Lockdown or Locked out

Christo Boshoff



This year was finally my turn to experience a part of life that everybody describes with awe and a sense of endless possibility - it was finally my turn to take the passage into adulthood. I was finally going to university.

Studying changed from running between classes to scrolling through computer tabs. This lack of true interaction with people and lecturers left students at the end of their first semester with an understanding of how it feels to work in university, but not a sense of how university feels.

The struggles of trying to adapt to university and coping with the strangeness of it all left a sombre feeling. However, there are positive things to come of the unique struggles presented by being in university today. We have been forced to develop and maintain a personal work ethic and schedule as there are no more classes that have to be attended at a certain time, but rather a list of various tasks that must be done at the end of the week, and thus I have learnt not just how to plan every day, but also how to plan for longer periods of time.

My university experience so far has thus felt very hollow and fulfilling. I am very grateful to be able to study and to have the experience to actually be on campus. It is also very rewarding to work on and with subjects that you plan to spend your life doing. However, with a lot of things being cancelled and the rest being altered, it is hard to not feel locked out of

the true experience of university.