These days we’ve spent worrying about our own health and health of our relatives and friends. No one person around me, whom I know, can really relax and I — not an exception. But as a part of the scientific community of Borys Grinchenko Kyiv university and because of my role as the Head of the scientific community in the Institute of Journalism I have to continue my activity.

Through all problems and specifics of work now, people still have the Internet, social media, which can connect different communities together. So my colleagues and I were thinking about what we can create for students, pupils, and enrollees. Among all, I told about an idea to create a meeting about EIT exams. I am preparing for my EIT English language exam and thinking about how it will be now, in quarantine. Each part of our scientific community from different structures chose their own event. My colleagues had accepted my idea, so I started my work.

It was the way to forget about quarantine and think about my own social life — I was worried about my event.

I have never done such online meetings before, had no experience in moderating them. There were many things to do: to find speakers, create profiles for participants, to find out which app for online meetings will be the most suitable and how to work correctly with it. The preparation wasn’t easy, but it 100% was interesting and I’m happy I had the opportunity to work on it.

Let’s face it, I’m happy also because I’ve done it and everything was good. But it doesn’t mean it was great from the start point. I will show you the list of some situations, which happened to me:

1. When you are online, it seems you have much time for everything, but you should always remember about deadlines (especially when you have some arrangements with other people). Also, remember that other people can forget something or decided to do it later than it needed to be done. So remind and be grateful.
2. Always have plans B, C, D, and all others for your “favourite” unforeseen circumstances. When you know sometimes you have a bad internet connection — make the deal with a colleague, which will continue moderating a meeting instead of you. If one hour before the start of the meeting this colleague writes you he/she had no light at home because of repair work and he/she already can/t help you — find a new one on the time that left.
3. Don’t waste opportunities, if a person can’t take your plan A, but can accept your plan B. It was when one of the speakers said, she didn’t ready to speak online, but she can talk on camera by herself and send me this video, which I can show on the meeting. Then I understood it’s my plan B, which isn’t really bad and, by the fact, is an alternative and compromise way for both sides.
4. Be fast. After the problem with the colleague, which can cover for me, I had another one, slightly more annoying, — a neighbour, who always doing a renovation of his flat. I had a little time before the start and my neighbour started to drill a wall. In one moment he stopped, but I understood he would do it again when I would be on my online meeting. So in the last 10 minutes that I had before the start, I went to my neighbour and asked him not to work just one hour. Luckily my neighbour was understanding and agreed to stop his work for some time.

And I’m showing you not all of such situations. At this meeting, participants were from different parts of Ukraine and they were all new people for me. I knew just some information about them: their e-mail, who they are (a pupil, a student etc.) and what they want to know at this meeting. I planned in my head different situations: what they can say, ask, how to behave, and what I would do, how I would react. But luckily our participants were calm, listened carefully, said ”thank you” at the end of the meeting and after when I asked what were their impressions from our event they have.

We are talking about results, which each person has in her/his life in different periods of time. As we have already seen — they can be not the best ones, like quarantine in the country. But #stayhome — it’s not only about our limits, but it’s also even more about our flexibility and willingness to do something useful for yourself and society.