#VoxPopuli | Stuck
By: The Science Scholar
Tags: Covid 19, Philippines, Productivity, Online Learning

by Gwen Valimento

I was obsessed with sticky notes.

Around this time last year, my window would be covered in those pieces of paper: Math quiz tom! Tournament on Saturday. Research proposal due Wed.

I believe in preparation: to finish an essay at least three days before, to not cram for an exam, to properly allocate resources and time.

Could anyone have prepared for this new normal? That Monday in March plucked us from the four walls of our classrooms and dumped us in our homes. I don’t think anything could have prepared us for something that takes our colorful life, desaturates it, and cramps it all in a 4.7-inch piece of screen—bigger if you can afford it.

Affordability then comes in when questioning this new normal. This pandemic made social interaction that we need as human beings something you can access and rely on only with a decent internet connection and a laptop that doesn’t crash every fifteen minutes. A more high definition laptop screen would let you see your classmates better, a faster gadget would let you load tons of tabs for your research. This pandemic highlighted the ugly truth of life that favors the privileged. In a world that exhausts us with its meritocratic system that is nevertheless embedded in the unfairness of the wealth distribution, life goes on as we’re stuck in our homes. College applications, internship programs, job opportunities—all of these keep coming and depending on our experience and performance. How do we expect everyone to perform their best when some have to worry about what to pay for internet connection for next week when it costs the same as food for a family of five to live off of for a day? When the mental health of some are deteriorating being stuck at home? Preparation needs proper resources. I don’t think that those who need it have been given what they need nine months into quarantine.

I don’t think our country is prepared. I don’t think any of us is prepared.

When the staggering effects of this pandemic could have been answered by proper systems of implementation and properly subsidized healthcare workers, our government sleeps. In a country with healthcare and education systems that seemingly have to beg for the budget and proper leaders in order to reach rural areas, we can see the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the government when MRT stations are still filled to the brim, when no contact tracing and mass testing are done, when science is kept on being pushed to the sides, and when workers are being laid off and finding a hard time keeping a stable job in a declining economy. It’s not hard to see how the poorest in society bear the brunt of the pandemic.

The sticky notes on my window that used to pile up with the piling up of requirements went posted in weird places: the bottom of a cabinet, the ceiling, the handle of the door that all seemingly asks for attention whichever way you look. Written in the thickest pen I could find, the contents changed too; from requirement deadlines and training reminders, it became something you can find printed on alongside a live, laugh, love shirt: Deep breaths. Focus. One day at a time.

This pandemic broke the five-year streak of the Pisay hustle, the fifty-pesos delivery charges, six laps of pack runs around the field, and the tradition of going to Trinoma after exams. Now we have to spend 24 hours alone at home, with the occasional ping from Discord and another email notification from Google Classroom. The things we took for granted, traffic jams, mornings in the back lobby, spending Research periods in the library seems bleak in the possibility of ever happening again. Would we even return to normal?

It has been a relentless paradox when we as humans need social interaction but it leads to the inevitability of seeing the bad news that keeps coming. It’s been hard to navigate between social life and this mess, when every refresh of the news feed brings about a different terror: a killed lawyer, a typhoon incoming, some dolomite replenishing. It doesn’t make it better when these platforms in our four-inch screens are our only way of looking out from the four corners of our home.

Sometimes the future seems bleak, but every day we pick ourselves up from a lonely night, a tear-stricken morning, and a stressed-out day from cramming requirements, all for one thing: the promise of tomorrow. One day we triumph and smile, and on another we don’t. But we slowly learn to decipher our moods: what makes us feel better, how to distance ourselves from toxicity in social media, how to navigate this difficult set-up. There is progress even in the four corners of our home, just a tad bit different from those in the four walls of our classrooms. This pandemic has made us embrace our innate human tendency to insist. To insist to see the future when we can finally hear a friend’s laugh again, to see another sunset in school, to go up the stage on delayed graduation, to see a day when climate change is solved, to find our research projects reach the Philippine community.

We triumph by seeing another tomorrow, by reminding ourselves over and over again that tomorrow is worth waking up for. And we do—we wake up, we survive, we see another day, and we try again.

I remind myself of those by writing on a sticky note.