Staying Sane During an Insane Time
As we continue to live in a world of quarantine, we experience a lot of changes, whether it is not seeing our friends, not being able to work out anymore, or even getting up in time for class. Sadly, the world goes on, whether we like it or not. To stay sane with this new norm, there are a lot of changes in our lives that can brighten up our day and these are a few that I have been doing :D
MAKE YOUR BED IN THE MORNING
The last time I was told to make my bed was back in elementary school. Now I am a Sophomore in college. But, since being bored half to death, I was looking at some self-care habits that would help boost my productivity. I found that making your bed helps you feel more productive during the day. Now, do I trust my sources? Probably not. But, as humans, we like to check things off our life’s to-do list and checking off “making my bed” every morning helps me feel like I have taken a W(in) to start the day.
Yes, this is my bed… and, yes, I do have a stuffed animal Stitch and Totoro pillows
WISE WORDS FROM THE OLD PEOPLE
Recently, mentors Gerald and AJ held a webinar about staying productive during this quarantine. Although they said a lot of things that I think are only useful to old people like them, one thing that stuck out was to finish the brain-taxing tasks in the morning. Similar to how your body functions, your brain has the most energy in the morning. As the day goes on, we will progressively become less energetic and our ability to think will decrease, as a result. Because our brain does not want to work on CSE143 in the afternoon or night, we will find more and more ways to distract ourselves. For me, nothing is more tiring than listening to teachers talk for 50 minutes. It takes an immense amount of brain juice to be enthusiastic about a class when we know 90% of the class probably is sleeping during the lecture, so I try to finish as many Panoptos and Zoom classes as I can before lunch time. So, when it comes to peak-distraction hours, I have less-urgent assignments and tasks to complete. Then, when it comes night time, I can enjoy a movie with my family before heading off to sleep.
Another useful tip that Gerald and AJ talked about was to take breaks. Because our brains are not wired to do work for 12 hours straight, we need to take breaks before we burn out. When I feel like I have hit a mental block during my assignments, I drop everything and go on a run. During this run, I can just take a step back from thinking of assignments and enjoy the plains and barren lands of Texas. This time away from my assignments helps me to come back to my assignments after my run and to start over. I have come to find that most of my solutions to harder homework problems come after I have taken a break.
This is my normal schedule…
Got my running look inspiration from AJ Castro
STAY CONNECTED WITH YOUR COMMUNITY
The one big aspect of that quarantine that is probably driving people crazy is the fact that we cannot see see any of our friends. As humans, we are social beings so we will eventually start to wither away and die if we do not have any social interaction. Just because we are not physically together does not mean that we have lost our community. You can do zoom study halls, play JackBox and other online games, or even just call with old friends to catch up in life.
During this quarantine, I have been reconnecting a lot with my squad from high school. Although we are all stuck at home, this has not stopped us from calling each other and making sure each of our families are healthy. Along with that, I still get to interact with my A2F family, whether it be seeing my mentor, Johnny Yeo’s face too close to the camera or Josh Ren trying to call me on Houseparty at 2AM because he forgot the time difference.
On top of the things that we do with our immediate communities, we can also take the opportunity to reach out to others. One thing that the sophomore guys have been doing is that we started a running competition, Aaron’s team versus Johnny’s team. Besides the fact that everyone is getting fat during quarantine, we wanted to take this opportunity to outreach to others at UW who may also be feeling a lack of community. We have been competing in the number of miles that our team runs cumulatively and those miles get translated to donations to charity of choice. I think that this is a good opportunity for us to exercise for a good cause, but also, as Christians, to be a light in other people’s lives.
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven”