The COVID-19 pandemic hit us all in different ways, and this is a short look into how it affected me, a biochemistry undergrad doing my masters project in OPIG.

The first thing that impacted me was the move to working from home. Now you might think that as the group does only computational work that our work might not be too affected by working from home, as all the servers etc. can be accessed remotely. To a certain extent, this is true, it is possible to work from home for starters. Things may well be right as rain for a few people, but it wasn’t for me. I think a lot of people are finding that things take longer when not in the office even under the best circumstances. Technology and equipment can also reduce your productivity quite majorly. Not having a very fast computer (mine is 5 years old and you can tell) or poor chairs that give you backache (living that wooden dining room chair life) are just examples of things that affect your productivity, and also not something most of can do about.

Just after this move to working from home, the university advised the undergraduate population to ‘go home’ if at all possible. I am fortunate enough that that was a possibility for me and so I moved back to my parent’s house. This is where trying to work a full working week gets really fun…

I moved back to my parent’s house and joined 6 of my younger siblings (aged 6-17), none of whom were at school. I’ll let that sink in a second. 6 kids. Stuck indoors. 24/7. Now I will say one of the perks of being surrounded by people is that I wasn’t bored, there are always things to do, always. Now I’m sure those with kids can fully understand what this does to working hours but for those of you who haven’t had that experience, I’ll illustrate it for you. You wake up (likely earlier than you wanted because a child was screaming about something or other, great now I’m tired), you have breakfast (but also have to make sure the younger kids have eaten, why does this take so long?), have a shower (haha that’s funny), make sure everyone is dressed with teeth done, etc., can finally sit down to work at which point it is about 2 or 3 hours since you woke up, where has the morning gone? The rest of the day goes by with interruptions sporadically, and forget working late, dinner has to be cooked and kids have to be put to bed. (I will put a caveat in that I was not alone in making sure the kids were alright, both my parents were around so there were 3 of us which made things significantly easier, my heart goes out to all the single carers out there). Let’s say you get to sit down at a desk in a room on your own (I was lucky enough to score this for the most part), at any second a child could come in because they are bored, hungry, upset, hurt or all of the above which for me meant I couldn’t really get stuck into anything because my focus wasn’t there. There was also the fact that other people in the house might want to use my computer for something (we certainly do not have one each), so that chips into your time too. Overall this all added up to me getting about a quarter (max) of the work I would have expected to get done in any given week.

Apart from this all being very frustrating because I wanted to do more, I also wasn’t given much support by my department or college (OPIG were great though). All I was able to do was apply for a 2-week extension which was just not enough to make up for working for 2 and half months at quarter capacity. Unfortunately, this meant the work I ended up handing in was not to the standard I would have liked but I did what I could in the time that I had, and fingers crossed it will be good enough to pass so I can get my degree.

I will note again that this is my personal experience and it may well be wildly different from other undergraduates and postgraduates. I hope you enjoyed this insight into my life for the past few months. Bye…