My First Online Class!

Just as many parents, students, and teachers had faced their first online class with some sort of stress and anxiety, today it is my turn! 

I have been provided with written instructions on keeping Two Plain sheets of paper, One Pen, a Quiet room without distractions, and to ensure that I charge the laptop prior to the online meeting! 

The whole thing came about because I had volunteered myself as a guinea pig for a medical study. To be precise, I have elected to be a participant in the Tata Longitudinal study: "Alzheimer’s Disease: Understanding mechanisms for early diagnosis and treatment", being carried out at Centre for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. 

The TATA Longitudinal study of Aging (TLSA) is a long-term, ongoing aging cohort study of residents of the city of Bangalore, India. The study began in 2015 with the aim of recruiting 1000 elderly subjects from Bangalore and follow them up periodically for several years.

Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia — a continuous decline in thinking, behavioral and social skills that disrupts a person's ability to function independently. However much these doctors and scientists may dissect the human brain and its functioning, my take on preventing Alzheimer's disease is to remain mentally and spiritually healthy, apart from being just physically healthy, which is what many people of my age are concentrating on, with proper diet and exercising.

The pandemic has taken everyone online whether you are teaching, learning, working, cooking, singing, dancing, exercising, or just idling. 

Scientists confirm that people’s mental health has worsened following the onset of the pandemic. It seems in April 2020, the UK Household Longitudinal Study, a large ongoing study of people who contribute data every year, some from as far back as 1992, has found that the group of young people, women, and those with small children saw their mental health worsen significantly more than other groups. 

Regarding the mental health ... let me digress. The 'Law of Wasted Effort' says that lions only succeed in a quarter of their hunting attempts — which means they fail in 75% of their attempts and succeed in only 25% of them. 

Despite this small percentage shared by most predators, they don't despair in their pursuit and hunting attempts. Only humans think that the lack of success in a few attempts is failure! Statistics tell us that, every hour, a student commits suicide in India; for such frivolous reasons including they failed in some exam. 

However, have you ever heard of a lion committing suicide even if it fails 75% of the time!! It keeps trying and trying till it succeeds!! 

Coming back to the main topic, am I experiencing some sort of anxiety with this online class? First, though we have met and spoken many times, I forgot my TLSA team member's name and had to ask her again this time! Hope they won't treat this as a sign of my memory disorder and dementia?! 😅 

Let me get ready for my online class scheduled at 10 o'clock this morning!