WBDesk brings you closer to our employees! Find out what goes on behind the desk, what the job entails, the daily routine. Here’s a special account of how Shivangi, Project Coordinator, manages Work From Home!
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “ We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” This feeling this quote invokes definitely hit home for me. Overnight, life, as we know it, did a complete 180 when the lockdown was declared. We had to learn how to adapt to doing everything through the confines of our house, including working from home.
In the field of social work, most of our work includes personal interaction with people on a daily basis. That all changed of course, but then again, we humans are nothing if not our ability to become habituated. Face to face interactions was replaced with video calls and text messaging, and working hours no longer 9-5.
If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed, it’s that I’m right in front of my laptop, starting work by 9:30 AM. Since I’m working directly with the teachers on the field, my first task is to connect with all our teachers and assign them work for the day. Most of our conversations happen through texts and group messages on WhatsApp, brownie points for technology!
We had a ritual in our office, once all of us were in, we used to have coffee together while on our desks, working. Of course, now they’ve been replaced by homemade fruit juices( healthy for sure, not as tasty though). Once work has been allotted to the teachers, I spend the rest of the day working on curriculum, which often involves an extensive bit of research and planning.
Working from home is certainly different from working from the office, more than anything it’s not being around like-minded people for sure, or those daily discussions we used to have. But we still make do with text messages and zoom meetings every once in a while.
In many ways, my days in lockdown are reminiscent of this 90’s show called ‘Groundhog Day’, although I can’t say I wake up every morning having been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted and burned, unlike poor Phil.