What the Pandemic Taught Me.

What the Pandemic Taught Me

by

Giovanna Zanella (ESR 2 / Universidad del País Vasco)

The last year of PhD is a run against time, many deadlines, final arrangements, last details and sum up to conclude before starting the writing part pretending that it possible to include all the effort, trials and experiments of the last three year in a thesis. Organization is the key word to survive and coronavirus arrived on time to destroy it!

In Spain, it became clear that the situation was tragic when the state of alarm was declared, on the 14th of March 2020. The immediate consequence was the closure of all the schools, universities, institutes, shops and businesses except the first-need ones. This decision implied that we were not allowed to go back to work the following Monday. The first feelings were confusing, I did not have perception of what was happening and only in that moment I figured out that for all the previous weeks I had been underestimating the incoming pandemic.

I did not have many options, I could not go to the university anymore but I could not stop working. Fortunately, at the beginning of the year, I decided to focus my research on exclusively computational calculations and this turned out to be a great advantage because I just needed my computer to work.

It took me some days to get used to the new lockdown routine, I felt totally disoriented, working alone without the support of my colleagues around me or the freedom of having a talk with my supervisor whenever I want. Everything was made remotely via video calls.

Arranging a fixed work schedule at home helped a lot to improve my productivity and time management. On one hand my calculations results developed a bit more slowly than normal because I missed the daily briefing moments with my colleagues or my supervisor, which were always very inspiring and useful. On the other hand, the loneliness of my home helped in going forward with my thesis avoiding to arrive in a rush at the last moment.

Coronavirus did not only influence my daily routine but also my idea of future. I feel very scared now, I do not know if another lockdown will occur soon and this makes difficult to plan my future decisions and take happily possible opportunities.

It cannot be underestimated that moving toward countries is very complicated at the moment and living in a foreign country knowing that our beloved ones are in risky situations is somehow frustrating. The limitations of travelling also affected our trainings as PhD students, it has not been possible to participate to conferences and present our work to the scientific community in stimulating and interesting events, which represents an important part of our formation.

Furthermore, also CATMEC network had to adapt to the safety measures applied by the countries involved. Our meetings suffered of some changes and will be carried out remotely, as well as the scheduled workshops.

To conclude, this pandemic made us change our habits and plans and highlighted the importance of being dynamic and reacting in front of the emergency. Once again, this emergency demonstrated the key role of science, which is the only tool for progress to ensure people a good life and for no reason can stop developing.

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