On 11 March, 2020, the WHO declared one virus as a global pandemic and the name of that virus — COVID-19. Due to this, worldwide, schools and businesses are shut down.
After the closing of schools and businesses, my family and I stayed at home. First, I felt uncomfortable and irritated, but I focused on various activities like drawing, essay writing, and my studies and kept myself busy.
After the shutdown, my new mission as a student was to know about the virus, spread awareness about it, and focus on my studies. As a family member, my mission was to help and take care of my family.
I participated in the various courses of the WHO. It helped me understand what the COVID-19 virus is. With the responsibility of being a student during this pandemic, I took part in the Voices Of Youth COVID-19 awareness program with activities like essay writing and drawing to spread awareness.
To continue my studies and learning, I attend daily live classes of my school and do regular assignments given by my teachers. Further, this shutdown has given me time to explore some open-source materials available on the internet and it has helped me a lot. I explore something new rather than the regularly scheduled study material.
I learn some experiments, facts and history and it made me more fascinated with science. I also learn Vedic mathematics developed by ancient mathematicians, which decreases the time consumption to solving problems dramatically.
In the shutdown, I had a chance to learn more about space exploration, like calculating the time of satellites, star positioning and many other things. At night I explore stars and satellites with a telescope. I also found software and apps which help me in space exploration. Some apps check the weather for observation, while others help to find the accurate position of a star or satellite.
As a family member, I took on some responsibilities. I have made all my family members aware of COVID-19, especially advising my grandparents to stay at home. I also talked to them about the precautions like mask-wearing, hand washing and sanitisation. We also do daily exercises and yoga for physical fitness during this shutdown.
Many poor people are facing difficulties in this shutdown because they no longer have jobs or an income source. My family and I decided to provide food packets to them. On a regular basis, my mom and sister make food, I and my father pack that food and social workers arrive and take the packets and distribute them among poor people.
I love gardening and harvesting plants, so I took all the responsibility of gardening from my mom. On a daily basis, I irrigate the plants and take care of them in our garden. I explore and try new techniques like hydroponics to grow plants in a very different manner. I am amazed that this technique only needs water for plants to grow.
The plants only need regular pumping of nutritions water. This technique takes less water and there is no need for soil in this technique. Then I also find out that astronauts use this technique to grow plants in the outer atmosphere.
In this shutdown, I learnt something new and this will surely help me in future and my mission.