This is the second group of students who enrolled in the IDC School of Design during the pandemic and started their design studies online. New students typically enrol on campus in the month of July, when the Mumbai monsoon season is at its height and the campus charms them with its verdant allure. According to research, the setting in which students learn the curriculum counts just as much as the curriculum itself. It would not be wrong to note that what remains on Google Drive after taking learning, the pleasures of hostel life, the lakes and trees, the studios, and in-person interactions into account is a collection of folders within folders within folders containing posted assignments. Online technologies have undoubtedly helped us to overcome physical distance, but they have also done away with the backbenchers; it has been remarked that in a zoom class, everyone is seated in the first row. Does it reveal anything about the new-age colonisation that is no longer physical but mental when a boisterous classroom morphs into a set of tiled black windows with white names and a few faces with virtual backgrounds that remind us of Van Gogh's starry evenings or the Golden Gate Bridge? Even if studies detail the severe challenges brought on by the pandemic, young kids' examples of the human spirit's resiliency deserve appreciation. In the months to come, it will be lovely to welcome them to school and watch how they maintain their authenticity in a time that appears obsessed with mediated realities and artificial intelligence.