At the very beginning, I was a bit afraid to take part in this project, because I thought that COVID-19 pandemic will make a lot more difficult to keep up with my studies and life in general. However, I really liked the idea of a collaboration between students and academics to create a website delivering the scientific knowledge that we have gained through our studies, as well as, acknowledging the contribution of overlooked scientists.
As a student, I used several useful websites that helped me with my learning when I was stuck. I used to think that it would be really great if I could do something similar to these websites in order to help other students understand easily the topics I was struggling with too at some point during my learning journey. Therefore, having the opportunity to work on a website with my colleagues from university and two of our lectures was fantastic, making possible for a dream that I was not even giving attention before to become true. I am sure that I would have never done this on my own, without the support of my lectures and colleagues. Therefore, being part of a team definitely brings a lot of advantages such as new ideas, motivation, the feeling that you are part of something and not alone.
As the COVID-19 pandemic certainly did not make people’s life easier, it had a great impact on me too. Although I am an introvert in the most powerful sense, I need people to connect with as well. Being in a foreign country on my own, away from my family for a long time, with the necessity to practice social distancing and the lockdown, I realised I was feeling very alone, unmotivated to do anything... I needed something to put me back on track... In this sense, working with my colleagues helped me to overcome isolation and remain motivated, with the hope that through this website we can build up an online community when physical (academic) communities are having to take a back seat to health, and therefore helping fellow students with their studies.
Additionally, I think I always secretly wanted to get involved into teaching and to find out more about our academics: How do they manage to do all the work so efficiently? How they can make teaching seem relatively easy? Is it really easy or requires a LOT of time and patience? Collaborating with two of my lecturers for this project gave me the possibility to see a little bit of the “teaching world” of our lectures and had a good impact on me, determining me to be more attentive to details and more organised.
Through this project I learnt that when students and lecturers collaborate, share ideas, and have a common interest, brilliant things, that otherwise might seem impossible to achieve, can happen. They can happen! Moreover, I learnt how to share the knowledge that I gained through my studies in an interactive way that can help other students and general public to understand very interesting scientific topics (NOT boring!). Also, I realised that creating teaching material for the general public is not that simple. After you understand a certain topic, it is difficult to remember what you used to struggle with when you were learning and therefore you tend to add very specific details all in once, which can confuse people that are not familiar with that topic.
I am really thankful and happy that, in a moment of courage I decided to take part in this project. I think I was scared that I might not be good enough or have something interesting to share. However, when you have the right people around you, they can help you see the situation from different and wiser perspectives, helping you to start to believe in yourself, building little by little your confidence. As an nice end to this, hopefully not very boring, post I cite the lyrics of one of my favourite songs to which now I can really relate to: “Forever trusting who we are... And nothing else matters.”
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