“It’s weird re-learning how great someone not on the screen but in person”
The start of the pandemic is a was a dreary dark time to remember. Most people’s lives went on pause, whilst others never had a moment to catch their breath. If you were a student, essential worker, business or office worker nobody was spared from the sudden change to life.
Being stuck within your home and unable to go out and meet with friends or family in case of infecting them, is not something any of us thought would be a situation we’d experience. Having to live through a pandemic, led to an impact on peoples mental health, as 51% of young people in the UK reported they felt their mental health become much worse, during the first month of lockdown. For young adults about to start life in the work field or having to adopt a different job as many didn’t provide online work, life seemed very bleak.
The pandemic forced many to adapt their lives around the current situation that loomed for over two years. Despite the Prime Minister fully easing all Covid-19 restrictions across the nation, many are still apprehensive and cautious with the sudden green light, that life was suddenly back to normal. To act like Covid-19 was no longer a severe danger and something we just lived with. But how do people go back to normal. But what is normal, being told you can hug people after spending 2 years avoiding physical contact with people, we still dance around if it’s okay to hug someone or resume any form of physical contact.
This goes for graduate now graphic designer Rachel Reed. At the age of 22 Rachel graduated in 2019, at this time she was filled with excitement and apprehension for the future as she just completed her for your graphic design degree and was looking forward to starting a paid internship in one of her dream companies. However, all that came to a halt when COVID-19 hit the world went into global lockdown. COVID-19 left Rachel jobless I had dreams of building her career down the drain.
“Things looked really bleak at that moment in time, I had lost my graduate job, a month’s worth of salary and some savings. I had a rent and other bill to pay, it felt like the world was against me.”
“I didn’t know what to do and the stress was causing issues within my relationship as well. It felt like a never-ending spiral into the abyss that I was considering going back into retail just to pay my bills.”
Rachel went through great hardship when she had to move back in with her parents “it felt like I had done a full circle” she says, “one minute I’m a graduate who has her an apartment in central London with a great job to than being a graduate living back with her parents.”
Despite being a depressive time, Rachel never up and took on any type of internship in order to pursue her dream of becoming a graphic designer. And her hard work paid off when she landed a full-time position at an independent design company and was able to move into a new apartment in London and being able to meet friends outside at venues, life finally resumed back to normal. “Yes, it will be tough, and it won’t be easy as I’ve learned myself, but things come in time and the best advice I can give is to keep trying no matter what.”
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