Throughout this covid-stricken year, there has been no shortage of bad news. Personally, it’s been challenging to adapt to situations in terms of academics, extracurricular, and volunteering. Covid has really made it difficult to enjoy the exciting parts of university. Adjusting to online learning, examinations, and zoom calls to meet up with friends, the social aspect of my life was inhibited, and motivation was low.
Despite this, I’ve made it a point to stay optimistic and focus on the blessings in my life.
To keep busy, I decided to aim high and take on other opportunities. This year, I was the President of #Dataforgood (UCL Analytics for Social Impact) and the President of the School of Management Society. I capitalised on the time I had at home to learn new coding languages, take courses on finance, and spend more time cooking! With my societies, making the virtual shift was interesting. I needed to look for online platforms which could allow my members to have a social aspect despite this year’s situation. We recently had an Among Us tournament within the School of Management Department!
Recognising my blessings and the fact that we were all in this together, I had a newfound sense of unity which motivated me to use my talents to help others. With #Dataforgood, we realised that many NGOs benefit from Data Analytics to secure grants and improve operations. Therefore, I took this opportunity to connect our partners with UCL Students with a passion for volunteering and data science. As all our operations were to be held online, I started early on in the year to recruit talent, coordinated project teams, and planned events ahead of time. We had difficulties with team motivation, volunteer attrition, and identifying suitable projects fit for our team’s technical abilities and time availability however our project leaders helped pull it through and they were the frontline in actively helping our beneficiaries by mentoring volunteers, conducting tailored analysis, and coordinating the team. Furthermore, I worked with UCL Data Science Society and Statistics Society to offer official Tableau and R workshops.
Throughout this year, we’ve all had difficulties that I cannot begin to imagine. I wanted to congratulate you all for making it through this year and hope to unify and grow stronger through our experiences in the coming years.
Written by Justice Fond