Impact of the Pandemic on My Academic Experience Abroad

The year 2020 was a year I will never forget. First, because I got a scholarship thanks to UNAM’s General Direction of Cooperation and Internationalization (DGECI), in their international student mobility program, which allowed me to study during a semester in Geneva, Switzerland, more precisely at the University of Geneva. I was also the first Engineering student from UNAM to go to that place: this got me even more excited. Secondly, the growth of a pandemic that has us still confined while I’m writing this text.

It wasn’t just about studying my career in a different place, but also traveling to another country, other culture, other educational system different from anything that I was used to.

In Mexico I had everything in the same place. Even though Ciudad Universitaria (“University City”, UNAM’s main campus) is such a big place, you knew where everything was and transportation inside it is really easy, letting you have almost everything “at hand”. During my classes the most difficult thing that could happen was having to move from the Engineering Annex to the faculty’s main building, with a direct path between both places. In Geneva, even though it’s a small city and a much smaller university, each building and faculty were completely scattered around the city. One day you would attend class in the main building, the next in your faculty, the next one at Geneva’s General Hospital Auditorium, and so on. Also, some days you could experience all of that on the same day and you had to see how you would manage to get to your next class on time. But what happened? Just when I was getting used to the daily trips, long distances, learning small shortcuts between streets and buildings, the pandemic appeared, and we were all sent home.

The semester started on February 17^th and since that moment I knew that things would be totally different to what I was used to, and would need to work harder than I thought.

Also, at that moment we learned how difficult the Coronavirus situation was in Italy, a country next to Switzerland, where many local workers live because it is much cheaper than Switzerland and near enough to travel daily.

On February 25^th the first Coronavirus case in Switzerland was announced and the whole country started to worry. It was also announced that the university was preparing for the possibility of closing its doors and start virtual lessons. Even though the university had the infrastructure and technology for that, it had never been used before on a big scale and there was an enormous ignorance by almost all the professors about how to use it.

On the afternoon of March 5^th, the first Coronavirus case in Geneva’s General Hospital was announced; just the same day I had a special class at that hospital’s auditorium in the morning. That changed completely my life. I don’t know if that had something to do, but on Thursday, March 12th, one day after the Pandemic was declared by the WHO, I had my first symptoms of what days later was confirmed as COVID-19.

As I had been attending my classes during the previous days, I immediately notified the university’s authorities, and I was told to wait for new announcements. Virtual classes were declared for everybody by March 16^th.

I called Geneva’s Hospital; there was an enormous ignorance around the illness, and they asked me to lock myself in my room and to call them in only two cases: if three days passed since my last symptom, or if I had too severe symptoms so that they had to send an ambulance to pick me up (at that time, elder people were the priority for the country and only them or most severe cases received direct medical attention).

During a full month not only had I to adapt to the new classes, but also to overcome my health state. Even the Mexican Consul in Switzerland, through DGECI’s intermediation, contacted me to follow up to my condition and some months later helped me recover my flight back to Mexico with a Canadian airline that cancelled my flight without previous announcement. Finally, on April 13^th I was healthy again and was able leave my room, but the confinement was still mandatory in the whole country.

During this time, and while the classes lasted, it was all about trying to see your teacher and classmates through the screen. We were all trying to put attention to class with all the noise on the mics or struggling with the Internet connection during each session. It might have been better if the professors recorded the classes so that you just attended the session to count your participation, because at that moment you knew you wouldn’t understand nor learn a thing, until you watched again the recorded lessons, once, twice, or even five times.

I had never taken notes on my computer before and it was difficult for me to change pages so fast, so I continued the old way, and all was written on notebooks or lose papers and more. I had never written that much and in so little time before.

I won’t deny I wanted to give up many times and leave everything due to the hard situation I had to go through. Even we had the opportunity to leave the subjects and go back home as if anything happened, but I wanted to show them all, but mainly myself, that nothing was impossible for me, and I wanted to know what I was capable of in life to keep going.

At the end, I approved all my subjects and learned a lot, not only in an academic way but also about life. I have no doubt there’s a before and after for me.

I want to thank UNAM and DGECI, above all, because without them I would have never experienced all of this.

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