Finishing uni and starting graduate life in 2020

The new decade has started off in a way no one could have predicted. As I clinked glasses, embraced my friends and welcomed the new Roaring Twenties with open arms on New Year’s Day, I would have laughed at you if you had told me that three months later we’d be in a global pandemic, with countries going into national lockdowns like dominoes falling.

This was supposed to be a memorable year because it is the year I finish my degree and go out into the world and start life without academic deadlines looming. But it has turned out to be memorable for very different reasons. Coronavirus had other plans for us all. Being a graduate in 2020 has turned out to be like an obstacle course, but with the finish line being erased just before you reach it. Three quarters of the way through second semester – in mid-March – we all started to realise the pandemic had properly hit the UK. The entire University of Manchester campus closed in the space of a day. I had to pack up as much of my stuff as I could and get on a train back to my family’s home in Oxford. I didn’t get to say goodbye to any of my friends or coursemates. I realised none of the things that I was looking forward to for the end of final year were actually going to happen. No last lecture and seminar on campus, no sense of closure and accomplishment as I walked out of my last exam with all my coursemates, no last night out to celebrate or summer graduation with the pictures we’d been planning since first year.

Our graduation, which was supposed to take place at the end of July, has been postponed indefinitely. We received an email from the Vice-Chancellor saying “that certainly doesn’t mean you’ll miss out” because they are planning a virtual graduation and hoping to hold a real ceremony later in the year. But let’s face it – we have missed out. As face-to-face teaching became a pre-Covid phenomenon, online classes ridden with technical and connectivity issues became the new normal. This was after three weeks of our lecturers striking. We were all asking ourselves what we were paying £9 grand for. Our exams turned into 24 hour open-book exams, which meant I finished my degree alone in my kitchen rather than with my peers.

It certainly hasn’t been smooth-sailing, and I still haven’t really had any sense of closure. The finish line of this obstacle course will only be reached once we are able to actually celebrate and say goodbye to uni and to each other at a ceremony on campus – not virtually – and who knows when that will be.

But despite this being a year to graduate unlike any other, I am fully aware of how lucky I am to still be able to say I have a degree from one of the top 10 universities in the UK. I also feel blessed in many other ways: I am young and healthy, and the pandemic has made me value those privileges more than I ever have before. Lockdown also made me really see what I have, rather than what the pandemic has taken away from me: I have a garden to spend the sunny days in, a loving family, food on the table. Life for people who already didn’t have those things was made far more difficult during the lockdown so I remind myself every day of how lucky I am to have them.

So what are my plans now? I was planning on travelling and doing some internships abroad but I am waiting to see how things pan out over the next few months before I book anything. The economy and public health are fragile and fluctuating situations around the world at the moment, so for now, this website is my next venture. Writing is what I want to do, and this website means I can do it wherever and whenever I want. If I can get through my final year of uni during a pandemic, I can get through whatever is thrown at me in the future, and you will be able to read about it here. Stay tuned.