Day 80: The End of Three Days on a Rollercoaster

Day 80: June 14, 2020
Global Cases: 7,998,388 Deaths: 435,697
Egypt Cases: 44,598 Deaths: 1,575

Dara Rashwan
Communication and Media Arts Senior 

9:55am:  It is day God-knows-what of quarantine. I had honestly stopped counting at this point, my phone was broken and still getting fixed and I stupidly forgot to put my iPad on the charger for my alarm. I woke up five minutes before my first class after having a whopping total of four hours of sleep. I sprinted to the kitchen to make myself some iced coffee before proceeding to sit in front of my laptop for three hours straight.

12pm- I had just finished my public opinion and propaganda class and considering I did not have much sleep I had the attention span of a fruit fly. Professor Firas noticed and pointed out how tired I looked and my lack of response, I couldn’t help giving that impression on camera despite being interested in the class because of my lack of sleep.

I couldn’t help but ask if I could be a part of this community history-keeping because splurging my thoughts into writing is one of my favorite pastimes. I realized how much I actually messed up my sleeping schedule throughout Ramadan as I’ve gotten too comfortable with the idea of staying up to see the sunrise and hear the birds chirp, to end up awake in the afternoon.

1:30pm: I had skipped breakfast, so I was hungry and luckily my parents had remembered me when they placed an order from TBS. As I ate my Nutella croissant I felt sheer nostalgia about all the times I would go to TBS on campus to get my daily Nutella croissant. Then I went from simply eating breakfast to feeling sad because I’m a senior now and I don’t want to imagine not being able to have my classes on our beautiful campus for another entire semester.

4pm: I texted my friends and went on Twitter in intervals because I felt overwhelmed by the amount of information I had digested in back-to-back classes and needed a break. My coping mechanism to deal with the stresses of life or anything really is to temporarily pretend they don’t exist until I have to … very healthy, I know.

6:30pm: I just finished eating from Pizza Hut takeout and my mom decided to lecture me about my eating habits and how I need to start being healthier. This particular conversation got on my nerves so I responded by ordering an Oreo Mcflurry from Mcdonald’s. The delivery guy was not wearing any gloves or a mask which alarmed me but the classic recent household staple alcohol spray came to the rescue.

8:30pm: I’ve been mindlessly drawing on my iPad for the past two hours and scrolling through the variety of art pages on Instagram for inspiration.

I did nothing worth writing about for the rest of the day and proceeded to stay up until 5am.

The next day …

I woke up somewhat earlier than usual the next day – at 2pm – with a heavy feeling on my chest, quarantine has been an emotional rollercoaster to say the least and I’m a crier… so you can imagine that is not a good mix.

For The Caravan‘s previous diary entries in Arabic and English go to our COVID-19 Special Coverage page. 

4:00pm: I saw a lot of upsetting news on Twitter and was generally triggered by things going on in my personal life so I spent the two following hours crying, journaling and unleashing all of my emotions about everything like there was no tomorrow. My little brother was generally amused by this and laughed at me when he came into my room.

I did nothing worth writing about for the rest of the day and proceeded to stay up until 5am (for the second day in a row)

The next day …

3pm: This is the time I’m used to waking up around, today I was feeling a lot more upbeat and looking forward to my day and planning to be productive.

5pm: Scratch that – I was not productive. I had finally gotten my phone back and I spent three hours talking to a new friend on WhatsApp as we bonded over our mutual love for art, music, and speaking in questionable accents. We also discussed how much we both miss campus and how the Journalism and Mass Communication (JRMC) department is the most laid back and interesting department in all of the university (yes, we actually spoke about this).

In between the conversation, I Facetimed another friend and made homemade guacamole to eat with corn tortilla chips, it turned out better than I expected it would. I started contemplating embarking on my cooking adventures and annoying my mom with my use of the kitchen every day to experiment with new recipes as I did in the first few weeks of quarantine. I shortly realized that I would be far too lazy to deal with all of that after class.

8pm: I wanted to try to sleep early so that I could be present and aware in class unlike the last time … so I finished up all my assignments and went to bed at a decent hour, I guess that meant I was somewhat productive like I had hoped to be.