This piece contains snippets from my English Project on documenting my stories from the lockdown, which will hopefully be published here later. Everything here is kind of mashed together, and most of it is draft work, but I hope it gives some insight about my learnings from this pandemic.
Today, in this entry, I would like to focus on what I have learnt about myself during this pandemic. Here in Singapore, we have been under lockdown for almost two months, and this has lead to many families being holed up together, an absence of schedules, and for many, a whole lot of boredom. This has lead me down a lot of Youtube rabbit holes, but has also forced me to spend a lot of time with myself and just… think. I’ve learnt more about my work style, my relationships, and about who I am as a person through this time, so I am hoping to reflect on all of this here.
During this quarantine, I’ve had to reflect on my work habits. I’ve always talked about and planned all of the projects that I would do if I had more spare time, or if I was at home all day. However, when lockdown started and I had more free time, I found myself getting distracted easily instead of doing the work and projects I wanted to do. It was a bit sad to realise this, but I am glad for the realisation as it allowed me to think about how I could improve! Afterwards, I started writing more to-do list and adding in these projects to them. By seeing these projects as work I should complete instead of optional projects, I was able to make time for them in my schedule instead of ignoring them. I also learnt a bit more about my style of working through this quarantine. Before lockdown, I would often get distracted while doing homework and it would take me extra time to finish the work. This also continued into lockdown, and I quickly realised that it would be a good idea to try and find a way to combat it. After taking some personality tests in other classes and trying different styles of learning, I realised that I have quite a sporadic work approach, and while I like schedules, I don’t always have the motivation to do work. While I am still working on a solution for this, I have found that breaking my tasks up into smaller chunks has helped me stay motivated, and I am planning to continue exploring and working on this.
Secondly, I have also learnt more about my mental health and well being during this period. While I was also mostly fine during the lockdown, I found it very tiring and frustrating at the start. In addition, especially at the start of lockdown, I was reading the news quite often, and seeing the stories and headlines would often be quite depressing for me. After two or three weeks, I came to the conclusion that I needed to change my habits. I started looking at the news less often and tried to make sure I went for walks and got outside more often. This helped me to adjust to lockdown and maintain a sense of normalcy in these unprecedented times.
Another realisation I have had is that I am actually much more social than I thought! I’ve always seen myself as a mostly introverted person. As a result, I thought I would be quite content with attending classes alone without doing group work and talking to other people in the class. However, even just a week into quarantine, I found myself really missing normal classes! I think quarantine made me realise how much I needed just normal, mundane conversations with people, especially after spending so much time with the same people at home! I also found it harder to focus, since I’m used to having people around me when I work, and in many classes, I enjoy bouncing ideas off others and talking with them. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to do much about this, but it was interesting to learn, and hopefully, I will keep it in mind in the future when struggling to focus!
I’ve also learnt how to maintain contact with my friends during these times. At first, it was quite hard to do this! We spent about a week after exams were cancelled just chatting with each other, but once school started, we all became busy and didn’t have the time to chat. It was pretty sad, since we all missed each other, but couldn’t find times we were all free! Instead, we decided to call at least once a week, even if it was for a short period, and also tried to text each other during the week. So far, it’s worked well, and I think this will be useful in the future during the summer holidays, or even when we go to college and don’t see each other for a while.
However, out of all of this, I think I have learnt the most about my relationship with my family. Being stuck together for over 9 weeks has meant that we have definitely gotten on each other’s nerves, but it’s also been quite a lot of fun having both my parents and my grandma at home. I think it also didn’t take us too long to get adjusted to staying at home together, despite us all being introverts. I think this shows that we are able to balance spending time together with spending time on our own, and that way, we are able to have fun whenever we are together. Personally, I think I’ve also learnt more about my parents and have tried to make a bit more time for them in my schedule, and I think they must also feel the same way.
Over time, I have been able to adjust to online learning and lockdown, and I feel more relaxed and happy now. However, I think it’s important to keep in touch with the news during these times and be aware of the stories of those struggling during the pandemic. However, I think all this time to reflect has allowed me to self-reflect and try and improve, and has made me more grateful for the relationships in my life. I’ve also been lucky enough to have the chance to attend seminars and conferences, read about the situation, and learn more about how to be productive during this time. I think, if I hope to take away any learning about myself from this lockdown, it will be to just appreciate my friends and family a little bit more, and to always strive to be self-aware and improve.