As we are all hunkered down to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus, here are a few ways you can cope and stay productive for sanity’s — and humanity’s — sake, prepared for us by Mikey Rox.
Take free online classes. Your mediocre SAT scores may not have gotten you into the Ivy League school of your dreams (don’t feel bad — mine didn’t, either), but the internet doesn’t give a hoot about aptitude tests. You now can take online courses from the likes of Harvard, Columbia and Princeton, among other top institutions, without paying a dime or leaving the comfort of your home. More than 450 free courses are available in a collection on Class Central (classcentral.com), in categories that range from computer science and engineering to humanities and art and design. You’ll also find LGBTQ courses, including the titles “Queering Identities: LGBTQ+ Sexuality and Gender Identity” and “Monitoring the Human Rights of LGBTI Persons.”
Get a head start on your taxes. The IRS postponed Tax Day to July, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use your time off to get your financial life in order. Doing it now will help avoid the crunch later, provide your accountant a head start before everyone makes their own mad dash, and it’ll be one less burden hanging over your head during this already stressful time of extreme uncertainty. You likely won’t get much assistance from library resources this year considering the wide-ranging closures, which is something to consider if that’s help you typically rely on.
Finish your home projects. Have any half-finished projects around the house? Most of us do. Grab what you need from the hardware store and get to work — a clean, organized home will immediately improve your mood.
Update your resume and plan new goals. If you’ve been considering a career change, take this time to update your resume and set new goals. It may take a while for the economy to get back on track after this crisis has ended, but we will bounce back, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be prepared to hit the ground running when we do.
Unplug from all your devices (and all news) a few hours every day. The worst way to spend your time during self-isolation is with your face buried in a screen while your hands are shoveling snacks. Constant inundation of negativity combined with inactivity will only make you feel worse — if not increase your paranoia… and nobody needs that. Limit yourself on screen time (sex apps are not the answer to your boredom right now, by the way) and resolve to focus on the positive. It may not seem like it on the surface, but there’s still plenty of that left if you look for it right where you are.
