Jessica Howard-Johnston (Class of 2011) As a live news producer living in Paris, I experienced the lockdown under the particularly strict rules enforced in the French capital. No exercise outdoors between 10am-8pm, every time you left the house you had to fill out a form and we experienced regular police patrols. It was a bizarre period, but I had three saving graces which kept me sane: 1. The golden ticket of having an “essential worker” form meant I could go beyond the 1km perimeter within which most French people were confined, albeit just to go into work! Being able to go into the newsroom and change locations on a daily basis was liberating. It was also rewarding - as a producer of global live news, I felt like I was doing my bit (albeit as a small cog) to help the world see and understand the pandemic and the effect it was having on all corners of the globe. The pandemic threw up all kinds of new challenges for us as an international news agency. With travel limited, news outlets were even more reliant on us and our thousands of journalists around the world. The images we were handling were at times unbelievable - the Champs Elysées deserted of traffic and people; world leaders meeting via Zoom; military patrols enforcing lockdown in Johannesburg; makeshift hospitals being set up in Central Park; and ice rinks being used as morgues in Madrid. 2. The nightly claps for healthcare workers. Paris is a largely apartmentdwelling city, and from across your courtyard or street, through the tall Haussmannian windows, there were the silhouettes of equally confined neighbours. Every evening at 8pm, Parisians came to their windows and
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balconies to join in a round of applause for medical staff working on the front line. A nightly opportunity to exchange smiles, 'bonsoirs' and gentle 'we're all in this together' nods with the strangers you didn't realise were neighbours, making confinement feel less lonely. 3. My St George’s girls! My school friends were my rocks - we’re now all over the place (Australia, Canada, UK, France) but this didn’t stop our thriceweekly Zoom calls - doing exercise classes, quizzes and Friday night ‘pub’ drinks....!
Ellen Geddes (Class of 2019) I have just finished the first year of my nursing degree at the University of Edinburgh, alongside which I work as a waitress for a golf club and also volunteer at St Columba’s Hospice. I came home from halls on 15 March and stayed at home during lockdown with my family. Prior to lockdown, I was getting ready to begin a twelve-week placement in both the community and hospital setting for my degree but, due to coronavirus, it was decided that first year students would not go on placement. This has left me and my fellow students with 450 hours
of placement to catch up on before we graduate in three years’ time! It currently looks like we will be aiming to get through most of these hours in year two, to minimise disruption to our Honours years. To help prevent a second spike in the virus, our lectures, tutorials and clinical skills will be online and they will try to get us into hospital to practice these skills before we go out on placement in smaller groups, to comply with government guidelines. Last year I was part of the youth pilot volunteer scheme at St Columba’s which aimed to bring more young people into the hospice and for them to help out in their various teams (myself and another alumna Laura Cameron were the first to participate). After that finished, I planned to go back to St Columba’s to start training to be a patient support volunteer but, due to lockdown, I couldn’t do the training. I hope that this will resume at some point. When lockdown was eased, I felt that I could help more than by staying at home – because of my age and good health I started looking at options and applied to care homes to help as a care assistant. However, by chance, I received a call from a lady I babysit for asking if I would be able to look after her three young children for a few days a week so that she and her husband could work normal hours. I have been doing this since childcare was allowed in homes – I have become a nanny 9am-5pm for two or three days a week. Lockdown has shown me how happy I am in my life. I love my course and the people on it, I love the new friends I have made at university. I like my job and the people I get to work with and the feeling I get from volunteering cannot be compared to anything. When I am living my ‘normal life’, I often get caught up in the busy-ness of it and don’t stop to enjoy it, however I realise I do enjoy that busy pace and part of me does miss it. I have enjoyed being home and spending more time with my family. I love being with them and that has been my highlight of quarantine, a time when we can all be together and not
have to think about ‘what’s next’. It was not long since my school friends and I all went off in different directions to start a new chapter of our lives, and we were all so excited for the times when we could come back together and share stories, spend time together and create more memories. Sadly, lockdown and coronavirus prevented that. Zoom calls could only do so much. I was annoyed that finally we were all back together in the same place, but we couldn’t even see each other. Those friendships mean so much to me and I had missed the girls so much, so I was excited to get together in the garden (socially distanced) and be with them all in person. Several socially-distanced walks and picnics later, I am still anxiously waiting for the day when we can see each other again without the restrictions. With the Wi-Fi unable to cope with all of us at home, I have spent much less time on my phone and laptop and rediscovered time for reading. Without the distractions, I have made my way through over 40 books since 23 March – a lovely respite from a busy daily life.
Marion Fairweather (Class of 1983) In 2019, I worked as the French Global Fundraising Manager for The World's Big Sleep Out run by Social Bite. I was very proud to be part of a global scale project working for an organisation recognised by Meghan and Harry, Leonardo di Caprio and George Clooney. During this time, I had the opportunity to discover many new things about the world and myself, meet new people
and learn a lot work-wise. One of the best memories was attending a dinner at the EICC to hear Malala Yousafzai, the famous Pakistani activist for female education, being interviewed by Jon Snow. I knew that 2020 would be different, but never could I have imagined it like this. I was planning to pursue literary translation studies and had been picked by Stafford House to work as a TEFL teacher at Napier University’s Craiglockhart Campus. Never mind a couple of holidays thrown in there. It was a new laptop which became a lifeline in March 2020. Whilst civilisation seemed to be collapsing all around me, thanks to technology I was able to use social media networks and recruitment sites freely and, eventually, after weeks if not months of seeking new employment, I found a dream translation job. For the last few weeks, I have been working as a French translator for a think tank called Global Virtual Village, translating articles for the blog section of their website, and helping them by translating for other sides of their business to recruit prospective new employees, programmes for podcasts on social issues and interviews with podcast hosts and guests. I have been able to continue French Literary Translation Studies with the French Institute by taking the online translation course delivered on Zoom. This has not only ensured academic continuity but kept me in touch with the outside world. It also ensured that I didn't miss out on the knowledge and skills I needed to launch a career as a translator. Eventually I developed a new routine, working for Global Virtual Village online, online translation studies twice a week and a daily walk. This time has helped me reassess what I really want from life. I already knew the basics – that I would like to work in music or literary translation, perhaps live in France one day – but, apart from that, I have always wished that I had more time to enjoy life.
It has been great to have time to think about healthy eating, enjoying the simple things and the importance of regular exercise and fresh air. It has given me time to relax which was also unexpected and a chance to rethink what is important to me. I've been working in business development for a few years and it has been an invaluable experience, creating opportunities to use my languages both to earn money and for good causes but, somehow, I have never quite felt that it was the right career for me. So, having had time to re-evaluate, I will probably continue translating and / or become more involved with TEFL teaching after the restrictions have been lifted, as well as continuing to be involved in music in some shape or form. The Edinburgh Music Club, of which I am a member and a past Chairman, has had to cancel all its meetings. I had become accustomed to performing there regularly, as well as listening to the other members every month, and that, as well as the cancellation of all choir activities, has left an emptiness in my life which has been hard to replace. The Music Club discussed potential concerts on Zoom, either live or recorded, but we haven't gone down that route yet. My Sports Club cancelled tennis, which I would usually have been playing from March to August, and it has been difficult to adjust to not using this skill over this period and not seeing my friends at the Club. However, hopefully we are starting to see some return to a new kind of normality with these activities and that is very welcome. Like the French Institute, universities and educational organisations have been able to reinvent themselves online, and I was one of over 1,000 people to tune into the Sebald Lecture on Translation (founded in 1989) and watch David Bellos deliver this online. Finally, like a phoenix rising from the fire, I was directed by the University of East Anglia to consider enrolling in an online translation teachers’ workshop held in Rome. Not perhaps the foreign holidays I'd planned - but certainly a silver lining in the clouds!
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