The COVID-19-lockdown closed libraries and universities and left student Cecilie Fabricius Sørensen to write her master thesis at home. A difficult task in a city apartment and an uncertain world
By Amanda Frisk, roommate to Cecilie Sørensen
In a living room filled to the brim with exotic plants and wood furniture, Cecilie Fabricius Sørensen sits by her living room table, from which she can see the Aarhus bay, and the cranes loading containerships.
It was here that Cecilie sat for the most part, as she wrote her master thesis. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing, because a month after she began, Denmark went into complete COVID-19-lockdown, which included both libraries, universities and studyhalls.
She had been working for five weeks by then and had just run into writer’s block, which she had decided to combat by working in other places than her home, three days a week. But with the lockdown, she didn’t have anywhere to go.
“I couldn’t get away from the thesis, because I couldn’t leave the rooms I was writing in. It was the last thing I thought of when I went to bed and the first thing I thought of when I woke up. I even dreamed about it. I felt like I was constantly working, even though I wasn’t being productive,” She explains.
Writer’s block in quarantine
Since the libraries were closed on such short notice, she couldn’t get the books she needed, nor were she able to use the study halls as an escape from working in her apartment. It took her more than 1,5 months to get back into a good writing process.
“I believe that it caused me to be in my writer’s block for longer, than I would have been under normal circumstances. With all my worries about what was going on in the world and around us, there wasn’t room in my head for the thesis.”
Cecilie ended up extending her deadline, so that she sent in her thesis in August instead of June.
“I think corona was a big part of the reason,” she says, but also states that she doesn’t know how the process would have been, if there hadn’t been a COVID-19-lockdown.