Navigating my University of Leeds degree online — from India
Akanksha Goyal is a second-year Journalism undergraduate studying from her home in Chennai, southern India. Here she describes what it’s been like working towards her University of Leeds degree from 6,000 miles away.
If you had told me in the summer of 2019 when I was accepting my offer from the University of Leeds to study Journalism that I’d be attending classes from my bedroom, I would’ve laughed and called you crazy.
Being an international student, the thought of not only spending my entire second year studying online from home, but also the possibility of being away from campus in my final year, would’ve seemed like a dystopian concept and yet, here I am.
Saying a hurried goodbye in March of 2020 to my room that housed so many first-year memories, I naively assumed that the scare of the virus would blow over in a matter of weeks. Little did I know the horrors that were about to unfold.
I returned home to Chennai, southern India, to continue my studies. The weeks turned into months, and it was soon time for the start of the new academic year. I had to prioritize my well-being and make the difficult decision of resorting to remote learning at home in Chennai, at a time when the second wave hadn’t yet taken over the UK and face to face teaching was still a viable option for practical modules.
Being one of the very few students from my class not returning to campus, I was pleasantly surprised by the school’s readiness to accommodate my situation. They not only arranged a one-to-one meeting with me to ensure I had all the necessary means to pursue online learning, but the professors also live streamed the practical classes which gave me a chance to be an active participant in the discussion. A mobile journalism kit containing all the necessary equipment for makeshift production was even shipped all the way to my house in India!
With all the tools required for digital learning at my disposal, the first semester passed by as smoothly as one could hope. Being an extremely shy person, the concept of having seminars online boosted my confidence and increased my tendency to speak out. Lectures become easier to attend thanks to the ease of logging in from anywhere and pre-recorded sessions added to the flexibility of my daily schedule, allowing me to manage my time better.
While a lot of my classmates and university students worldwide found online learning to be tedious and distracting, my experience with it was quite the opposite with my only inconvenience being the time difference. It goes without saying that I missed the day-to-day bustle of campus life and wanted to be back in the midst of all the action as much as the next person, but I carried on being optimistic and pushed forward.
Come January, I was once again hoping to be able to travel back to Leeds since we were to start having newsdays, a simulation of a real newsroom environment where we, the students, produced entire bulletins or blogs by the end of the day. But unfortunately, the infection rate in the UK meant face to face teaching was not yet feasible.
Under normal circumstances, newsdays would entail working collectively under one roof on whatever role we were assigned to that day. In this case however, in order to achieve the group effort, we stayed on call or in constant communication with each other to exchange ideas and produce an output.
I personally had been delegated the role of a reporter multiple times during the newsdays which required me to conduct and string together interviews or vox pops. This was one task I found particularly daunting since I was over 5000 miles away from the interviewees and didn’t have many contacts in Leeds. However, it called for a rethink to how I would go about it usually and I harnessed the benefits of social media to acquire respondents.
Obtaining footage to go along with my TV outputs was another arduous task. Unable to go out and film for myself, I had to dig through archives from news organisations which also proved to be difficult due to content availability in international territory. Even my peers on campus found this task challenging as they had to navigate and abide by lockdown rules.
Through all the technical difficulties, problem solving sessions and working together as a team to produce a satisfactory output, I learnt to make the best of an unfavourable situation. I also came to realise the scope of using technology to create journalistic content, especially enjoying the versatile nature of obtaining sources and conducting interviews through digital platforms. Despite being unable to access certain online content due to geographical differences, I was forced to think creatively and consequently discovered alternative means for retrieval.
My whole encounter with attending university online has opened my eyes to the prospect of education beyond traditional channels, enforced creativity and out of the box thinking, and contributed to countless new experiences. While it wasn’t an ideal situation, it ignored the physical barriers to continuing my degree and provided my life in lockdown with a relative sense of normalcy, for which I’ll always be grateful.
Pursuing a practical course, I’m still clinging on to the hope of returning to campus for my third year and gaining some hands-on experience. Although I do not know what the future might hold, I’m looking forward to the new set of adventures that come with it.
Written by Akanksha Goyal, a second-year Journalism undergraduate student at the University of Leeds.
