Emotional Narratives of Higher Education Students in Quarantine Times

Times of crisis are complex periods where dynamics coexist that accentuate difficulties, but also that create opportunities for individual and collective overcoming, in the sense of greater equity and social inclusion. With the Covid-19 pandemic, changes were introduced in our lives. In Portugal, universities closed and replaced the 2nd semester classroom classes with synchronous and asynchronous virtual classes. This situation was initially thought to be transitory, but remained until the end of the 2019/20 school year. As teachers of a group of 2nd year students in the Education and Training course at the Institute of Education, within the scope of the Emotional Competences curricular unit, we proposed to students to write narratives of their daily lives to include in their portfolios. In this article, we analyze those related to the periods of confinement and post-confinement, which allow us to perceive experiences and difficulties experienced by students over time, what emotions emerged, the regulatory strategies to deal with these difficulties, as well as the lessons learned, namely with regard to the development of emotional skills. They consider that this situation constituted a restriction on their freedoms, but also an opportunity to develop self-regulatory strategies, deepening dimensions relevant to their personal and academic path.