Hey everyone! Belated Happy New Year and congrats on finishing your first semester! 🎉 There is no doubt that there are lots of changes or even challenges due to nowadays’ unfavourable circumstances. We all definitely deserve a shoulder tap for the efforts you put in adopting this new ‘normal’. Thanks to the university’s hybrid learning arrangement, I have applied Late Arrival Points (LAP) to receive online lessons from home in Hong Kong. Therefore, I am going to share my first-semester experience with you guys!

1. Time difference
   At the beginning of the semester, I faced difficulties in adjusting the 13-hours time difference to attend the live seminars. There was even one time that my friend had to ring me up for the lesson because she noticed me didn’t show up on Zoom. Since then, I became more organised from creating a studying schedule and set alarms for lessons. Despite miles away from the university, online learning actually boosts my self-discipline ability from time-management and improve attention span on my studies.
   
2. Long-distance friendship
   When long-distance hits, I really really really do miss my friends 😭 It has been almost one year since we last met … Although we can facetime anytime and virtually have lessons together, I can tell it is totally different from meeting them face-to-face! I hope we will meet real soon and I can’t wait to give them a big big hug. To the ones reading my blog now, I wish everyone good health and hope you can reunite with your long-distanced loved ones soon! Especially in these difficult times, supporting one and other is really important to keep up a positive mindset.
   
3. Student life
   When I was in the UK, I always love to hang out with my friends and travel around. It is kinda miserable when these simple little things may not be able to happen in the near future. I missed the times when my friends and I studied in the library, rushed for lessons and had cafe-hunting at Guildford town. I could not believe we are all graduating this year, but I am sure those memories filled the corners of my mind.
   
4. Online assignments
   In this semester, I had individual and group assignments than exams. It was the first time we had the presentation through Zoom with teachers and team members from different parts of the world. This was new for us to have virtual meetings on Zoom as well. We had to come up with a timeslot that fit perfectly for everyone at their time zone. Apart from Zoom presentation, we submitted our presentation as a video clip with voiceover. Frankly speaking, we were impressed by our teamwork to work everything virtually together to achieve a good result. We also had a great time ‘meeting’ each other when we had group meetings. A huge thanks to my team members for their contribution!

2020 has officially passed and I hope everything will get better in this new year! I am looking forward to the new semester and cannot wait to share more with you guys soon. Bye for now!