Learning How to Live In A New Reality

What a weird time. I can’t really put into words how I have been feeling. As you know, at least I hope you know, coronavirus has somewhat taken over the world. College classes have gone online, events have been cancelled, we have been ordered to stay inside and so many plans have changed. This is an interestingly strange time period to be a college student. We are quite literally living in a history textbook that our children will learn about someday. Now, enough with the melodramatics, I’m sure we are all dealing with a lot because of this virus. The question is, how have we been dealing with it?

Well, the way I have been dealing with it all is through, oddly enough, vlogging. I recently purchased my first DSLR camera and once the world shut down, I thought to myself...how can I put this to use? So, I started to vlog! I have been vlogging practically everything. The moment I got back to Virginia Tech was the moment I started to film. I want to capture it all. I want to be able to look back and see how our world changed periodically and how I overcame it.

Having the camera on most of the day has motivated me to try new things. The other day I spent about 6 hours trying to make homemade pork buns and I got it all on film! From the moment we started to activate the yeast to making the pork to actually assembling and steaming the buns, everything was caught on camera.

Another positive to this seemingly negative situation is that my video editing skills are getting infinitely better. Because of my major, Multimedia Journalism, I already have Adobe Creative Cloud on my laptop. Through the Cloud I get access to video, audio and photo editing software and I have been playing around with all three.

I realize this is a difficult situation for everyone. It's daunting, unsettling and quite frankly scary, but I feel as if it is also a time for unity and to express your creativity. Finding ways to entertain yourself while staying inside for the sake of your health and the health of others is a rewarding task. Personally, I feel as if I have been able to take this interesting time that we are in to try things that if we were on a “real life” schedule I would have never thought to do or really even had the time. I challenge you to try something new during this quarantine. You'd be surprised how easy it is to entertain yourself. Maybe you’ll ever find a new hobby or maybe you’ll even find yourself.