Zoe Drapper

How have you spent your time during the last few months in lockdown?

Aside from baking endless loaves of banana bread and learning how to crochet, I’ve mostly spent my time missing friends and family, being sad that I’m not able to interact with people each day and worrying about how I’m going to concentrate on my studies.

How have you been coping during the outbreak?

I’ve really been trying to limit my news intake and stop myself from endlessly scrolling through the news, as the current climate left me feeling deflated. To distract myself, I’ve been reading, baking and playing far too much of The Sims.

I’ve also found that it’s important to make sure you take breaks - just because your home is now also your full-time working environment, this doesn’t mean you should be working constantly. Having a set time each day to stop working and to take time to recharge really goes a long way.

How have you found the move to online teaching?

I really struggled when I found out we would have no face-to-face teaching for the rest of the academic year, but over time I have started to get used to and enjoy online learning.

"Although initially a tricky transition, I have found online learning at Surrey to have run very smoothly so far (perhaps even more than expected), and it’s actually been quite fun at times."

It’s been very easy to get involved in all my lectures, and we’ve had plenty of opportunities to ask questions or to discuss things in groups. With this change, it’s also been helpful to have all your lectures recorded, so you can go back and catch up if you’ve missed anything.

How have you stayed connected?

I’ve found we’ve all had a lot of opportunities to stay connected thanks to a really great sense of community, which has been encouraged by our lecturers and other students. Whether through social media or weekly Zoom meetings, it really has felt like we’ve been able to stay in touch, making you feel a lot less alone at home. Having group work in certain modules has also been great in helping us to stay connected – it’s definitely given me a sense of purpose in this new and strange routine.

All-in-all, the transition to online learning has definitely been much easier than expected, and even though it’s not the same, it’s enabled me to still feel connected with my course. Continuing with lectures has been good to give me some sort of schedule and something to keep busy with. It’s nice to know that we’re able to continue our studies as best we can, while we all await the highly anticipated return to normality.

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