STUDENTS CAPTURE CONFINEMENT LIFE Isolation is by definition a solitary experience, but one that, in 2020, was shared by staff, students and faculty across The American University of Paris. But social distancing doesn’t mean an end to collaboration; all across the AUP community, new projects have harnessed the community’s creativity. For AUP Student Media, creative solutions have meant not only maintaining the organization’s learning goals, but also providing a support network of peers sharing stories about how they have been coping with isolation. The result is the Corona Diaries, a series of video blogs and written content documenting life in lockdown. Shining the spotlight on an unprecedented shared situation became an
exercise in solidarity, uniting quarantining students across the planet in an expression of their common experience. The Corona Diaries is a collaboration between ASM’s online and video platforms. Often funny, sometimes melancholic, the eight video episodes and multiple articles cover a full range of emotions associated with lockdown life. “We were almost playing the role of a writer or filmmaker, whose exploration of the personal space becomes something very universal and relatable,” says Professor Jurgen Hecker, ASM faculty advisor for the 2019–20 academic year. Each week, students were asked to relate their work to a different
broad theme. One episode was dedicated to the students’ views on the proliferation of fake news and conspiracy theories associated with Covid-19, while another explored how it felt to travel home during lockdown. The “Headspace” episode tackled the vital topic of mental health; it used simple visuals – headshots of the speakers staring resolutely at the camera – coupled with emotive voiceovers to explore what participants learned about themselves during quarantine. These video segments, in addition to providing a glimpse of the lives of students in confinement, were linked to participants’ academic requirements. AU P H I G H L I G H TS
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