‘Every cloud has its silver lining’

“I’m a bit different from many students that start a PhD at TU Delft. Before I came here, I graduated from a Chinese design school in 2008 and then after that I worked at the same institution as a design educator. I was granted a scholarship and qualified almost at the age limit, so I kind of feel that I grabbed the tail of the chance to further my study. I was lucky but it was stressful as well.

My husband is German and we decided to move to the Netherlands after the first year of my PhD. A lot of my friends and colleagues are dealing with long distance issues as a result of Covid so I feel lucky that he is here with me in the Netherlands.

I think the work-life balance is definitely more challenging right now. Sometimes you just need some ‘me’ time to be quiet and relaxed, to have some space for yourself. Even if you are close with a person, you still need some private time. My husband and I have to work and live together in a small apartment. Theoretically we’re in the same room for the whole day so sometimes it can be stressful. We need to try to not interfere with each other like when we have meetings. So, we made an agreement about what hours we can each do certain things and that way we can plan what type of work to do that might not need so much concentration.

We named this special time lockup instead of lockdown. Instead of having the feeling of going down, we’re trying to see if there can be some positive factors that we can use. For example, we don’t need to travel right now so we can really concentrate on the work at hand. We can save our vacation time for when this all ends. We will have a reason to reward ourselves at the end for all of this hard work.

‘We should step back and look at things not only with emotion’

I feel that I’m also very productive during this time. Sometimes you feel like you don’t have time for a lot of things but I can really focus on what I have to do now. Before Covid I often had to meet with colleagues or professors and usually that required me to travel to meet in person. So now I’m saving travel time. Once per month I had to meet with colleagues in Eindhoven for a one-hour meeting, but to go back and forth it takes me a whole day. One time it took me four hours coming home because of an accident on the railway. Meeting online helps me to be free from these kinds of distractions.

Between my second and third year was a bit of a stressful time for me because I started to realise that my topic was so big that I probably couldn’t handle it in four years. But during the lockdown I realised that sometimes with stress there is also an opportunity that appears. I think having some quiet time helped me to really understand my topic better somehow and now I feel very comfortable with what I’ve done and know that I can write the story that I’m developing with really different directions and applications.

I think using this time to zoom out to see things in a different way is what I’ve learned during Covid. I think this can also be helpful in the future that in any crisis the most important thing is don’t be panicked. We should step back and look at things not only with emotion, but analyse what we can and can’t do now in a very rational way. I think that every challenge we face has a solution. In this changing and challenging era it’s critical to remember that every cloud has its silver lining.”

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Heather Montague / Freelance writer