For some reason today I felt a strong urge to write a blog post about this topic (that I’m sure everyone has written up their own version of), so here it is. If you found this page on your own, congratulations. 👏

How COVID-19 affected me

I think this is helpful context to know what headspace I was in and what stresses I was feeling.

  • By now, I think everyone knows Wuhan, China as the origin of COVID-19. What a lot of people, including my friends, don’t know is that I was born in Wuhan and everyone on my mom’s side of the family still lives there. 🇨🇳 Needless to say, my family members were all very concerned for their well-being and we’re extremely lucky that no one got sick from COVID-19.
  • I was not particularly scared for myself in catching COVID-19 because I was perfectly fine staying indoors (there was a period of time when I only left the house for 1 hour every week to buy groceries). However, this meant I basically didn’t exercise for 6 months and I could feel my physical and mental health deteriorating as a result.
  • I was not the direct target of any xenophobia, likely because I was in Berkeley where Asians are the majority, but I was still concerned how I would be treated and was particularly fearful for Mom and Harry who live in St. Louis.
  • All of the incidents around police brutality were particularly distressing and I felt powerless and disconnected (being in academia) to tackle this problem that felt a lot more “real” than any problem I’d research in the PhD.
  • While I’m not an international student, I identify strongly with my Chinese heritage and I was outraged at the ICE news. I was also very scared for all of my friends who were international students.
  • All of this amounted to an incredible amount of survivor guilt and just constantly thinking, “That could have been me.” 😰
  • Sometime in the spring, my mom noticed that I was losing a lot of hair. Still do from time to time, lol.

Some things I did

Certainly all of the above weighed on me and definitely impacted my ability to do research, my emotions, and my motivation to get through the day. The following is a combination of lifestyle choices and mindset adjustments that really helped my overcome these hurdles.

  • One thing I love to tell people is to “be kind to yourself.” Take a break. Spoil yourself every once in a while. Twice in a while if you need it. 😊 What this translated into for me is making sure I took time to enjoy food, a good book, watching a movie, etc.
  • And don’t feel guilty! So often I hear people say, “Gah OK I’ve taken a break/procrastinated, but I still don’t feel like working…” …so then don’t work! I think we work best not when we force ourselves to work or if we work longer, but if we work while happy and engaged, so if taking another hour (or day…) is what I need, then that’s what I’ll do. In particular, I found out very quickly what did not work for me was dedicating to a 8:00-17:00 schedule without any distractions, and taking evenings off. Instead, I let my mind wander as needed throughout the day, and if that I meant I suddenly got inspired to work from, say, 20:00-23:00, then I’d do that. Perhaps the fear here is that one would never go back to doing work. But remember: it’s not because you’re here at Berkeley that you have to be motivated to do good work; it’s because you’re motivated to do good work that got you here at Berkeley. Go Bears. 🐻
  • That being said, I did do a few things to make my schedule a bit more regular. For one, I had the same daily schedule regardless if it was a weekday or weekend (again, with my irregular breaks, I didn’t need a “weekend” off). I woke up every day at 7:30, lunch around noon, dinner around 18:00, and slept at 23:00. This at least gave me a regular sleep schedule and I felt very refreshed each day.
  • I knew that once classes started in the Fall my life would get better because there would be a cadence. This is true. But I what I didn’t expect is that they would open up the pools on campus! I went swimming 3 days a week, without fail, and the best part is that we get to reserve our own swimming lanes. 🏊 Finally no more lapping/being lapped or having to worry about butterfly arms smacking another swimmer. The weather (besides the smoky days) was also sublime and perfect for swimming. Getting regular activity back in my life felt so, so good.
  • Since I am terrified of group interactions, I was able to connect with more folks 1:1 through Zoom and that has been really fun. I’ve had long conversations with close friends and I always look forward to those (some going 3+ hours). I also had good conversations with the first-year PhD students, just to get to know them better and check in to see how they were adjusting in this situation.
  • There are a lot of negative consequences of this whole pandemic, and while the news is incredibly disheartening, I eventually tried to channel that into motivation for improving society. Naturally, my focus was on the education space and I focused on 1) how to better engage students in the remote environment, and 2) how to better support underrepresented minorities in STEM. This led to a lot of outside readings and discussions with various people and I definitely learned a lot and tried to take some actionable steps. While I can’t claim I’ve made any significant achievements, I did figure out what works (and what doesn’t) with the goal of making future iterations even better. Stay tuned!
  • Oh, one more thing. Since I’m a PhD student, I should probably at least address my research in some capacity. Well, the thing is, I don’t think anything research-wise was particularly different for me nor did it make me feel particularly better. If I wasn’t doing any of the aforementioned things, then I spent it on research. What I will say is that I felt incredibly lucky to have great mentors (Mark and Tim, among others) who gave me the time and space I needed for myself so that research didn’t cause me stress. ❤️ It made me feel so good that my one criteria for the PhD was working with a nice advisor (nice people in general) because I never could have anticipated this happening.