2020 has been a really tough time. Not gonna lie, but for me personally, 2020 started with electricity cut off at 11:58 pm, 31st of December, 2020. Like what? Why can’t I enjoy the celebration properly? Well, like my prediction that I have mentioned in one of the group chats, said “I know 2020 will be a bad year”, it is true. But why is 2020 such a terrible year?
Two thousand- twenty begun with the wildfire in Australia. Many species have gone extinct plus lots of animals such as Kangaroo and Koala died, then followed by WWIII between the U.S. and Iran. I’m not going to talk much about it because most of the audience already know what is really going on. There have been many more crises happening in 2020 such as: airplane crash in Pakistan, death of Kobe Bryant, earthquake in Turkey, volcano eruption in Philippines and lastly is the spread of the virus, Covid-19, around the world.
Since Covid-19 spreads so quickly, the government in every country decided to close every school and establish lock down for safety measures. This pandemic’s lock-down has lasted around 4 to 5 months already and no one knows when it will end officially.
It has been a long time already since I don’t have school. Some people might wonder what did I do during this time? To be honest, I didn’t really do a lot of things in the first month. But by the second month of quarantine, I felt guilty for not doing anything. At the same time, I am addicted to watching life expert videos talking about the advantages of being productive. At this point, I want to learn some new skills. Graphic Design had come to my mind. I really like this new skill, so I have contacted Caro and talked a lot about someone that can mentor me to be a better graphic designer. She gave me many advice like watching YouTube videos because it would help and also she is willing to help me find a mentor by posting a status on her Facebook account. It ended up with tons of people wanting to help me. Puppy, who used to be our volunteer teacher, and Sushi, our former facilitator, are two people of the many. I’ve talked to them a lot recently and I also created some graphic works. After a few weeks, I felt like graphic design isn’t my skill. After I found out about that, I chatted to Puppy about some random stuff. It turns out that she works as an architect. We spoke a lot about architecture and she gave me some tips and how to be a good architect. After the chat, I took her words really seriously because I was interested. I tried to watch lots of videos about architecture works while practicing sketching. Guess what? I love it. It must be my passion even though I don’t usually draw. I’ve done two to three sketches, some ideas and designs to a house/building, many room designing and decors.
These are the graphic work I’ve done:
Wait a minute, what about your school subjects? Haven’t heard me mentioning it? Don’t worry, I’ve also done tons of stuff related to those subjects too. I did some math exercises in Khan Academy’s online course. To be honest, during this lockdown, Math is the only subject I didn’t really work on much. I don’t know why too, but I just focus more on other priorities. For Khmer literacy, I’m not really productive on it either. I did not do anything much, I just read the pdf about the constitution of Cambodia that teacher Sokha assigned. Now talking about STEM, I did many things such as: Reading articles, researching, and mostly, observing birds. I saw many birds and some strange animals that I won’t be able to see if I’m not into STEM. Besides that, I am currently focusing on English Literacy. I did plenty of reading on Newsela, spending a lot of time on IXL to practice reading skills and improving my vocabulary. I’m not gonna forget about this, I’ve spent hundreds of hours on writing including this post that you are reading now. I don’t think these have kept me busy enough, so I’m planning to do more work related to Math and Khmer. I want it to be my most productive break ever. As time goes on, I am sure my productivity will increase.
As some of you might already know, I’ve been selected to be part of the LigerSat team. It is a really short time for us, as the junior, to prepare for when the senior graduates. Meaning that I will take an online class to understand more about the project and especially, learning about ham radio to take an exam for license inorder to use our ground station. It took us about three months to finish the book but unfortunately not everyone had passed the practice test yet (it is just similar to the actual exam but it’s not going to be graded). Hopefully, all five will pass the exam when we take the official one. It is not ending here, after finishing the book, we have one more class with Josh Umansky (LigerSat mentor), about arduino. We learned to connect the wire, function of each component and coding the arduino to work. It is a pleasure to learn with Josh. It is also fun when we practice with the website, but it might be really harmful if we do it in real life without knowing the concept. To be continued, we will also have another class with our newest mentor named Giovanni. I’m not a hundred percent sure about the concept he will teach us yet but I know it is going to be fun.
The Ham Radio License book:
Beside all of the learning stuff, I also spent most of my day on video games and social media. Not gonna lie, quarantine had changed me so much and mostly my behaviour. Since I’ve been to Liger, I don’t really go out instead just chilling in my room. These 3 months got me so much experience in life. I went out to visit my friends but I won’t forget about wearing face masks and washing my hands before and after going out. Of course I spent most of the time playing with my younger cousins. I also helped my grandpa and uncle with their jobs. I think from now on I use my time more conveniently compared to me just chilling in my room all day long.
In conclusion, I am supremely thankful for quarantine for shaping me to be a better person and change agent. I’m so surprised that I found 3 new passions in just four months. I’m also glad that I can be a great family member again after 4 years. Nevertheless, this isn’t a great time for many people to enjoy their life because of the virus that is spreading around the world. Lastly, I just want to give a clearer explanation about what I had mentioned earlier. It is never too late to change and also think that time is valuable, if you have time, use it wisely. A week or two can change your life forever.