After receiving the two-day notice of closed-loop management, the Experimental Building B of East China Normal University in Shanghai quickly entered a static state.
The students left in a hurry, and several computers were still connected to the power supply, scattered on the desktops of various workstations, and there were half-written graduation thesis stored.
The calendar in the lounge stopped in March, with an unfinished bottle of sparkling drink next to it.
In the lab, tomatoes, tobacco, daphnia, crickets and zebrafish grow quietly, consuming water and nutrients little by little.
On March 13, before the door was closed, Wu Hongxia, a third-year student in the School of Life Sciences, decided to live in the laboratory building.
The crisis and joy that experimental people understand
Wu Hongxia is in the critical period of her job search. She wants to record a video of a lecture in the laboratory to apply for the job.
There are folding beds for lunch breaks in the lounge. Wu Hongxia took a few pieces of laundry from the dormitory, packed up the toiletries, and moved in with her classmate Zhou Nannan.
At the beginning of the notice, it said that it will be closed for two days. With the development of the new crown pneumonia epidemic in Shanghai, the time of unblocking is uncertain.
Wu Hongxia asked the counselor for quilts, washbasins and towels, and then transferred shampoo and shower gel from the dormitory, and began to use the laboratory building as her home.
The lounge she lives in is "reassuring", nearly 70 square meters, spacious and convenient for work, and online interviews will not be disturbed.
The way campus life has changed, but academics have to go on.
Over the past two months, Wu Hongxia has completed her graduation thesis, completed her online defense, participated in 8 interviews, received 4 offers (employment notices), and has a thesis to be published.
Also in the midst of the epidemic, Lin Hui, a graduate student majoring in organic chemistry at Jilin University, heard about Wu Hongxia's experience and was very envious. "I also want to be sealed in the laboratory building."
She started her graduation thesis in October last year, and has changed 3 experimental topics so far, all of which have ended in failure.
At the beginning of March this year, when she started her fourth experiment, the laboratory was closed for management.
Until today, seeing that the second year of graduate school is coming to an end, the experiment has not made any progress.
On March 11, the day when Jilin University implemented closed dormitory management, Lin Hui's experiment with his brother Qiao Zeqi had come to an end.
"If you give me another day or two, maybe I can finish the whole system." Before leaving the laboratory, his experimental products were still soaked in solvent without separation and drying.
When the lab was reopened, "there is a high probability that the stuff will be unusable," and he would have to spend two weeks doing it all over again.
Huang Peng, a third-year student majoring in materials at Shanghai University, faced a more anxious situation.
He is about to graduate, and 30% of the experiments originally planned to be completed between February and May have not been done.
"I thought that in 3 months, anything could be done, but it was blocked for 3 months." Even if the experiment was completed, the samples made by Huang Peng could not be sent to the school for functional testing due to poor delivery.
A few days ago, Huang Peng's class counted the progress of the students' papers, and one-third of the students said that the experimental data was not enough.
If the data is lacking, there is a risk in submitting the paper for review.
Although the defense situation is undecided, Huang Peng has made a "worst plan" - delaying graduation.
After placing the order for many days, Li Xue still hadn't waited for the reagents and mice to be shipped from Shanghai.
The experiment of the second-year student of the clinical specialty of integrative medicine in Zhengzhou University can only be pushed again and again.
When the mice could be shipped, the epidemic situation in Zhengzhou became more serious, and off-campus faculty and staff were restricted from entering the school.
The laboratory that raises animals in the school needs to be managed by a special person. During the closure of the school, there are not enough staff to receive mice.
Li Xue explained that she wants to create a model of a disease in healthy mice, such as cerebral hemorrhage, etc., and then treat it with drugs and other means to study and observe the curative effect.
After the modeling is completed, its status needs to be monitored in real time.
Mice are a "necessity" for many researchers. On social media, some Hunan netizens said that after the laboratory was closed for management, the tumors of the test mice continued to develop, and the size exceeded the ethical range.
Another Shanghai netizen said that his friend was studying obesity genes, and when the lab was unblocked, all the mice had starved to death.
The experimental animals and plants in Building B of the China Normal University Experiment face similar risks.
However, Wu Hongxia and Zhou Nannan lived in the building and became the "light of hope" for the students to continue their experiments.
The two first helped transport computers and scientific research materials, and later helped take care of experimental materials, involving zoology, botany, biochemistry and molecular biology.
In two months, Wu Hongxia added more than 30 WeChat friends, and more than 50 classmates came to ask for help through various channels.
When a senior brother asked Wu Hongxia to take care of the mice, the laboratory building had been closed for two weeks, and the mice had all died. "The experiment has to be repeated."
But most of the flora and fauna were rescued.
The zebrafish used in the research on intestinal flora and host health in the laboratory initially lost a batch of them every day. Wu Hongxia tried to stop the circulating water and change the water regularly. The result was that the situation improved, and the number of surviving fish increased.
The protozoa used for the experiments required grain feeding.
When Wu Hongxia received help from her classmates to take care of her, the grains of wheat in the petri dish had been quietly fermenting for 13 days, swelled to the size of a coin, and turned yellow and hairy.
Wu Hongxia moved it under a microscope to observe it, and found that there was an oval creature with black and gray edges and a transparent center, which was "twisting magically", and immediately passed the news to its "owner".
Perhaps only "experimental people" can share this joy.
Wu Hongxia is always cautious, she knows the preciousness of these experimental materials.
Tomatoes need to be watered every three or four days, but at first she would go in every time she passed by the lab.
To change the wheat grains for different petri dishes, you need to change a pair of tweezers, and the light should be shaded to control the concentration of the solution.
Wu Hongxia's work gradually formed an order.
Every morning, she went to observe the zebrafish on the fourth and fifth floors, changing the water and feeding them.
Every two or three days, she waters the tobacco plants on the second floor.
The interval between crickets and water feeding is 5-7 days.
She observes protozoa once a week and feeds some plankton by the way.
The course of life is slow and peaceful, Wu Hongxia finds it amazing, "As long as I feed them, they will grow naturally, even though the outside is already a mess of porridge."
In return, the "Experimenter" also fed Wu Hongxia.
They told her which drawer of her work station had crispy noodles and snail noodles, and where the ice cream was hidden in the refrigerator, and asked her to take it freely.
They said a lot of thanks to her through WeChat. Some people gave her red envelopes, and some people said that Xiefeng wanted to invite her to drink milk tea.
They called Wu Hongxia and Zhou Nannan "the light of experimental building B".
How can there be no "society" in the study of sociology
After the school was closed, Yan Hao's dissertation interview, a senior sociology student at Nankai University, could only be conducted online.
At the end of last year, he conducted a field survey in the community of Heping District, Tianjin for 3 months, and used the winter vacation to organize the information. Originally, he planned to return to the "field" after the school started to complete the rest of the research and interview. school."
Yan Hao found that online interviews are difficult to observe the other party's expressions, movements and voices, it is difficult to achieve natural and smooth communication, and the interview results are not good.
A more serious problem is that not all the research subjects have left their contact information. Originally, he planned to interview 10 people, but only 4 people were completed in the end.
Some time ago, he participated in the defense of the thesis, and the teacher's review opinion believed that the case analysis part was not enough to support the research question he raised.
"Conversely, it can be said that the data is insufficient." Yan Hao concluded.
The advantage of this paper is that the literature review part is relatively solid, because he is closed in school, he has enough time to read the theory and sort out the literature.
Among the 12 students who defended in the same group as Yan Hao, except for Yan Hao, only 1 student completed the subject based on field surveys. Research.
Zhao Fanjia, a junior majoring in journalism at Nanjing University, believes that professional knowledge in the classroom "is not taught to me and I will learn it", but to practice in the society.
Zhao Fanjia likes this major and is eagerly looking forward to growing up in practical training.
However, due to the impact of the epidemic, almost all the training activities in her current discipline training plan, including going out for photography, radio and television internships, and overseas exchanges, have been cancelled.
"Every time I think about it, I get a little discouraged."
Compared with Wenya, who is currently a sophomore, Zhao Fanjia is lucky.
The sophomore year has the most professional courses, and although the number of theoretical courses and practical courses is equal, the latter usually occupies most of the students' time after class.
When Zhao Fanjia was in her sophomore year, there were no restrictions on entering and leaving the school. During the course training of news writing and photography, she went to several communities and stores to learn about the application of face recognition technology, and followed the interviewees to experience the government affairs of changing ID card information. Process, filming and recording the operating status of 6 second-hand bookstores in the city.
Due to the closure of the school, Wenya basically attends classes online this semester, and her homework can only be completed on-campus.
In the case of limited topic selection, the news gathering and writing class adjusted the homework requirements, instead of a complete report, only the outline and ideas were written.
Zhao Fanjia felt that the outline idea and the on-site interview may be "completely different".
In addition, the "Social Documentary" assignment has been canceled in the photojournalism class, and Wenya only needs to complete two sets of photographic works, "Nantah Landscape" and "Nantah People".
"It was fine in the first few weeks, but after I took more pictures, I felt that there was nothing to do in school."
In order to complete her homework, she needs to pay more attention to her surroundings than ever before, so she has discovered some corners that she has never noticed before, such as a hill behind the college building, the entrance to the Philosophy College is H-shaped, and the creeper on the wall is covered by sunlight When irradiated, the texture of the leaves will be particularly beautiful.
Nonetheless, people still feel that this is not quite what "photojournalism" should be.
Wenya also felt sorry for the missed teaching resources: "In the past, teachers led the team to go to various places to collect wind surveys and write reports on the spot. This opportunity is gone now."
Just seeing a teacher on campus will surprise Zhao Fanjia, "because there hasn't been a teacher in the school for a long time."
When the control is the strictest, off-campus faculty and staff cannot enter the school.
In last year's drone photography class, the teacher took the students to shoot on the Yangtze River Bridge. This year, they can only "talk dryly online".
Tao Ya, a second-year graduate student majoring in radio and television at East China Normal University, was even more at a loss.
The graduation project is about to start a month later, and she still doesn't know what type and theme of the film she wants to make, and she can't even "worry about which specific thing".
There is no course schedule for this semester. She originally planned to do an internship. She returned to school briefly in early March to test for a teacher's qualification certificate, and was sealed off on campus.
As far as she knows, most of the graduation projects of the last radio and television students were animations and documentaries.
Affected by the epidemic again this year, Tao Ya guessed that there will be more students doing cartoons, because they only need to operate on the computer, which can effectively avoid "force majeure" interference and graduate safely.
He wants to practice the piano, "It's like grass grows in my heart"
On May 15, Shanghai University changed the swimming test to an online test.
Some netizens ridiculed this, and the idea of "land swim device" in the comedy movie "let the sport of swimming completely get rid of the shackles of water" has come into reality.
It is a tradition of Shanghai University that graduates must pass the 50-meter swimming test. This theoretical test is only for undergraduate students graduating in 2022, which is a special arrangement under the epidemic.
Xu Duoduo, who had not passed the swimming test for four years in college, breathed a sigh of relief.
She originally planned to sign up for a swimming class and learn more, but now she doesn't have to.
She completed the theory test a few days ago. There is only one subjective question. The title is "What movement training can be done on land to help learn to swim?" The number of words is more than 500, and the paper can be handed in within 4 hours.
"I have learned swimming for two semesters, and I am still a land duck." Near the end of the semester, Qiao Ke, a junior majoring in finance, resignedly ridiculed in the circle of friends.
She took 6 offline swimming lessons in her freshman year.
At that time, the teacher would explain the movements on the shore, and the students practiced in the water.
Qiao Ke has learned the movements of his limbs and can "pull" a few times in the water, but he still can't breathe and cannot pass the 50-meter swimming test.
Later, in response to the epidemic, the school changed the remaining swimming lessons to online learning at home.
The teacher uploads the action teaching video, the students practice on the bed or stool, and the action is recorded and uploaded to the learning system as the basis for course assessment.
This year, Qiao Ke took swimming lessons again, but he still hadn't been in the water.
Xu Kailong, a first-year material major, often learns to swim by standing on the ground according to the demonstration video uploaded by the teacher.
Extend your arms forward, stand still with one foot, try to keep your balance, and push the other foot out.
At the same time, imagine your head sticking out of the water, inhale and look up at the dormitory ceiling, expand your lungs, exhale and bury your head back.
After the video homework was uploaded, Xu Kailong received the guidance given by the teacher: "The action of reaching out should be done before the action of kicking the legs, so it cannot be synchronized."
"The action looks really funny." Xu Kailong's roommate took tennis lessons, and he also practiced swinging against the air in the dormitory, and also "does some weird moves" on the yoga mat.
They would hold back their laughter when the other side was recording homework videos, and often couldn't record it at one time.
Yang Jiarui, a freshman majoring in piano at Shanghai Normal University, became an "Internet celebrity" overnight. He recorded a video of playing a piano piece in his bedroom with music software on an iPad tablet, which received 342,000 likes on social networks.
In the video, he has a straight suit and curly hair. He bows to the camera and sits down. He raises his wrists and hands, and his fingertips land on the screen lock password.
He played "For Alice" on the keys of two iPads and a cell phone, looking intoxicated.
When Qu Ba got up, he skillfully bypassed the bed board that might knock his head.
Since the school was closed, Yang Jiarui has not touched the piano for more than two months.
This is the longest time he has interrupted his piano practice since he was 5 years old, except for the high school entrance examination. "The flexibility of the fingers will definitely decline."
Before being sealed in the dormitory, he went to the piano room to practice the piano almost every day.
But now, the piano is untouchable, and I can only play it occasionally on the music software.
When it came to practicing the piano, his speech speed began to speed up and his breathing became short, "like grass growing in his heart".
Almost every night, Yang Jiarui would put on headphones and sit on the bed quietly listening to piano music for an hour or two.
Even for the same piece of music, different performers will have different interpretation styles. Yang Jiarui will fantasize about entering the performance, thinking "what would happen if the person on stage was me", and then "the more I listen, the more excited I become, the more The more I listen, the more I can't sleep."
"Prepare for the worst, prepare for the best"
Two graduate students majoring in chemistry at Jilin University clearly felt that the "holiday" was coming.
The inquiries and urgings of the tutor have been reduced from three times a day to once every two weeks, and the laboratory life of "eight to ten" no longer exists.
Jozech turned off the alarm completely and began to follow the rhythm of his body.
He woke up naturally at 9 a.m., got out of bed at 10 a.m. to wash, and went to work unhurriedly.
When you're tired, you play with your phone, and when you're sleepy, you rest.
If you don't pay special attention, "I don't even know what day of the week it is today".
Lin Huiyan gave up the habit of taking a nap at two o'clock.
Since she started to prepare the thesis data, she has been in a state of anxiety for a long time. "Sometimes it is not that I don't want to sleep, but I am so nervous that I can't sleep."
When the psychological pressure is too high, she does not like to talk or laugh, so it is difficult to relax completely.
In the past two months, she was completely out of the laboratory environment, but felt a lot more peaceful, and gained a kind of relief that she couldn't help herself.
"The mobile phone is full." She joked that she used to squeeze time to play, but now she is tired of playing and then goes to study for a while.
She downloaded matching and card games with her roommate and watched 4 hours of TV in one afternoon.
This is the longest "vacation" she has had since grad school.
One day, Qiao Zeqi stood in front of the window brushing his teeth and saw a scene he hadn't seen for three years: in the open space downstairs, "Liu Genghong girls" stood in two rows, dancing to the mobile phone, and there was a skipping rope next to him. , playing badminton.
Before the closure and control management, Qiao Zeqi had never seen so many people downstairs at the same time.
Most of the people who live here are graduate students in medicine, pharmacy, environmental science and chemistry, "all going to the lab."
Everyone went out early and returned late, just to meet each other, and many people "never even met".
But now, when the weather is good, there are almost hundreds of people moving downstairs.
Many people played board games with picnic mats on the grass, while others hung a hammock between two trees and lay in it and looked at the sky.
Jozech started dancing again, dancing with a few new friends, and a crowd gathered around them to watch.
He felt as if youth had returned.
Liao Zhili, who studied sociology, found that the epidemic lockdown will create a sense of boundary on campus, and students will develop a sense of community, organize to build and use the surrounding space, and thus achieve a more intimate connection.
Since graduate school, Jozech has been suffering from not having time of his own.
His research group only has one day off a week. After he has finished part-time work, he has no energy to do other things.
He even set up a fitness card to exercise reluctantly in the first year of study, but gave up completely in the second year of study.
On a whim, he bought 6 hip-hop lessons, and he never attended any of them until the expiration date.
Lin Hui still had the habit of running at night when she was in college, and she didn't have the time and energy to continue after graduate school.
Tao Ya, who majored in radio and television, said with a smile that he started the life of "Three Harmonies".
During this special period, she hopes to maintain her mental health and not pressure herself, "what to relax, what I do".
She dances, watches movies, plays cards with classmates, and sometimes even forces herself into a state of relaxation.
Lin Hui felt that the epidemic helped her share some of the psychological pressure.
If graduation is postponed in the future, it is also the result of many factors, not only ability problems.
Although the "vacation" is comfortable, she still hopes that the laboratory can be opened as soon as possible.
"In fact, hard work is our normal state. No matter how 'tortured' we are, we all want to do experiments."
Not long ago, Lin Hui heard the gossip that the laboratory would be open in a week.
The degree of reliability is unknown, but it is certain that Jozech's hip-hop team has not been active for a while - because several medical professionals have begun to enter the hospital for closed-loop internships.
Wu Hongxia remembers that since May, 5 students have entered the experimental building B one after another. Although closed-loop management is still required, experiments can finally be started.
Since May 16, off-campus faculty and staff of Zhengzhou University can enter the school one after another. Li Xue received the experimental reagents and began to contact the school laboratory to receive mice.
In the Department of Bioengineering of Zhejiang Shuren University, the experiment of Wu Xiao, a third-year student, was finally restarted after shelving for 4 months.
In order to participate in the Zhejiang Provincial Life Science Competition, his group has been preparing for the experiment since September last year, and it was expected to win at least the provincial third prize.
Unexpectedly affected by the epidemic, the current progress of the experiment is just over half, and there is only one month left before the deadline.
The growth of mold takes time. No matter how fast the progress is, Wu Xiao feels that 80% of the time is not finished.
He is both anxious and calm, planning that if he cannot participate in the competition, the experimental data can also be used to complete his graduation thesis.
He plans to continue his postgraduate study after graduation. The knowledge and experience gained in this experiment will also be helpful for the follow-up postgraduate entrance examination.
In short, "prepare for the worst and meet the best".
(Except Wu Hongxia, Zhou Nannan, Liao Zhili, Yang Jiarui, all other interviewees are pseudonyms)
Du Jiabing, a trainee reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily. Source: China Youth Daily