Coping with the Pandemic

JAYNE LOO

With the pandemic that has been going on for more than a year in Malaysia, people from different sectors have been intensely impacted as the daily cases rose. As much as the economic rate has been heavily affected and has resulted in many people losing their jobs, a big number of students across the country have also been suffering as they are stuck at home for more than a whole year. Not only students, even fresh graduates that were supposed to start working and high schoolers that were going to have their SPM / IGCSE this year were repeatedly hit with bad news that they couldn't go to school physically.

Photo by Chris Montgomery

When the pandemic hit Malaysia in March 2020 and with the first MCO, “Movement Control Order” implemented to flatten the Covid-19 chain, students were hit with “online classes” at the same time while blue collars were ordered to “WFH” which is Work From Home. As the time flew and cases got worse, people were then advised to not leave the country.

A lot of sacrifices were made by the youth in order to cope with the pandemic. That also means students who were planning to study abroad were pulled back and forced to also study online since citizens were prohibited to fly to certain countries as the cases there were rising rigorously. As a student myself, I was also affected by the pandemic. I have faced many problems and had to sacrifice a lot to keep myself going. As far as I am suffering, someone else out there is suffering more whilst being stuck in another country. I cannot imagine the events they couldn't celebrate together with their family members or the days when they really need their family and they are hours apart from them, if not thousands of miles apart.

Opportunely, students from different stages are willing to share their stories about how they were affected during the pandemic. Aaron Patrick was a student who graduated college from his Diploma in Mass Communication in early 2020 and started working in October that year. He shared that it was quite frustrating when he worked whilst the daily cases were rising each day. “In terms of work, it was a challenge to constantly adapt moving back and forth from working at the office to working from home and back again.” He constantly had to adapt to working at home to working at the office. At one point, Aaron also stated that “it also made me sloppy in terms of my work ethic.” Luckily, he is now more determined to overcome the frustration that comes with the pandemic and push through to succeed after re-evaluating and re-adjusting to the changes he faced.

Summer Yang, 22, is a fresh graduate who majored in Public Relations. She was supposed to go for her internship in her fourth semester in 2020. She was looking forward to it as it would help her family to lessen their financial burden with a little bit of income but unfortunately the daily cases were rapidly rising at that time, her batch were forced to reject all internship offers and finish their semester with a mandatory Capstone project. “To be honest, I was really sad and disappointed as I would still be stuck with the same environment as my previous semester - which was definitely difficult and limiting when it comes to learning.” Yang also shared that she had difficulties studying online as she had only switched to online classes during her third semester. She also mentioned how it is important when it comes to communicating with her group mates to avoid any misunderstandings and possible disagreements. It was also difficult to enquire about their questions or advice with their lecturer as personal consultations had widened the gap between student and lecturer. Although Yang faced a lot of problems throughout her semesters with some like communication breakdowns, internet connection issues and procrastination, she has now finished all her courses and successfully graduated!

Apart from that, there are also people who started their course online and graduated online as well. Rachel Ong is a student who started her course in April 2020 and just finished her foundation in March 2021, and the pandemic had restricted her to experience her dream college adventure. She didn’t get to go to campus much or meet new friends from different courses. She spent all her time back in Kuantan where she studied online. Nevertheless, Ong did mention that her study progress wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be as she did manage to focus during meetings and classes, but occasionally she would sometimes doze off during classes. “However, I would've definitely preferred it if I could have gone to campus to physically meet my lecturers and classmates.” But much as the pandemic had affected her, Ong did point out that she didn’t have to get up early to get ready to go to campus, and she got to spend more time with her family back in Kuantan despite having to take care of her own expenses if she were to study in Kuala Lumpur. But on a slightly negative note, formal meetings would make Ong worry because she feels insecure about her communication skills. Ong also brought up that her social skills have decreased because she could choose who to communicate with without anyone complaining. Spending time with her family is more important than talking with friends for Ong.

I believe that not only college students have their thoughts about the pandemic, high schooler Tammy Koh has also shared how the pandemic had heavily affected her senior year. Koh’s academics were affected for the reason that her motivation decreased as the lockdown progressed. She was constantly sitting in front of the computer screen as her senior year dreams faded in front of her. “My graduation, last sports day and my chance to experience becoming a leader in my co-curricular activities were taken away from me.” However, she admitted that not being able to go to school for physical classes made her furious as well as having selfish intentions that she couldn’t experience her last year in high school. She had to even undergo SPM unprepared. It was definitely a hard year for Tammy as a high school student coping with the pandemic.

Starting your internship is always something that college students would look forward to so they can learn new things to prepare them when they go out into society one day. However, starting your internship one month before the daily cases rise again is certainly not the happiest moment Quenton Chang wants to keep in his memories. As someone who is interning in the Domestic Department at Universal Music Malaysia whose job involves creating posters, taking pictures and videos of events and editing video clips for social media content, the pandemic has certainly taken a toll on Chang’s dream to experience a proper internship. “Personally, I felt robbed of my internship and the chance to truly widen my network. The pandemic has limited my chances to experience more physical events that I was looking forward to.” A lot of events were cancelled under the spell of the pandemic and he had to bring all his workload home instead of being assigned to take pictures and videos of artist recordings or deal signings. Doing everything through a screen just couldn’t let him imagine the atmosphere of the event.

The pandemic has taken a toll on everyone, not just students or high schoolers. Of course, we all hope that the pandemic will soon end and everything can go back to normal, not only students, even other sectors of the economy can function properly. We hope everyone can help and to break the Covid-19 chain, wear a mask, social distance and wash your hands. Avoid being in large crowds and stay home if you don’t need to go out.

“Protect Yourself, Protect All”.