Student Blog: Should Students be Involved in the Discussions Around the Return to Normalcy?

I am about to start my final year as an undergraduate student. I have completed two years of tertiary education in a pandemic. I have learned and adapted to the ways of online learning. Quite frankly, I have been able to reach my full potential through all of this.

Now, as the new school year dawns on me, I have had a lot of thoughts on the approach and eagerness to return to normalcy. South Africa and my university, Rhodes are so eager to return to normalcy as are most people. I agree, it's time to start easing back into a lockdown free world. But I do not agree that we can return to the world we once knew.

For example, my university first stated that there would be a hybrid approach to teaching this year, online learning would continue but there would be an reintroduction into face-to-face learning. But then, I find out that I am expected to return to a full face-to-face programme for one of my courses. That's three lectures and two tutorials a week, all of which are in person. Five days a week, I will be in person with people who may or may not be vaccinated and who may or may not take enough precautions to ensure that they are doing the most that they can to prevent the spread of the virus.

If you want to attend a Broadway show, you have to vaccinated AND show a negative Covid test but universities won't do the same?

On top of that, my country has announced that if a person tests positive for Covid but don't have symptoms, there is no need to isolate. So, I could quite possibly be sitting in class with a Covid-positive person.

I am outraged, I am losing sleep and I have very little hope that I can get through this final year. Because if Covid doesn't take me out, I will certainly be taken out by the "traditional" and preferred way of testing and education - in person.

I think that if politicians, medical professionals and educators would just listen to the students of their nations for five minutes. They would find that most students learn so much more when they're in their own space and have their own time to work through work. Personally, I do much better in assessments because I have time to work through the assessments given.

Absorbing and retaining endless amounts of information for a three hour paper is ludicrous.

Not to mention that students, who started like me, at the beginning of 2020 have never written an in-person examination at a university level. I have not sat down for a three hour paper since I was in Matric in 2019.

The amount of anxiety that will come with the reintroduction of examinations for humanity courses. Courses where we mainly write essays, courses that don't need to force us into sit down exams. If this was commerce or medicine. It would be a different story but as a person, who is in humanities to go into production for film, television and theatre. There is no need for the return to in person.

There should at least be an eased and phased approach whereby tutorials and practicals, smaller groups of people, return to face-to-face but lectures and assessments remain online. My university has concessions from the government to continue online until the end of 2022. So, why the rush? And why with no communication at all?

I found out I'd be back to in person because I needed to know the plan. We start uni in a week and there had been no communication, only when I asked was I told.

We talk about the anxiety and mental issues that the pandemic and Covid fatigue has caused but no one ever seems to worry about the effects and anxiety that returning, so quickly, to in person can have on people. Specifically, students.

Students, who literally go out every weekend and don't wear their masks and refuse to be vaccinated won't care but it's the students, like myself, who will suffer. Because I am so terrified of what could happen to me if I get Covid despite being double vaxxed and despite taking all the precautions. And on top of that, I have to somehow manage to do as well as I have online, in person. I have to figure out how to do what I did three years ago.

We are constantly told that we are so unique and special as individuals. But we are forced to be tested in the same way. I am so tired of people saying how we each have our own paths in life that is unique to us but cannot change the way we are educated and evaluated!

Open up the conversation to students. Listen to our concerns. Understand our fear. Evolve. Just because this is how things were done in the past, does not mean that that's how it should be for the rest of time.