Student blogs

Hello guys!

Since week 44, we, Biomed master’s students, have had all of our lectures online on Zoom. This was decided after the public health agency of Sweden set new guidelines due to the rise of Covid-19 cases in Stockholm.

So now, a normal day looks slightly different!

MORNING

Most of our online lectures, or at least the ones in the cancer section, have been starting around 9 am. Therefore, I wake up around 8:30/8:45 am, and then wash my face with slightly cold water (so I can be a bit more awake). Afterward, I boil some water and make myself a cup of tea. Though I think most of my classmates are making a cup of coffee around this time! Next, I join Zoom.

Online lectures have their pros and cons, and I am still trying to get used to them. But one pro is that you can divide your screen into the zoom part and a word document for note-taking. It is pretty useful!

LUNCH BREAK

We can still get a lunch break at noon. But for most of the past days, what time we eat lunch had been up to us. This is because we had individual study time or lab work scheduled in our timetables, and for these, we were able to organize ourselves.

As it is November now, the days are getting shorter and shorter, and short days + online classes = me needing to take vitamin D. The one I’ve been trying to take lately is a tablet which gets dissolved in water and results in a citrus-flavored drink. I definitely recommend taking vitamin D during winter in Sweden; it really gets dark pretty early during the day.

AFTERNOON

After lunch, we either have more lectures or study time to read research articles and do group work. For instance, for the cancer part of Frontiers in Translational Medicine, we had to do our lab online as well. This was a bit odd because we weren’t able to do the actual experiments, but we still had to calculate dilutions and analyze data. So my group would usually have a zoom call and/or work on this after the morning lectures.  

EVENING/NIGHT

As it is already gets dark around 3pm, I think of 5pm as night already. So I believe my Swedish lessons, that start around 5:30pm on Thursdays, are in the evening. They were in-person until last week, now they are also online. Many extracurricular activities have also been canceled, but at the same time, this means I have some time to relax and get ready for the next day.