d be careful when describing the effects of different drugs though, as LSD for example doesn’t “drain your body of hormones”, I feel like you might have tried to refer to ecstacy? This would’ve also been a great opportunity to thrown in some stats – but overall an interesting read!
Hi Aman, your feature touches on some important themes connected to how younger people have coped with the restrictions imposed by lockdown. As your focus is on students, some exploration of its impact on their studies would have been useful: you have majored here on their lives beyond college work, but how have they coped with online learning, not seeing tutors or classmates, not having the library as a study space, etc.? Some research could have been added: e.g., what are the stats on mental well-being among students since the pandemic began? How much have universities spent on tackling this issue? This feels more like its about young people in general, rather than students in particular, but you do have some interesting things to say in your piece. Where is the photo from? It’s needs a credit added for it below your final paragraph!