We’re all in this together! ♫♪♪ 

Grab a pen and a notebook to write some notes down. Journalists Caro and Rashmi help you discover your new hobbies and learn some things to help you cope up with lockdown 

 good luck being quarantined with us 😉   

During these tough times, where we are all facing a major pandemic, Caro and Rashmi managed to find some pockets of peace to share with you. Here are some ways that isolation, can make us stronger.   

Global Unity  

In 2020, we are all working together to stop the spread of Covid-19. Never, has the world been more connected, and dependent, of online interactions and of course, media. It is in situations like these, that unity and companionship become an essential part of our day to day lives. Ever since the start of the virus, countries worldwide have come together to help stop the spread. Today, we come to you, to talk about what this connectivity has meant for us. 

Gaining knowledge and having self-awareness   

During the lockdown period, a lot of people have been trying out new hobbies, such as working out, cooking, exploring new music, photography and much more. Recently there have been several new Instagram pages dedicated to tutorials which you can follow from home. This creates a community for people with similar interests and allows people to connect in a different way. For us, we found that cooking was a hobby we enjoyed a lot.  We found that it is something that relaxes us and helps us feel a sense of accomplishment (if we succeed!). If it were not for the current situation, we don’t think we would’ve found ourselves cooking as much and finding a new interest for it.  

Rashmi says … 

Since the gyms are closed, it meant that I had to find other creative ways to work out and incorporate different items into my workout in order to get the same effect. I found that many YouTube influencers were coming out with specific at home workouts to do which I found to be very helpful. Some of the workouts I did were the “20 mins HIIT workout” by Natacha Océane which will make you sweat like crazy. Another great workout which targets abs specifically (you’ve probably heard of this one) Chloe Ting’s “Abs in 2 weeks” workout which is a 11-minute routine.  

Another hobby we kept up during lockdown was our love for K-pop. For Rashmi, she used this as an opportunity to catch up with the content, whereas Caro discovered her love for the genre. We bonded and connected over our favourite band (whom you’ve probably heard of) BTS. This was something that brought us together during isolation and strengthened our friendship even more.  

Something else we learnt about ourselves was about the type of learners we are. A great tip that we want to share with you guys is how to be productive by changing your surroundings. We found that waking up early and starting the day off that way would help get you motivated and productive. Not to mention your surroundings can really impact your performance so we always make sure to have a clean and neat desk so that we can get lots of work done. 

Mental strength   

One crucial point to focus when talking about the lockdown is one’s mental health and mental strength to sustain all the challenges that come with isolation. To be honest, the biggest challenge we had to face during isolation was being away from friends. I mean, we only had one month and a half of face to face classes, but in that period, we made great friendships. When isolation started, we all made promises of staying in touch, however, as time goes by, you forget to facetime them at night and see how they’re doing. Drifting away from friends can be difficult, and you might not want to talk about it. But sharing how you feel lifts a huge weight off your shoulders.  With this, we say, even if times get hard and lonely, and you have no idea of how to speak out and seek for help, the bare minimum is more than enough. Text a friend “hi”, call them, call your mum, be in contact with people in order not to lose yourself. Times are hard during isolation, and while you are your only friend when stuck inside, it doesn’t mean you have to be your own enemy.  

We really hope this helped; we wrote this aiming to write something that would’ve been helpful for us back in March when lockdown just began. Somehow, even though things got really complicated, we still managed to pull through and make the best out of a very bad situation and we hope that with these very simple advices, you can make the best out of it as well.  

Stay safe guys 

Xx  

Caro and Rash