Lockdown Experience, Simon Yosef

Lockdown Experience

Simon Yosef - Doctoral Student, Health University of Wolverhampton

Lockdown, lockdown and lockdown! I feel that I have a life which I don’t own What a dizzy journey walking to the unknown One minute I am hopeful and next minute I am down

I lost my friends, my resilience and my mojo I live at home and I work at home as there is nowhere to go Lockdown! Lockdown! what an embargo! What a confusion what a vertigo!

Am afraid of the future, am losing "the present" I have no feeling but like suffering from thirst Very tricky sphere like surviving in a desert I lost my confidence if I am completely honest.

But as there is always but there is always another day That will keep all the muddle at bay Yes, there is another day And it will be a safe bay.

Castles, cars, networks and liberation

Alison Etches - PhD Researcher, Education University of Wolverhampton

Although I didn’t realise at the time, beginning a part-time PhD in early February 2020, just weeks before ‘Lockdown 1’, was a little like a scene in an action movie where a character leaps over a rising drawbridge of a castle just in the nick of time. Upon reflection, I feel fortunate to have been able to have experienced an oncampus induction, which has served me well in the initial stages of researching my literature review. Living over 35 miles from campus, I always envisaged making use of online library services and possibly meetings, but little did any of us realise just how much these tools would mean to us in 2020-21.

When applying for a PhD, I anticipated that I would learn new skills and improve established ones. As a mature student for whom IT regularly seems to ‘fight back’ I can confirm that I have now learnt many new things about how IT can assist connectivity with others (Nguyen et al, 2020) and facilitate access to resources, but that from time to time, like a much loved old car, it can and will let you down. I have also learnt that I am not alone in the world of IT ‘fight back’, and therefore to embrace its benefits, and be less worried by its hitches.

Like a wrongly imprisoned person nearing the end of their incarceration, I am longing for a return to a lively campus, to see my supervisory team and attend real events as opposed to online ones. Nevertheless, I can’t help feeling the rush of online, UK wide academic events which emerged during the pandemic have enabled me to meet and make contact (Zheng 2020) with more people than I could ever have imagined in 2020-21 without expensive travel and event fees, and in a timesaving as well as environmentally friendly manner. Beginning to meet and grow into a research network is highly important. Technology made this possible not only for me, but for many others, thus it is only right to celebrate the innovative approaches (Sandars 2020) that evolved as a temporary, pragmatic response to the pandemic, as well as looking forward to all our post pandemic futures.

References:

Nguyen MH ,Hunsaker A and Hargittai E (2020): Older adults’online social engagement and social capital: the moderating role of Internet skills, Information,Communication & Society, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2020.1804980

Sandars J, Correia R, Dankbaar M, de Jong P, et al. (2020) ‘Twelve tips for rapidly migrating to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic’, MedEdPublish, 9, [1], 82, https://doi.org/10.15694/mep.2020.000082.1

Zheng F, Khan N A and Hussain S (2020) ‘The COVID 19 pandemic and digital higher education: Exploring the impact of proactive personality on social capital through internet self-efficacy and online interaction quality’ Children and Youth Services Review Vol 119 DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105694