“Don’t Let Yesterday Take Up Too Much Of Today.” – Will Rogers

The coronavirus has come to a huge shock to us, and within a very short time, it has challenged our attitudes and behaviour wholly. At times it feels like life is normal and yet it’s not normal. It affected us students, around mid-March, where we started the DLP program in order for us to continue with our academics in this bizarre situation that we have never experienced. Somehow the lockdown was reminiscent to when we had the 2019 ISIS bombings in Sri Lanka. Sometimes, the anxiety surrounding the publicity is as contagious as the virus itself, spreading fear and nervousness among the community. But we geckos were resilient and knew how to overcome an obstacle like this as we’ve had in the past, when there was a lockdown imposed for the 2019 bombings for a month. It was a challenge that we all felt ready to face and a change we were ready to overcome. I also take this situation as a learning experience and another obstacle that we all have to get through to be successful.

Reflecting on the program

I thought the online program introduced by OSC was great. The first few weeks were hard as we were finding ways to get used to it. Most students found it difficult to sit in their chair all day whilst staring at their screens from 9 to 4;30 with 1:45 mins of class. The classes were then reduced to an hour and we thought it was perfect for work to be done and found that the workload was manageable and less stressful. We now had to get used to interacting with one another through Zooms more than ever and sometimes it felt tiring, in other words, “Zoom fatigue”.  Now, more than ever we had to balance our days with school work and extra work like CAS and Extended Essay with our normal lifestyles. At times it felt like we were juggling too many balls at once and were really stressed out. As time went on, we got used to this routine and miss our normal school day with greater reason. We get by this program with ease now as we felt used to this and gradually knew how to balance our schedule.

How I’m surviving the lockdown

Lockdown/Curfew isn’t easy as it really bores you out really fast. Whatever I did it didn’t feel right because I felt trapped like a bird in its cage. It’s amazing how we could miss the simple activities of our everyday life, like talking to your friends, greeting your teachers and just having that presence of not being alone. The first few weeks felt bearable but as it continued it just felt weird. Its like summer holidays except you can’t leave your house. I get by this by calling my friends once in a while, doing art and working out. It’s an easy and productive way of spending some leisure time. Furthermore, my peers and I have planned a fundraiser that would raise plenty of funds for UNICEF’s COVID 19 response in Sri Lanka, this would also be one of my CAS projects.

Difficulties of being active

This was harder than expected because whatever I did got repetitive. I could only work out at home and did not have much equipment so my workouts weren’t very different from day today.  I did frequent art and was limited to all the equipment too. I got exhausted with all these repetitions and made me bored. So every week I change my schedule and keep a goal of doing something new every week. This changed things up and I felt good, mentally and physically. This kept me going throughout quarantine and some of the activities that I did bring me closer to my siblings. I felt like my brother and I have definitely built a stronger bond during the quarantine and have had some personal growth during this time.