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We are experiencing a global crisis due to the Covid-19 outbreak, and our first concern should be our health and that of those around us. This is something we all agree on. However, the potential impact this pandemic will have on my studies has been constantly on my mind during the last few days.

We’re Clare and Katie, two chemistry BSc students from the University of York. Our final third-year project centred around finding new and innovative ways to teach chemistry. As we come to the end of our project, we’d like to share with you our experiences and reflect on the opportunities that emerged along the way. 

As a working-class female student from a large industrial town in the north of England, I came from an educational environment that did not really expect or prepare me to climb the social ladder. Consequently, when I got accepted into an elite Russell Group university, I was never really prepared for the loss of my identity, or the loss of a sense of home and place as I attempted to find my feet in the environment of higher education.

Imagine a place blanketed by a thick layer of forest punctuated by meteor craters (the highest number of craters per square kilometre in the world), studded with bogs and natural mires.

Snuggled next to Latvia, underneath Finland, and bordered by Russia, Estonia is a Baltic state in northern Europe. With a population of 1.3 million and a land mass smaller than most US states, Estonia is, indisputably, tiny. But while it might not be large, its impact on Europe and the world is immense. Ever heard of Skype? Invented by an Estonian.

It has been hard to be here in Shanghai during the Covid-19 outbreak, but I am hopeful. 

Things have slowly started improving in Shanghai. The Tongji University campus supermarket is now open, and we can easily purchase food, drinks and stationery between 10am and 2pm. The number of new cases in Shanghai is reported to have subsided, and everyone seems hopeful that this epidemic will be over soon. 

In 2016 I visited some friends who were working in humanitarian organisations in Kazakhstan. I soon fell in love with the country and moved there for work in early 2017.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a global development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 that aims to develop the infrastructure and investments in nearly 70 countries and international organisations in Asia, Europe and Africa.

Although higher education wasn’t a direct focus of the initiative, the benefits for students living in the countries along the way is undeniable. China has seen an increase in the number of students from countries such as South Korea, India and Pakistan, as well as from a number of other smaller nations.

Being a British student living in Germany for my year abroad this year has been quite interesting. Add to it the fact that I am a German national who had previously been residing in England for the past 10 years makes it all the more complicated. I spent the first 10 years of my life in Germany and then the following 10 in England. This has allowed me to gain good insight into how the two countries feel about the big B word. So where do I even begin to talk about Brexit?

In January 2020 the news started spreading: “the coronavirus is a global health emergency, more and more cases reported every day.” 

This came just a few days before the Chinese Lunar New Year. Consequently, the degree of fear started growing among international students like me, wondering if we would really be safe.

We had heard news like “a new mysterious virus behind the pneumonia in Wuhan” in early January, but still we had never anticipated that within 10 to 15 days this would turn into a global health emergency.