As we are nearing the third week of lockdown here in the UK, I can safely say we haven't lost our minds yet having to stay indoors. This week has gone by so fast to be honest and each day flies by incredibly quickly.
This Friday 3 April was meant to be our last day of term. In my case, it was technically my last day of university. This bittersweet moment left me feeling very nostalgic of all the memories accumulated in the last few years, but also with a heavy heart that so many memories were cut short in the last couple of weeks. Four years ago, I truly did not think I'd be spending my last day like this.
As we had our weekly seminar with all the PPE students of my year, it was wonderful to see the faces of my cohort, at least virtually! Our lecturer had the marvellous idea for all of us to bring any drink of choice to the seminar and have a final toast to celebrate the end of term and essentially our degree. I hope all final year students had a nice final send-off as well. And for all continuing students, I hope you cherish the next years that you have because they will truly fly by.
Also, Spring School Closure is around the corner! Normally my friends and I would do an Easter egg hunt or have a nice meal. This year the tradition will continue. My flatmate and I got little chocolate eggs to hide around the house and we’ll try to do a hunt there. Hopefully we remember where we put them all! For our nice meal, there’s nothing better than brunch. We were feeling adventurous, maybe trying to make shakshuka. If we’re feeling extra adventurous I might make some Mexican dishes. We’ll see how they pan out (get it?) and enjoy the sun from our terrace. Safely 2m away from the passers-by.
In other news, I thought I’d share a couple of skills I’ve been trying to brush up on during this period. In this case, digital skills. As mentioned in a previous post, I tried to schedule my day into five sections with short term tasks to complete each day. The best way for me to plan that out was on Excel. Please excuse my geeky fangirling over Excel but the things you can do on it are incredible! For example, I used conditional formatting to colour code my calendar. The way I used it was I have set rules that will fill the cells with a colour if it contains specific text, e.g. my course code. There are so many things you can do on there and now’s the perfect time to experiment.
Also, I introduced my flatmate to VBA and a task that normally took him 20 mins he can now complete with the push of a button! MAGIC.
What things have you tried?
By Andrea Solis-Olivares, LSE Undergraduate (PPE) and Digital Skills Lab Tutor