I first heard about the “coronavirus” in early January of 2020. I had already booked a quick getaway to Genting Highlands and was debating whether or not to go, knowing that our trip would coincide with Chinese New Year. I was concerned with the crowds that would inevitably be there.
I remember staying up at night, reading news and watching videos online, scouring through message boards from China to get news of the pandemic. Things were not looking good, and I was already very concerned about the rise in cases and how severely the disease seemed to affect people based on the videos that were spread. I read diaries that had been translated and consumed all information I could from China, the USA, and Europe.
Even early on, I was already very afraid of the virus.
Still, after discussing with hubs, we decided to proceed with the trip.
Why? Because my laptop was wiped clean. (In case you haven’t figured it out, this would be one of the many, many, many tragedies that would befell me during this PhD journey.)
On 7th January, 2020, while I was keeping up with posts from China about the pandemic, I lost all my documents, except for an old, rudimentary backup version of the PhD proposal I was working on. All 50+ articles that I had saved as references were gone. The idea I was toying with for my conceptual/theoretical framework was gone. It is every person’s nightmare, and it happened to me.
Hubs said to me that I needed a break, and that we should go ahead to the trip to Genting to take my mind off things. So, despite my concerns, we went—and I’m actually glad we did, because that was one family trip we would look fondly back on while the world was shut down.
PhD-wise, it would be another six weeks before I would even feel any semblance of motivation to work on the proposal again.
At the end of January 2020, on one of the nights while we were at Genting, I began ordering face masks and isopropyl alcohol.
I remember buying two large bottles of rubbing alcohol for only RM20, and 100 pieces of face masks for RM10 a box. This was way, way before panic buying cleared the shelves and face mask prices rose to RM50 per box.
As the days passed and Malaysia announced its first COVID-19 case, I got in contact with a friend from Wuhan, China.
When I registered for the PhD in September 2019, there were three others who had registered with me. One of them was Fan, a student from Wuhan, who had decided to fly home at the end of the first semester to celebrate Chinese New Year with his family. He was then confined to Wuhan, both due to the COVID outbreak and because Malaysia had started imposing travel restrictions.
On 15th February, 2020, I sent an email to him, asking how he was and what the situation was like there. “You’re coming back to Malaysia soon, right?” I wrote to him at the end of my email. “Please be safe, and do let us know how you are doing.”
He replied to me within half an hour.
“I’m supposed to come back to Malaysia 4 days ago, however the airport in Hubei has been closed. Meanwhile people from Hubei are not allowed to enter Malaysia right now. That means I cannot go back soon,” he wrote back to me. “I heard the news that there are several cases in Malaysia. But don’t worry, just stay away from crowds and wash your hands often. Everything gonna be all right!”
When the movement control order (MCO) was announced in March 2020, I had already anticipated it. I still remember that day on 15 March, 2020, when we received the news from the Deputy Vice Chancellor’s (Academic) office that UiTM would close its doors for the following three weeks. If memory serves me correct, we had only been back for a few short weeks, and were asked to stop meeting students face-to-face.
Classes were to be conducted online for the first time, ever—for me, anyway.
Suddenly, we had to learn how to take attendance online. To administer tests online. I, being absolutely camera shy back then, remember feeling so awkward talking to the camera as I attempted to record my lecture for my students. I ended up re-taking saying hello several times before finally just saving the video and hitting send, mortified at my performance.
Those early days were rough. We had to conduct classes, but we were not allowed to send videos of lectures to students, as they were too heavy to be uploaded and downloaded. Unlisted YouTube videos became the option, but even then, my students faced issues. I feel ultimately proud of their tenacity, however, as they still did their best to submit video presentations and go through with their studies, despite the hurdles. It made me seek to become better as their lecturer, always thinking of the most effective way to teach them, while minimising the burden it would cause them.
If there’s one thing I wasn’t prepared for during the MCO, however, it was the fact that Fahim, my then two-year-old, was with me all day long as I juggled between work and PhD.
Bless Fahim’s daycare, they did try. They sent teachers to deliver coloring pages and arts and crafts activities to do at home—but these activities were only helpful to fill in one or two hours of the week. Hubs and I were strong proponents of not having a television at home, and this turned into a huge challenge for us during the first MCO. I had a spare laptop, and this I used to put on Didi and Friends and Cocomelon to pacify Fahim while I taught my classes, but we eventually decided to stop that because we didn’t like how glued he was to the screen. It was a very, very, very stressful time.
Hubs and I started to play tag team. The fact that we were both academics made things a bit easier, I will say. I would take care of Fahim in the morning. Hubs would take care of Fahim in the afternoon. We’d keep the house clean and rotate Fahim’s toys every few days to keep him engaged. We ordered more picture books (which took weeks to arrive, as everyone was buying online and PosLaju could barely keep up with the demand). We read books to him. Played with him. Did a bunch of activities with him. I look back at that time with such fondness, because I was able to spend such quality time with him.
While this was going on, I was preparing my research proposal. It sounds crazy, but I was actually able to be very, very productive during the MCO. Around the time when I registered in September 2019, I was involved in a loooot of things, both inside and outside of UiTM. I had multiple projects going, personal and professional. When COVID hit, a lot of these projects had to be halted, which became such a blessing…because I was able to get my time back.
Before the pandemic, I would also spend a lot of my time on the road. We were still renting a small apartment in Bandar Seri Putra (near Nilai) and the commute to my main campus was at least an hour one-way, without traffic. But as a language lecturer, we service three campuses, and so it was not uncommon for me to drive 1.5 hours one-way to one of the branch campuses. This does not include traffic, or the travelling in between classes, as I was teaching 18 credit hours then. With such long commute, I would be too exhausted to do anything by the time I got home. Normally I would have sleep early, then wake up at 3AM or 4AM to work on my PhD. I would sacrifice my weekends studying, going to the library and working on my proposal.
The pandemic removed all that, at least for the second semester of my PhD. We were advised to have short classes, non-synchronous if possible to cater to the less fortunate students. That meant I was able to get away with pre-recording one lecture that would serve three classes, which saved me a lot of time. MCO also meant that I was no longer travelling. Because hubs took care of Fahim during the afternoons, I was able to read and write and focus on my proposal.
Despite having lost my original proposal two months prior, by 24th March, 2020, I had already hit 20,000 words.
COVID actually saved my PhD in a lot of ways, as we’ll come to when we progress in the story. It was a stressful and uncertain time, volatile and ambiguous, and because of it, I would also come to lose an entire semester because of it. But in retrospec, when I reflect back on COVID, it actually helped me immensely, simply because it halted all the projects I was working on at the time. Anyone who knows me would know that I normally have at least four or five projects running simultaneously at any given time. COVID took most of them away and forced me to focus.
So, if there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s that you NEED to focus. Especially at key times where you need to exercise creativity and critical thinking, like during the proposal stage and during the writing phase. These two times for me were key in my journey in the social sciences.
So, if you want your PhD done and done soon, put EVERYTHING aside, and focus. If focus hadn’t literally be forced upon me for those few weeks of the MCO, I’m not entirely sure that I’d have finished, even by now.
It’s my personal opinion that PhDs are best done full-time, just because it lessens the distractions you’ll face. Some people, like me, are more productive when they have multiple things going simultaneously. So it’s on you to figure out what circumstances make you work your best.
On 12th June, 2020, towards the end of my second semester, I submitted my PhD proposal with the intention to defend it on the 23rd June, 2020. The proposal was 47 pages long.
When I think back to that proposal…I cannot help but feel very proud of myself, knowing what it took to produce it. I was teaching 18 hours a week. The pandemic happened, and during the first MCO, I was juggling working full-time and being a mother to Fahim without having anything except toys and activities as we didn’t have a TV at home.
But boy, oh boy, was that proposal severely, seriously flawed.
As I’m writing this, having passed my viva, I know that my research idea and intention were solid. I just did not have the researcher’s mind and writing style to convey what I aspired to achieve back then.
That lack of mine turned out to be devastating, as the defense led me to getting a result of “3” = major corrections, and the need to re-defend the proposal. And that’s where I’ll end this entry for now, and we’ll pick it up on that next week.