(Image source: Faceless via Adobe Stock).

10 August 2022

By Alex Wong, Social Sciences BSc

Starting my university journey in the middle of a global pandemic was not what I had in mind as I touched down (on a mostly empty flight) at Heathrow. I had never felt more out of sync in my life, lugging around my suitcases like a lifeline. The sharp contrast between reality and my ideal university life only served to magnify what I felt was missing from this new chapter – meeting new people, exploring a foreign place, while immersing myself in an academically rigorous program. Instead, the year passed by in a blur of lockdowns, zoom classes and monotony. One thing I did learn is that it is difficult to feel upbeat when the sun sets at 4pm as you’re watching from your window waiting for a takeout.

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11 June 2020

By Fola Brady

Just as businesses are adapting to the remote working environment created by lockdown, so must staff and students at the IOE in order to maintain learning during Covid-19.

On a personal level, this has taken me from my room in Camden Town to the left-hand corner of my mother’s attic (there are birds living in the roof on the other side and I don’t particularly want to befriend them). Yet, even from my “desk” (read: shelf), with its temperamental Wi-Fi, soundtrack of occasional muffled arguments or hooting from the ceiling, and even the carousel of visiting cats – I feel I will have grown as a learner by the time I return to UCL.

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