My Quarantine Story: Challenges and Benefits

It took a while before the coronavirus reached our country, with the first confirmed case on the 27th of February. From there, it didn't take long until the government took far-fetching measures, prohibiting all gatherings of over a hundred people on the 12th of March. All universities decided to close their doors the next day.

I haven't accomplished much interesting stuff since the social distancing rules went into effect. Several deadline extensions followed the closing of my university, giving the lecturers some time to move to online education. That suddenly gave me a lot of free time, which I spent following the events on the Steem blockchain and the Hive fork, among other things.

^{Social distancing Toronto by Roozbeh Rokni}

Since then, most schoolwork has resumed to the usual pace. All my lecturers prerecorded my lectures and made available to us through an online platform. Despite that, I still seem to have considerably more free time than when I had to be at my university. Some of that is time I usually spend with others, talking about homework, complaining about lecturers, or just with my friends during lunch. All of that takes a lot less time when you're sitting at home with your family. I mostly spent the extra time by playing some games like Cities: Skylines, something I didn't do much since going to university. I also read considerably more here on Hive.

Because I'm now at home all day, I spend substantially more time with my family. We have lunch and together every day, with all of us present. With my sister, I started rewatching a series from our childhood. You often don't have time for such interactions under normal circumstances. I especially appreciate the eating moments. We do have dinner together usually, but all of us are out during lunch on a regular day. Seeing each other at least twice every day helps alleviate the lack of social contact, while also strengthening our already strong bond.

^{Picture by Kars Alfrink}
This is me during the social distancing

All that free time appears to be a great life, but the reality is more nuanced. If you don't know what to do with your free time, you start getting bored, especially when combined with considerably reduced social interactions. I do call my friends regularly, but that doesn't fill a day. More so, in January, I had a seven-week holiday because of differences in academic calendars between my university and the university I went on an exchange with at the start of the academic year.

I'm now going to focus more on making contributions to some open-source projects. I already made a little contribution to Hive Keychain. I hope to find some other cool, open-source projects I can contribute to in the coming days, where I hope to do more than documentation changes. That way, I can reduce my boredom while also learning valuable skills for my future career as a Computer Scientist.