I Got Corona!
No not the beer, I got that little pandemic that’s hovering outside my house, and now inside!
As a 12th grader, I can say at that this year has been dire. Education has been on the ropes, Nobel winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman has said that this year will affect all students, for the rest of their lives.
The exclamation mark in the title has posed a dichotomy for me, am I happy that all my exams are postponed and have gotten more time to study, or am I sad that all my exams have been postponed and I have a perpetual sword over my head for the past 14 months, and have to study.
A feeling that all might feel, especially in this pandemic, is a sense of hopelessness. Martin Selinger says that, hopelessness occurs when it is sufferings you cannot control.
Obviously we can’t control the pandemic, so a sense of hopelessness is not abnormal currently. But this piece of information I learnt is from a book called “Grit : The power of passion and perseverance.” An important factor of Grit is Hope, without which no one can survive. Even the author Angela Duckworth does not know how one can improve one’s own individual power of grit. But being an optimist rather than a pessimist could actually increase your life span, would certainly help you get through corona.
Read a book while humans fight against this savage virus outside from their homes. Not necessarily Grit, but any of your choice!
Broaden your horizon, think in a logical and rational manner with no more assumptions, you have got the whole day to yourselves, minus the bit of studying, eating, and most importantly... SLEEPING. An outstanding way to do this is by hearing to podcasts! Youtube is addicting, so podcasts are a good way to learn about new things, on any subject ,be it F1, Economics, Psychology, history, the list goes on and on! My personal favourites would be No Stupid Questions, by Angela Duckworth and Stephen Dubner, the same Angela Duckworth who is the author of Grit, then F1 Beyond The Grid and Freakonomics radio.
Play some games, have some fun, you can’t spend the whole day by just reading books and looking at the faces you see everyday. As all might know, The Queen’s Gambit was a huge success for Netflix, and because of the pandemic, Chess population around the world grew exponentially, with myself succumbing to the temptation to buy a chess board.
But there’s only so much you can see your dad think for long hours and trump over you occasionally, online chess is a great escape for that! Games ranging from 1 minute (Bullet Chess) all the way to 14 days for making a single move! I certainly do not have the patience waiting for 14 days for a random guy across the world to make a move just 24 hours before his time is up .I prefer bullet chess, because like most people of this generation, it is much more dynamic, and quicker! Pester your friends to play chess, get the chess bug! Thankfully some of mine already have been infected by this worldly game.
The amount of education this world has is extraordinary, and even more so that you can access all of this in a slab that is the size of your hand.
Did you know that a staggering 95% of all Wikipedia pages lead to philosophy? Am not saying that the world revolves around philosophy, but give it a read, and do tell if you follow any branch of it.
This next one might be chided by a few millenials, but take up some chores, you will be occupied, and your parents might have the slightest ray of hope that you are a tiny bit responsible.
Be a bit dynamic if possible, don’t do all of this in a single day, gets a bit mundane to even do something interesting over and over again. Keep changing what you do, and try to be a bit lively, not the ashen corpse face my sister said I had on the 5th day of home quarantine.
This too shall pass and muster hope from every cell in your body, agreed that I have been saying that for the past year, but our body has 15 trillion cells, so it certainly will take some time to run out!













