Studying Anthropology during a Pandemic

My final semester of grad school starts on Monday. I have two classes left and a thesis to write. I am grateful. Most of my peers are taking three or four this term. So I can relax a bit and work, maybe even full time.
Yes, this is how I imagine relaxing.

I am entering this semester with even less certainty than the last. We are still in Italy, where starting Monday I return to writing my thesis, and soon I will be adding these two extra classes to my agenda. But one thing I have learned over this past year is doing online ethnography and studying anthropology during a pandemic is hard.

Online or In-Person Classes

My classes are currently all online. They should stay that way at least until the first week of March. Then… Who knows? Belgium’s approach has surprised me at every turn. So we will be living, once again, in a state of uncertainty on whether we should rent another apartment in Italy or return to Belgium ASAP.

I was surprised by how many people are in favor of in-person classes. Admittedly, I only get information on this from the US and a handful of European countries. But in the face of a pandemic, the last place I want to be is in a room full of 100 students with the windows open and wearing a mask.

I know online learning is not for everybody, but I happen to be someone who does well academically working at her own pace—away from others. I love people. I was even told so in a business personality test. I just love to be around them in settings and contexts of my choice where I can engage with them and leave whenever I want. I am very much an introvert.
Online learning works for me. I understand that people want to be on campus and find the active engagement necessary—I could probably benefit from it.

My university tried several forms of online, in-person hybrid courses. This format makes the most sense to me. This format allows students who want, or need, to be in class the option to do so and those who prefer not to the option to stay home. Everyone wins. Except there is still a pandemic so nobody can win. But you get my point.

One Year in Lockdown

I can say, like anyone studying during the past year, that my university experience is not typical. I started my program in September 2019, spent three months interacting with fellow students, had exams, saw some more students, then we went into our next semester. While preparing for exams last year, a friend of mine from school would message back and forth about “what [was] going on in China.”

I stopped going to my classes before the university officially switched to online-only. I commuted an hour to campus and an hour back three times a week. As someone who had already been hospitalized with pneumonia and had made it through courses in the past without perfect attendance, I decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

It is hard to believe we are coming up on one year—at least in Belgium and Italy, the countries I live in. I think back through my experience as a master’s student: three months on campus, three months with my peers who have become friends.

Doing Online Ethnography

Some disciplines are easier to move online. That does not mean it is easy to move them online. Interactive, fieldwork-based projects make doing anthropological work, specifically ethnography, online difficult.

Anthropology, as I said, has various methodologies. But when studying people and the things they do, the people part is essential.

This creates a bit of a problem:

How do you study people when you cannot be near them, be in large groups, and cannot ask them too many questions?

Something else that came up as a problem for one of my research teams:

How do you find research participants if people are not out, walking around?

And a final question:

How do you observe people’s daily lives if their lives have been disrupted?

All of these questions are challenges today’s practicing anthropologists have to face. Sure, there are digital ways of reaching people. We have been doing this for decades now, and businesses are doing great with the technological solutions available.

But this assumes that all of our participants have equal access to the necessary technology. This also assumes all anthropologists have these. It is more likely that practicing anthropologists have what they need, but what about students? Not all students have stable internet connections or computers to keep up with online courses or manage online interaction.

These are all challenges we need to keep in mind. We need to ask ourselves who is in danger of being left behind. We have not even touched on mental health—which I will discuss more next month.

Changing Our Research Questions

I am a member of the student representatives for Anthropology at my university. In one of our meetings with the professors, we discussed how to address online ethnography and research for students. I said I felt we needed to change the questions we asked to be researchable in a digital format. As less or inexperienced researchers, trying to learn to research a more traditional topic then translate that online is much more difficult than observing something in an existing online setting.

I am not sure what came of it since it primarily affected students who are the year behind me, but I watched as my cohort and I stumbled along, trying to pull together what we could to research anything that resembled what we set out to research.

What next?

Everything about the past year has just been me making things up as I go along. Which is like the rest of my life. But usually, the external rules in my life stay pretty consistent, and I move around within them as I see fit. Now, the external rules in my life could change at any moment. My university may require that we all be in Belgium next semester. They could require that we physically attend classes. Jesse’s work could require that he be there in person.

We have no idea.

It makes planning difficult because we don’t know where we will be or where we need to be. So we live in this state of uncertainty—which was our choice when we left our apartment. But it does not make it any less exhausting.

I also have no idea what I will do after I graduate. Will I be doing a PhD? Will I have a job? Will I sleep all day and wait for someday when things return to what once felt normal? What if this is the new normal?