During one focus group for the project “Youth Ambassadors of Non-Formal Learning ” we got to meet Nia Donova from Vratsa – almost 17 years old and very active in all paths of life! We asked her to share a little more about how life has changed during times of social isolation and how she’s handled the changes and she has some wonderful and inspiring things to share. Read on!
In the period of the state of emergency, my life really wasn’t all that changed. In my spare time I like to be involved in all kinds of activities, which change all the time. I like changing things up. The state of emergency helped me think over my life and note that I don’t pay attention to the little everyday things, which I take for granted but I can’t do without like meeting friends.
On the topic of education, I managed to learn a lot of different things, even through the obstacles. The problems usually came from our teachers not being competent enough in terms of use of technology. In the beginning, every one of them would give us a lot of tasks just because they weren’t sure we got the previous ones. It was chaotic and if you didn’t sit down to study all day, like I did, you just start mindlessly rewriting, just so you can meet your deadlines. I really hope that online education helps everyone and we keep using it, because it’s much easier if everything is correctly arranged. During the period of social isolation for a person like me who always wants to be busy, opportunities are a little limited just because we’re not modernized enough. Take China for example – for them social isolation wasn’t that big of a problem because they’re used to working from home, shopping from home, etc. Even so, in Bulgaria we also have a lot of online lesson opportunities online, which can enrich our ideas about the world and to polish ourselves.
I’m a very social person. I love people. I love listening to people, talking to people, just being around people. The situation limited my contacts a lot though. And what do we do when we lose something we love? Exactly. We look for an alternative and we don’t give up. Personally, I found my alternative in reading books and doing sports. What better than turning ourselves in our own self-help machine? We all know that feeling of getting lost in a good novel and not being able to stop until the end of it comes. And sport… sport shows us how much we love ourselves. Personally, I have been swimming for years. When I go in the water, I feel an energy surging inside me – an energy that needs to be exhausted. During isolation I couldn’t go though, because pools were closed. So I went to step two – dry training. I trained from home and went running where there are no people around.
This is how I spent the last two months – it was difficult but not impossible, and everything has its good and bad sides. The situation may limit my contacts but it has brought me closer to my family. In the fast-paced world we live in, it’s so rare to think about the little things – the little things that actually make us the way we are.
The project “Youth Ambassadors of Non-formal Learning” is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union (608821-EPP-1-2019-1-BA-EPPKA2-CBY-WB).