Three students from different streams and age groups tell Team Viva about their key takeaways from a year as challenging as 2020
It’s commonly said that when life gives you lemons, use them to make lemonade and cool it all down. Well, what if life gives you an eventful year like 2020? On the last day of this year, three students from different streams present their take on what they learnt from the year’s unpredictability and its abundant challenges. Life, certainly, for them, had taken a new turn as students had to adapt to newer and digital ways of education, and no socialising.
Shreya Sharma
What is the life of a college student all about? Certainly, it’s about a good college, a great group of friends to hang out and make memories with, attending and bunking lectures together, being part of extra-curricular activities, having good conversations about the future with family, meeting new people and what not. However, a question — what if one day you don’t get to do all of that? Well, this thought sounded irrational and did not trouble me until the day it actually came true. And as it happened, over the last 10 months of the pandemic, I grew in many, unimaginable ways.
The very first lesson — life is highly unpredictable. We all know about this fact but do we actually consider it and live our life keeping in mind its unpredictability? I don’t think so. All we do is rant about our supposedly boring lives being fully submerged in our work, not enjoying and savouring the moments we encounter. We hardly take out time to acknowledge our loved ones. This pandemic has taken many precious lives and now, when we look back, we regret not being able to spend time with the ones who mattered to us. This unpredictability of life has been a driving force for me to savour every moment. I have learnt how I can only seize the current moment; nor the past neither the future.
Second — importance of healthy relationships. Not only we should focus on building healthy relationships with our family and friends but also watch out for the toxic ones, which heavily impact our mental health. This lockdown has been a blessing in disguise for me as it has helped me improve my relationships with the people I care about and form some new, valuable ones. This in turn has taught me to be understanding, apologetic, empathetic and supportive as a daughter, a friend and an apprentice. Also, ending toxic relationships did not just make me stronger but also made me realise my independence. I now know who I am, what I want and I strive for it.
The third takeaway was found in self-awareness, which I believe is the ultimate key to living a fulfilling life. Certain arguments with my friends and family made me realise how I need to change my sense of self. I have the power to change only myself and take a control of only my words, thoughts and actions. I can mould them in my way. I am accountable for my doings. I have the key to modify myself and become a better person.
The fourth lesson came with technology’s necessity. In this new normal, it has helped us in more ways than one. I realised how I couldn’t just complete my studies through it but also connect to the ones I haven’t been able to catch up with in a long time. It has reached masses and helped millions of lonely people connect with each other. Hence, I understood the important of conversations.
The concluding lesson is gratitude. We, as humans, needs to be more grateful for what we have. 2020 is evidence of life’s unpredictable nature. One moment you’re breathing, the next you’re not or you’re struggling on a hospital bed. Hence, I have started to pay gratitude and every day, I thank the mystic forces of this universe for giving me such an amazing and fulfilling life. I now accept my flaws and aim to grow, become better and stronger everyday with whatever I have.
Srish Srivatsa
What can be said about life? That it happens. It is beautiful yet hard. It presumably has a sour tooth because it always seems to give everyone lemons. That’s also evident from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ opening words in Love in the Time of Cholera — “It was inevitable” — much like Thanos. Well, life happens in its own ways, whether we approve of them or not. Things will change irrespective of our convenience. And the same is happening in the current pandemic.
However, even if one feels like prisoner, being trapped inside homes, cut off from people, social routines and a world which at times acted as refuge from the everyday realities, behind those shut doors, we became creative. We, humans, did allow a virus to push us back but we will be doomed if we let it pull us down.
I felt stuck in my home with my family until I realised that they were as stuck as I was. So, what do we do? Well, we talked, and beyond the usual “Hello” and “How are you?” I was surprising to see that it took a life-threatening pandemic to actually make me converse with my family. We invented new ways to talk to each other. We came across some new observations about each other. We learnt how even in the darkest times, we could find light and keep going.
During the lockdown, everything from my classes to my life had started to map out on my mobile phone. I was stuck in another state, away from my family, and in those times, I would be worried about them. At the same time, the pressure of missing out on notes and studies engulfed me as now everything had shifted to digital. Lectures were being conducted on Zoom, Google Meet, MS Teams and I was gradually losing all my interest. It became too boring and even more exhausting than attending college in person. We certainly had no other option than to endure.
Furthermore, amid the social distancing norms and constraints of not talking to whoever we want to, I could find out the people I cannot separate myself from and the ones important to me. I also saw how it made my fellow classmates and our teachers come together as if we had known each other since long. It made us have conversations with each other, which were not just related to work or studies but also about each other’s wellbeing and whereabouts. I certainly learn the value of human interactions, even if they were over a screen.
We became the personification of the saying, “It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and still, keep moving forward.” We all united and cared for ourselves, our family, friends, the person living next door, even the stranger we pass by in the corridor.
Anurag Gupta
Everything was just fine when the world first knew that COVID-19 had been declared as a pandemic. There were lockdowns and travel restrictions throughout the world. The airports were full of nurses in hazmat suits conducting tests — as if replicating a scene from Resident Evil. Apart from becoming a chapter in future history textbooks, this pandemic has taught many lessons to everyone and hit each person differently.
My key takeaway — staying at and working from home is not easy. There are many roles to play when the whole family is living in the home at the same time. On the other hand, when it comes to working, there are many people who struggle for devices at home because they might not be sufficient for everyone. We had to fight each morning to come at a consensus on device usage. Nobody was prepared for such a strict lockdown. I wondered how students in the rural landscape would have struggled to find good network and suitable gadgets to be able to attend school, online.
Second, I started to value friendships and relationships. The sudden paradigm shift from socialising after classes or hanging out with friends to staying put at home, hugely impacted relationships. However, it also made us realise the importance of human contact and interaction. Eventually, we started adapting to the new normal. We now got more to spend time with our loved ones at home as well as with others away from us, virtually.
Another lesson I learnt was that happiness comes from within. With devastating news coming from across the world, people losing their loved ones, struggling to earn a living or even a meal per day, it became difficult to stay positive and row against the flow of negativity. The pandemic proved that no matter how many material objects you may own or how many followers on social media you may have, during the darkest storms, only you can find the ray of hope and sail amid it.
