Life of a Student in Lockdown (1)

A Series of Lockdowns: Lockdown 1 March 2020 - July 2020

Going into 2021 and entering the UKs third national lockdown is not something I thought would be a central part of my three years at university when I was nervously applying on UCAS and writing my personal statement in 2018. Sadly, the student voice is often marginalised in media and seemingly least prioritised by the government, or at least that was certainly how it felt. As I’m now halfway through my BA in English Literature at the University of Manchester, I have been reflecting a lot on my time at university so far, life as a student, and how that seems to fit in with the rest of society at the moment.

When I started university in September 2019, ironically, my actual degree, the essays, lectures, and seminars, have been the easiest aspect of the entire experience. While I understand this may not be an opinion shared by fellow students, continuing learning about a subject I love came most naturally to me. What I found more daunting was finding myself alone in a city I had only previously been to once without anyone I knew, and the notorious Freshers Week (and the subsequent Freshers Flu). I also had to grapple with sudden strikes by university lecturers and tutors for weeks on end, which left me feeling conflicted because I sympathised with their cause but wished I didn’t have to miss weeks of class because of it.

However, all of these things were precedented; I had heard of them before and had friends and family who had gone through, or were going through, the exact same things as I was. What I could never have anticipated, as no one could, was the Covid-19 global pandemic sending the UK into a national lockdown one month into the second semester of my first year at university.

Reflecting on that time now, it seems like a very far off memory, almost as if I were remembering a film of someone else living my life back then. Mere weeks before the first lockdown, I had practically been on a tour of England visiting friends in Newcastle, Bristol, and Birmingham, during yet another bout of lecturer strikes at Manchester. I had met countless ‘friends of friends’, been in pubs, clubs, and even gone to a musical production of The Book of Mormon before taking the train up to Manchester on the same day my friends and I received an email that the university was going to be stopping all face-to-face teaching imminently.

I remember it being almost comical that after nearly three weeks of missing university because of strikes, the very day I was finally returning, the university was closing. Of course, I had no understanding whatsoever of the pandemic's magnitude and what was about to hit the entire world.

Regardless of this, my friends and I arrived back at our halls (the infamous Owens Park accommodations if any of you are versed in the halls at UoM), feeling well prepared to bunker down throughout lockdown if need be, as long as we were together. Naturally, the first week was a novelty; we baked banana bread, whipped the now considered over-rated Dalgona coffee, and became completely addicted to the social media app TikTok. Funny signs warning students about coronavirus symptoms popped up, while every day we watched more and more students leaving dragging suitcases behind them. I was hardly even concerned for my mum, who had contracted the virus already, as she maintained that she was fine over the phone. I would never have imagined it would take her months to recover after suffering from ‘long covid’.

I was happy to stay at university at this time, totally fine with my dad telling me he couldn’t come to pick me up because he had to make sure my mum was okay. During that week, I had received various lovely text messages from family members and friends offering to drive me home from Manchester and even stay with them while my mum was ill. I again ignorantly maintained that I was both fine where I was and that my mum was not sick enough for my dad not to spend a day driving me home from Manchester.

The rose-tinted perspective of the first lockdown, however, swiftly came to an abrupt end when yet another email appeared in our inboxes informing us that if we cleared out all of our belongings, handed in our keys, and left our accommodation by the end of the week, we would not need to pay for our accommodation fees for the rest of the year. A short spur of madness had all my friends and I promise to stay so we could at least be together during lockdown, but a sobering conversation with my parents about the situation had me and all of my friends packing up and travelling back home the very next day.

It was a shocking time for all of us. We were devastated, not only feeling upset because we knew we were ultimately going to miss out on experiencing the end of our first year properly at university, but also because it almost seemed as if we were being coerced away from our friends and the almost masochistic affection we had developed for our grotty halls. I couldn’t comprehend how it was not only for the greater good of myself but of the rest of the country.

During the short week I had been in lockdown at halls, there had been several house parties by students which had to be shut down by police, and although the virus had barely begun, I already knew several students who had contracted it by then. At the time, it didn’t feel real. Like any nineteen-year-olds we felt invincible against the virus that we had been told only really affected people over 60 with pre-existing illnesses. We said to ourselves that it didn’t matter if we got it because we were all young and healthy. We never thought about the impact hundreds of thousands of students with coronavirus could have on the wider community.

Regardless of this, which I know now, it didn’t stop me from feeling almost betrayed. I felt let down that the government hadn’t done something to contain the virus becoming so deadly so quickly in the UK. I angrily questioned why they hadn’t paid attention to what was already happening in countries like Italy months beforehand. I must have been in a state of exhausted shock when I arrived home, perhaps from the whirlwind of media coverage of the virus, the emotional goodbyes, frantic last-minute packing while being hungover the morning I left halls, and the five-hour car journey back home. I slept practically for a week, while my mother in the room next to me was just starting to get over the worst symptoms of the virus, which I quickly found out had been much worse than my parents had led me to believe.

Soon enough, however, the horrible mixture of the simultaneously mundane and terrifying nature of lockdown truly hit me. Over the first few weeks of lockdown I tried to keep a diary of each day, guided entirely by peppy teenagers with the confidence to run their own youtube accounts who promised it would be worthwhile my time to one day look back on. I can safely say that they were entirely wrong about that. I became incredibly frustrated by these diary entries, as not before long they served more to remind me that I wasn’t doing anything with my life than anything else. It was depressing writing about how I missed my friends, felt trapped in my own home, wished the weather was warmer, and could no longer bear to watch the news anymore, so I soon abandoned my diary.

Of course, there are also the peculiarities of the first lockdown that I can also look back on almost fondly now. There was undeniably a sense of national unity during this time while we mourned the deaths of people who had tragically lost their lives to coronavirus and hoped those critically ill in hospitals made a full recovery. The clapping for the NHS every Thursday at 8 o’clock, at first, made me cringe. Still, once I got over myself and my predictably withdrawn teenage reaction towards expressing emotions, I joined in soon relished the time afterward chatting across the street to my neighbours. Watching season 12 of Ru Paul’s Drag Race admittedly went a long way towards keeping me sane during this time, as did various internet trends that circled across the media, such as running 5km for ‘Run for Heroes’, the fever-dream Zoom parties, watching singers live-stream performances with varying degrees of quality, and doing gruelling workouts following Chloe Ting YouTube videos (the music of the ‘Get Abs in 2 Weeks’ video will, I think, haunt me for the rest of my life).

Another unforgettable part of the first lockdown was, of course, the upsurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. While there are so many deeply saddening aspects of the rise of the BLM movement in 2020, starting with the fact that it was necessary in the first place, the deaths of far too many black people at the hands of police from overly-aggressive, uncalled-for arrests, or in BLM protests, and the fact it’s an issue still ongoing and unresolved in society, I have still never learnt so much about racism and white privilege in my life. I believe that part of this again was due to lockdown. Black people around the world had the opportunity to speak out, and more importantly, be heard and share their experiences of racism and what fundamentally needs to change in society. There was no excuse for anyone not to learn, listen, educate themselves, start conversations about racism, donate, sign petitions, and contact their local MPs about these issues because of lockdown. Although evidently, the fight is far from being over, lockdown allowed me to connect deeply with people of colour I know to hear their experiences and try and be a better ally and activist because of it.

Nevertheless, despite these notable aspects of the first lockdown, my days eventually slotted into a rhythm of going on long runs, doing grocery shopping, and spending unreasonable amounts of time either on my phone or watching Netflix with glazed eyes. However, more than anything, I remember feeling isolated. I think this is something yet again widely unaddressed by the media. Loneliness for young adults is rarely discussed mainly because it’s relatively uncommon in comparison to the problem it presents in the older community. The intense loneliness I, however, felt was something I was completely unprepared for. Being an only-child, I thought I wouldn’t find spending lockdown with my parents too bad, and it wasn’t; I cannot stress enough how grateful I am to get along with both of my parents, live in a house with plenty of space and a garden. Despite this, missing seeing my friends and spending time with people my own age had more of a negative impact on myself and my mental health than I thought it would, yet another example of ignorance I only really appreciate now.

No wonder I felt lonely; I wasn’t equipped in any way for being on my own for months on end. Since nursery, young people have been surrounded by peers their age, spending every day together in school, playdates, sleepovers, school trips, hanging out, parties, I could go on. Being launched into separation from all kinds of social iteration in real life made me miserable; of course it did. To this day, I still haven’t really heard people talk about this, both by my peers and in the media. The conclusion I have come to is that the strictest form of national lockdown was over quick enough for it to be addressed, but mainly because of embarrassment.

The embarrassment of admitting to loneliness is something I relate to entirely. I felt incredibly insecure throughout that entire time, wondering why I was talking less to all my friends, blaming myself for being withdrawn, not realising that no one was doing anything, so no one had anything really to talk about. It is something I was embarrassed about at the time, and also once lockdown started lifting and I did finally get to see some of my friends again. It is only now, experiencing my third lockdown, that I have the knowledge I frankly wish I never needed; that everyone felt how I did, and that my response to my surroundings was entirely rational in relation to the unprecedented global circumstances. This awareness I have now, unfortunately, still isn’t one I think is made clear to the hundreds of thousands of young people in the UK - that what they are feeling is normal, their insecurities are a response to the scary and unheard of continuing global pandemic still rife around us. I know now that my insecurities were simply just that; insecurities built up in my own mind, which was, at the time, unstimulated and left to worry about a million things a day from wondering if all my friends hated me to vaguely hoping that the pandemic would be over before I started my second year at university.

I hope this account of my experience during the first national lockdown has helped anyone reading this feel less alone in their experiences and feelings. I will be continuing this series to recount both my experiences in the second and third lockdown soon.