A Year In Lockdown | Growth, Struggles, and Accomplishments

Today marks a complete year for me. A complete year of lockdown. When it was first established, and distance learning was made the norm I saw this as an incredible opportunity to relax and grow. After all, how many students got the privilege of taking classes from their bed in the last decade? Say goodbye to long commutes?

So, I set some goals for myself. Things I should work on, technologies, and disciplines I should explore during this time to make the most of this opportunity. And to incentivize this, I made a pact with myself that I would share my experience/accomplishments/activities with my network once the lockdown is lifted.

Today, it’s been a year and here we are, still coping. What first seemed like an opportunity very soon lost its charm, but I digress. I’m writing this piece to share how the past year has been for me and how I’ve tried to make the best of this time.

First, I know the pandemic dates back to early 2020 but the lockdown was declared in mid-March in my city, so I’m writing from that perspective.

-

It is the 15th of March and on-campus classes have been temporarily dismissed as the university plans to shift to distance learning (DL). I have about three weeks of vacation. During that time, I was serving as a lead for a Google Developer Student Club in my campus and working on an app to submit in a global competition. The three weeks off gave me the profound opportunity to complete my Flutter course from the App Brewery and build a Flutter app with Firebase integration. This is how I spent the months of March and April.

I am a big advocate for peer-to-peer education and with the culture of tech communities rising in Pakistan, I, and a couple of undergrads in the city decided to build Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors Islamabad – a community to promote education in tech, design, and data science. Since then, the community has grown considerably in size, impact, and recognition.

I, however, spent a major part of the year exploring, learning, and practicing a new discipline. User Experience Design (UX). I first came across it in mid-March while working on my app. I read about things like design sprints and user-centered designs, which greatly intrigued me. I put this as one of my goals with other things like web and mobile development.

Little did I know that this discipline was a rabbit hole. At least for someone whose only source of inspiration and learning came from the web. This is one of the drawbacks of self-education – it takes a bit of time to calibrate a path for yourself. Decide on the resources to make use of. I studied the discipline from almost all major learning platforms – Udacity, Coursera, edX, LinkedIn Learning, Pluralsight, and Udemy. I boast around 60+ certifications but soon I realized they are just a number if I do not have something tangible. I also got some speaking opportunities in the meantime.

Then began my quest of putting what I learned to practice. By this time, my university had shifted to DL so I had to manage my new-found interests with the ongoing coursework. One of the places which I used, and still use, to find answers to my questions is Medium. It is so powerful to learn from other’s experiences and some publications like the UX Collective and The Bootcamp are my absolute favorites. From there I learned about something called “UX portfolios” where designers share their project case-studies. And those case-studies are what I need to work on. So, I began implementing my new UX design knowledge on a concept product idea I had, Blaze. The following months were spent like this. I learned from courses, and books and implemented it on my projects.

Note: You can view all my case-studies at my portfolio - https://shahzebkazmi.live/

After a while, and this is August – I was done with my fourth semester and maintained a 4.0 GPA. I thought of using the community platform of Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors Islamabad and advocate for UX and design in Pakistan. My incredible team was swiftly onboard, and we ended up executing a major design roadshow with seven events, international speakers, corporate collaborations, and a reach of over 15,000. It was such an experience. I shared my design knowledge for the first time!

Soon in September, my fifth semester commenced, and I had a course of Web-Development this term. I thought this would be a good time to shift gears and work on some other goals I had prepared when the lockdown began. Web Development – I dove in and learned HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, and then progressed onto React.

Then in October, something happened. Burnout. I was unable to manage multiple things at once, lost motivation to pursue my self-established goals. I sought help from friends and in the process came across things like design communities and meetups. I started to attend these virtual gatherings of design professionals from around the world – learn from their struggles, expertise, and accomplishments. I discussed my burnout and what I could do to cope. The advice I got was simple:

- Relax.

- Lighten your schedule.

- Dedicate a day to yourself.

- Try to focus on fewer things at one time.

And guess what, it worked! In no time, I was back and starting to meet my goals. My portfolio was growing but I still had no website. So, I started to design and build that. At this point, I was also eyeing the upcoming January deadlines for summer intern roles. The pressure was building up.

I got inspiration from several design portfolios on the internet, and I made a discovery. I had no resume! When I started to work on my resume, I found another thing, I had no relevant work experience to add! Queue, another goal I set for myself – freelancing.

I, again, research how to get started here as I never had freelanced before. Tips from here and there and I have an account on Fiverr. I waited a few weeks and then luck struck, and I got my first project – a web design. It required me to utilize both my UX and Web Development skillset. I completed it in a few weeks and submitted it. Soon after that, I got another one which was solely a website redesign – putting my UX skills to work. After this – things just snowballed, and I got a good amount of 4-5 subsequent orders. Now I had relevant experience for my resume!

During this time, I started a YouTube channel named “The Design and Tech Show” which is an e-learning platform that has training videos, guest episodes, and hands-on reviews. I continued my passion for sharing design knowledge through this endeavor.

Phew, that was a lot to write! So, it is December and I have the following things on my plate:

- My portfolio website + resume,

- My university coursework, assignments, and upcoming exams,

- My self-enrolled online courses,

- YouTube channel,

- Portfolio case-studies,

- Freelance client projects,

- Community operations responsibilities.

Can you imagine the stress? However, somehow I powered through and maintained my activity – I had to. There was no other option. A new year arrived, so did my mid-term exams, and summer intern deadlines. I was finishing up on my last portfolio case-study, Whim, and putting the final touches on my portfolio website. I wrapped up my last client project on 4th January and my exams and vivas started on 5th January. The time beyond this is me at my extreme – managing exams, and working on my portfolio. I took a break from YouTube, online courses, and freelancing.

On 18th January I put my portfolio website online and met my application deadlines. Beyond that, I focused on my exams which ended on 25th January. I was free, after a long time. I picked up a freelance project and started to take online courses again.

Then on 28th January, out of nowhere I learn that I have my final exams from 1st to 17th February. I was in trouble again. I had a client project, to go along with my exams for which I did not have much time to prep, I mean three days break between two major exams? I know, that was a weird time. Anyhow, I somehow made it to the end and from 22nd February my sixth semester commenced.

From 22nd to now, I have experienced extreme burnout. I mean, you know the reason. Hence, I have kept a light schedule. I work out, go for runs, read, apply for summer intern roles (profusely), and am gradually making a comeback to online learning and YouTube. I recently completed a few courses on LinkedIn Learning and Coursera – my recent LinkedIn posts were about them.

And that would be all! That was my crazy year in lockdown. Learned a lot, grew a lot, used Notion a lot, and somehow managed to make it till now. However, this is not an end. This a checkpoint. I have a lot of crazy things to do, projects to execute and goals to meet.

Here’s to hoping that the next time I write this, we would be living in a much less crazy time!