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NANDIPA SILUMA: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Nandipa Siluma. While most students returned to their homes during Spring Quarter, some international students chose to stay on campus. I had Hesbon Ochako, who is from Kenya, record himself in his daily life.

HESBON OCHAKO: Hello, I’m Hesbon Ochako, and I’m a sophomore at Northwestern. I remained on campus for Spring Quarter. I live in Willard. And this has been my daily schedule. I am going to give you my day schedule. Let’s get right into it. 

On Monday I would wake up at 9:59 a.m. and make a dash to my desk for my 10 a.m. math class. I sit in class with my pajamas and I will not turn my camera on. The class will end at 10:50 and I would go back to my bed. A boy needs to rest. So I went back to bed from 11 to 12 p.m. At 12 I walk to Plex to get my lunch. 

After getting lunch I’ll come back and start preparing for my next class, which is a history class, at 3:30 p.m. I will try and do the readings and skim through them. And I’ll go over the lecture slides just to familiarize myself with what the professor is talking about. And then I’ll eat my lunch as I do the readings. Sometimes I will get distracted and start watching a show. Then I end up not doing most of the readings, which is fine. But that’s what happens. And then at 3:30 I’ll get into the class. The class is from 3:30 to 4:50 p.m. I’ll sit there, engage in the material, try to understand what the professor’s talking about.

At 5 p.m., I’ll go and take a shower. I always carry my speaker to the bathroom. I love listening to music while I shower. Then, at 6 p.m., I go and get dinner with friends who are still on campus and we’ll sit outside, if the weather is conducive, and have our dinner between 6 and 7:30. And then after 7:30 I’ll come back to my room, try and study, try and get some work done. At around 11 p.m., I’ll start watching shows. It’s such a perfect time to watch shows. I watch shows from 11 to about 2 a.m. Then I stay on my phone from 2 to 3, and then I go to bed. Basically, that’s my life. 

NANDIPA SILUMA: This piece was reported and produced by me, Nandipa Siluma. The summer managing editors are Sneha Dey and James Pollard, and the summer editor-in-chief is Emma Edmund.

Email address: [email protected]

Twitter: @nandipasiluma