Posted on by jenfitchett · 1 Comment

Down the rabbit hole… and into the world of ‘StudyTubers’

I’ve been trying to think back to when (and how) I first stumbled upon Lydia Violeta’s channel on YouTube. It was somewhere towards the beginning of lockdown – a chunk of time that no one can quite coherently reconstruct! In the midst of the ever-changing decisions on when and how term would restart, in my case to complete three block one courses, I had ended up procrastinating down an endless YouTube tunnel. You know how it goes… You watch a video on how to make a chicken korma using the limited list of level 5 lockdown ‘essential food items’, and the next thing its four hours and 20 videos later and you’re watching a Business Management student from Leeds University show you how she studies for her exams. At this point you have no idea how you got there, but you are hooked!

I personally was captivated because this filled a strange grey area between escapism (hey, it wasn’t me who was stressing over accounting exams!) and a very useful insight into the student experience. Particularly, the student experience of adapting to online learning in lockdown. While Lydia Violeta’s first year pretty much ended at the beginning of lockdown, another StudyTuber Eve Bennett documented a number of ‘day in the life’ videos on how she was transitioning to online learning. These were so important to me in understanding what our students might be facing, from a student’s perspective. And let’s be honest, a student at Oxford University is probably experiencing far fewer challenges than the majority of our student body in South Africa – with challenges of internet connectivity, data costs, loadshedding and 10 person households being all too common. It meant that I was consciously trying to make the life of our students that little bit easier wherever I could. 

It was sometime around then that I tried to find local StudyTubers. The YouTube algorithm wasn’t my friend on that one. If you’re out there – please let me know. So, I pitched this idea to SAYAS – let’s film a ‘day in the life’ for the SAYAS YouTube channel. We decided to start with our bloggers – a brilliant group of postgraduates, each of whom have had to adapt both their lifestyles and their research projects to lockdown conditions, yet have somehow had the time and mental capacity to apply to join our blogging group. No doubt these ‘day in the life’ videos will be an inspiration to many who are considering postgraduate degrees. Hopefully, however, they will also be grounding, reminding us that PhD students are people just like us, and struggle with many of the same challenges while they make their way through pretty mundane lockdown life. 

My own ‘day in the life’? Watch this space. We are also hoping that some of the members of SAYAS will record these too over the course of the year. At the moment it involves an endless cycle of recording and exporting lectures, replying to emails, and trying to reschedule meetings around lecture recording time because it all takes so much longer than expected. I also have exciting days, even in lockdown. Attending conferences, running workshops, and my personal favourite – group meetings with my postgraduates. Probably the most important things I’ve learnt from watching ‘day in the life’ vlogs is that even the most productive people aren’t productive 24/7, and that’s ok! 

I hope you enjoy this journey with our bloggers!

Jennifer Fitchett

Posted on by Maseteditshego

The Humanities during a crisis, crisis in the Humanities: what do Literary scholars do during a crisis?

While the world is up in arms, united against the Covid-19 pandemic, some of us are studying a degree in the Humanities. The big and right question to ask of course at this moment is what would a BA or MA or PhD in the Arts and Humanities help a student and the rest of the world in a period which seems to be scientifically orientated and driven. The race to find a vaccine to curb the deadly Covid-19 virus is on, the need to development and improve ICT for various means to support communication and interactions in the ‘new normal’ is also on. Now what does a student in Humanities do to help? Indeed, these critical questions can leave any student in the Humanities confused and in doubt of the relevance and importance of their education and its contribution to our society at this point in our lives. All these points to what seem to be a crisis in the Humanities or rather Humanities’ crisis. It leaves one asking the questions of whether we need the Humanities? Should governments, patrons and universities continue funding the Humanities and developing curricular for these faculty or is it about time all funding and resources are redirected to scientific departments and faculties which yield tangible research output which can help humanity in a time like this?

I am truly curious, it is confusing and terrifying. How do critical and philosophical essays by Plato help us get through everyday today? What do Shakespeare’s plays mean right now? What use is it to read and quote Lord Byron’s poems? How do African classics of Ngugi wa Thiongo, Bessie Head, Alan Paton and other great African writers help us not only cope but get through everyday life and towards gaining control of our lives and going back to how life once was?

We have all (those of us in the Humanities) with our intellectualism retrieved to the comfort and safety of our own spaces/homes etc. Away from the dangers that lurk on the streets. What does this mean? What does it say about our contribution to life? It would seem the real heroes, those who make tangible contribution to our everyday lives are out there in white coats and in the labs trying to find a way to ‘return’ us to ‘the good old days’ when hugging a loved one was not conflated with contravening any regulation. But all we have done so far, is to stay back and stay safe and let ‘them save us’. Are we a part of a world we are unable to adequately contribute to? Are we the ones who consume without producing? I speak about production here in the actual sense not intellectually. From where I am writing from even poetry and all kinds of fiction seems not be so enjoyable right now with all the anxiety in the world and the fear of death of a loved one or of contracting the Covid-19 virus. It seems we live at the mercy of our peer the “hard science”. Post this pandemic, should we still call them our peers? Should we still sit in halls in groups of hundreds and talk about various classicals plays, short stories, poetry, novels and so forth? Maybe the Arts and Humanities are a field for those who want to avoid everyday life, those who want to shy away from reality. Is there a crisis in the Humanities? Are the Humanities in a crisis?