Lying low during Covid times..

Covid 19 has be with us since March 24, 2020. It first came to Italy and then it travelled to Belgium with skiers returning home from their ski holidays in the Italian slopes.

My cousin Glenda, who resides in Hong kong, had already sent me a text to stock up on face masks a month earlier as infections were sweeping through HongKong and Singapore.  We were kind of lagging behind in Europe...

As I picked up where I left, it has been two years and four months of living under Covid pandemic measures. I have been too reluctant to travel because of the uncertainties involved. Countries were imposing quarantine measures of up to 2 weeks, compulsory  and repeated PCR tests and the possibilities of being grounded.

For the sake of doing something, I signed up for an MBA course in the fall of 2021 at the prestigious  Catholic University Leuven  (KUL).  By far the most enriching thing I have embarked on and yet with much blood, sweat and tears. I continue to press on until September 2022, by which time I should have rightfully graduate. Thank you to the Belgian education system where students get second attempts at exams when the first sitting went amiss. 

The experience of being an adult learner in a classroom of fresh BBA graduates was daunting to start with and I remember feeling like a dinosaur in the first day of Business Research Methods. Staring at the computer screen and struggling to keep up pace was a confidence breaker.  The professor assured me that the lessons are available on the University's learning site which I could follow. 
Hybrid teaching evolved because of Covid so students could learn from home when campuses were shut down. Another good thing to have come out from such inauspicious times.

For me, learning to work in diverse groups on team assignments and projects meant knowing how to use Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Toledo Collaborate (University's E-platform).  It meant knowing how to share screens, make presentations on Canva, infographics and white papers. Having free, unlimited access to academic papers and journals was a precious resource of a university student. I began to understand what academic life will be like should I decide to do a PhD... endless, relentless research. Granted that one has to be very motivated with the research topic to dedicate four years of one's life. Roll back 20 years, I would have been tempted.



Location: Leuven, Belgium

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