Something that really stood out to me from the Visual Journaling video was Ian Birky’s focus on the stimulation of human brains during the pandemic. Since we currently live in a virtual world where most of our time is spent locked up in our room, or for his colleague stuck on their bathroom floor trying to work, we lose physical human interaction and therefore lack stimulation for our brains. Birky emphasized how this lack of stimulation causes our brain to gradually slow down and therefore any way we can activate our mind is important to our cognitive functioning. I completely agree with Birky and believe that being in this art class has reminded me of how important it is to take time to reflect through drawing and creative expression. I get bogged down with my engineering work and am so happy to have another way to use my mind.
Additionally, I think this pandemic has made me reevaluate what is most important to me. When we had to leave Lehigh last spring, I returned home to London where restrictions were extremely tight. I was not allowed to leave my house without an ID to prove I lived within a 5 mile radius. Due to these restrictions and feeling confined I decided to focus my visual journaling on the experience I had when I was locked down in London with my parents. Aside from classes, I began running and cooking a lot so I created a composition of my new found interests and coping mechanisms with the changing times.