Posted on by ncubekn

What I get up to when I am not PhDing

One particular question I always struggle to answer is: “Keith, what are your hobbies?” This is due to the amount of time that research consumes, rendering it a challenge to have regular hobbies. Work does not simply end when I leave the university’s gates, as I often have to take some work with me to complete from home. This involves preparing lectures, reviewing documents submitted by junior students, writing papers, amongst a few other things. Working is an integral part of our daily routine, to the extent that I feel like academic responsibilities consume most of my time. Despite this, there are moments when I do find time for non-academic activities.

I love adventure and seeing new places when I do get the chance to. There’s this one activity I have always looked forward to doing for such a long time… skydiving, and I finally managed to go for a tandem jump at Skydive Pretoria early this year. I generally love aviation, but the idea of safely jumping off a moving aeroplane has always excited me. The experience I got was far much better than I expected. We took a 10-minute scenic ride on a light aircraft up to the dizzying height of approximately 3.4km above ground level, where we jumped off the aircraft as I was attached by a harness to an instructor. We then plunged into the rush of a 40-second freefall before the instructor opened the parachute, before guiding us to a safe landing on the ground. Although this is an experience that many people fear, it is certainly an activity I would love to do regularly, and I am considering obtaining a skydiving license so I can jump out of a plane alone. 

Myself jumping off an aircraft, attached to an instructor during a recent tandem jump in Pretoria.

In addition to jumping off planes, I also love reaching destinations. I believe travelling to different destinations broadens one’s understanding of this world, as you are exposed to diverse places and cultures. Fortunately for me, in our field, we get to travel to conferences both nationally and internationally, and this helps me enjoy my hobby while I complete schoolwork. I have travelled to Germany and Japan to conferences, opportunities I would not have been able to afford in my capacity. Travelling around South Africa for local conferences has also given me the chance to experience the true beauty of this country. Sadly though, as I mentioned in my previous blog, physical conferences are currently limited due to COVID-19 precautionary measures. Hopefully, we will get to travel to conferences once the pandemic is over. In my capacity, I travel to neighbouring countries such as Swaziland, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, and I am looking to explore other African countries a little bit more.

In addition to attending church regularly, one more thing I enjoy is spending time with high-school students for mentoring and teaching purposes. It is particularly concerning that a lot of students from disadvantaged backgrounds lack role models and people who can guide them to a bright future. Some colleagues and I started the Yakhanani High School mentorship Project, where we go to high schools in disadvantaged areas to mentor and teach children in high school, as a way of preparing them for University, and we usually do this on weekends. With the current COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, such mentoring is a challenge, and I hope we can resume the mentoring sessions soon.

Ultimately, besides these few activities, scientific research is my one true hobby, because it is something I enjoy. As the famous quote by Mark Twain says “find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life,” conducting research is not only a job for me, it is something I enjoy doing while I am working.

Posted on by leahjunck

Nurturing sanity

It feels quite bizarre, writing about crafting in times like these. The ongoing extraordinary situation of living through a pandemic has had a lot of people flaunting their acquired skills on social media – whether it is knitting, doing yoga or learning a new language. Anything one can learn online is being marketed with excessively motivational tones.

We have indeed had to find ways to entertain ourselves during the COVID-19 crisis and its restrictions. In the midst of it, the lives of UCT students were, once more, abruptly disrupted. I am writing this blog with an eye on any news update regarding the fire that has been raging since yesterday (18.04.2021). It has forced students to evacuate their residences again with only their most needed possessions, and tragically reduced much of the rich contents of the Jagger Library to ashes. I feel gutted with every wind burst that I hear pushing past my window as it has me imagining the firefighters in an uneven battle with nature’s forces. The interviews I conducted with first-in-family students of the engineering department around this time last year for a project I am assisting Dr Renee Smit with had already given me a glimpse into the effects such ruptures can have.

The shared topic the group of SAYAS bloggers had decided on a while before this disaster is ‘I am a student, but I am also…’ and was meant to be a fun change of pace, talking about our hobbies, interests, and passions. I, too, have cultivated some habits that have helped me to keep my mind from wandering into unwelcome directions and reduce some stress. And even though it seems absurd to discuss them in this acute and painful state of things, it is perhaps just the right topic and something I may attend to after writing this.

The quaint little hobby I want to share with you today must therefore be viewed against this backdrop: we all need things to keep us sane, especially in unpredictable times. Sometimes, the more ‘mundane’ they are, the more enjoyable and settling. When I initially told my mom on the phone that I was doing embroidery, I could sense her grinning through the phone. ‘We had to embroider place settings at school’, she commented (probably with an eye roll). My embroidery is a little different from what my mom was taught at school and she has become a big fan of my designs. Here are a few to give you an idea.

I’m having some fun designing these pieces. The repetitive pattern of sliding the needle through the fabric and seeing the predetermined pattern emerge is calming and helps me maintain an illusion of control – even if only for a moment. It also helps me engage with my own body and how it has been changing (perhaps I should extend my repertoire to male bodies as well). For some reason, the human outer shell and what it appears to hold together has a mesmerising effect on me. Likely also because (or the reason why?) my research focus has been on how experiences become part of our everyday fabric. While writing this, I am also realising the extent to which putting my thoughts in writing has a calming effect on me. Feel free to share your ways of nurturing your sanity or other thoughts in the comment section!