By Andrian Prichliak
Hi everyone, my name is Andrian Pichliak, and I was the Internal Relations Director of SUSK for 2019-2020. Today I’ll be talking about something that’s impacted pretty much everyone’s life in one way or another – Quarantine. From classes getting moved to online virtual sessions, to bars and restaurants being closed down, many can agree that this act for the greater good (in reducing the spread of the virus) kinda sucks. At the same time however, it offers unique opportunities!
I, like many others, have been laid off due to the pandemic. I worked two bartending jobs – and as soon as things started closing down I knew my days were numbered. Then, all of sudden I get laid off from both jobs in one day…. Ouchie.
Rough start to the quarantine, but honestly it could have been a lot worse! Initially during my time in lockdown I was preoccupied with school, so it was quite easy to keep busy. Right after my finals were over though, I was face to face with COMPLETE boredom. I focused a lot on working out and running, but that only covers so much of your day. After a 2 hour workout, you still have roughly around 10 hours of your day left, so what do you do then????
Well, since I had all this free time and CERB money coming in, I decided, why not re-write my MCAT??? I was decently happy with my first score, but wasn’t really happy with how I scored for this one section (granted, I didn’t study much for it, but the fact remains I would’ve killed it if I had). So here I am, back at it with the MCAT textbooks. Gotta say it was a bittersweet feeling getting back into it – sweet that I still knew some of the stuff, and bitter with how hard the stuff was.
So beginning in mid-April, my life was a consistent routine of working out and studying. Then I get a call from my manager. Honestly, I never would have thought I would miss my job so much to the point that when I see my manager’s name pop up, I pick up the phone quicker than I would ordering Domino’s at 2 am on a Saturday night out. Seriously though, I was super stoked to give my life further purpose and see all my work buddies again. I felt like a social butterfly – finally bursting out of its cocoon. Fast forward to today and I’m back at work, studying and working out very occasionally (tbh I don’t remember my last workout session but it’s fine), and most importantly CONSTANTLY washing my hands and loving life.
So I guess what I have learned during my time in this social distancing lockdown, is that it is definitely kind of a bummer that we can’t do all the fun social things that we are normally accustomed to – but for good reason. Instead of seeing our situation as a negative, view it as an opportunity! All this free time can be put towards something productive! You can focus on learning a new language, learning about investing, learning how to write better blog posts (currently working on that one), the options are limitless! We are living in unprecedented times that allow us to seize these opportunities that otherwise may not be available to us – which at the end of the day can help us turn something that we view as a bad thing – into a good thing.