UCCDH student stories during COVID-19

3 Sep 2020

Two students from the Department of Digital Humanities have been featured in Student Stories during Covid_19, produced by the UCC's Graduate Attributes Programme.

You can read the contributions of Fiona Keeley and Harry McCann as follows:

My name is Fiona Keeley, and I am studying BA Digital Humanities & IT @universitycollegecork. In March, halfway through my placement with @pwc_ireland, I moved back to Cork to work from home. Attributes like ambition that I had learned at UCC helped me through this process and I was able to help others as they adjusted to this massive change in their work environments. I had to develop a new set of online skills and work with my team to help others develop their digital skills. It was a time when all my friends on placement exchanged ideas about how to improve our digital skills and #WorkFromHome skills. The ambition instilled in me while at UCC had taught me to work competently and during COVID-19 I used this value to develop new skills as I started to work remotely. The world of digital has become paramount for keeping in contact with my friends and the UCC community. The once-innocent phrase "Let's meet f coffee" had left my vocabulary and I was welcomed into a reality where 'zooming' had become a verb and Google Meet had become the new conference room. I believe wherever you find opposition there has to be some form of opportunity, even if it does try to disguise itself. Despite the upheaval, COVID-19 brought about a rapid change in the quality of digital tools on the market. As the country entered lockdown it became a necessity to find new ways to communicate online. To keep solid relationships with my colleagues in the workplace, with my friends, and with my college contacts by using online tools. I did not have all the answers, but that ambition and willingness to learn greatly influenced how I scrutinized information during #COVID19. I learned while being able to use digital tools was important, making sure there was constant communication within a team was even more important. It wasn't as simply as meeting in person, people now had to allow for things like technology malfunctioning and digital training programs. I discovered the potential of my UCC email account and all the features attached to it. My ambition to use my time to my advantage helped me to redevelop my a good work ethic in a changing tech environment.

My name is Harry McCann, I am a @quercusucc scholar, and a final year Digital Humanities and IT student at @universitycollegecork. My day starts with a run. I then boot-up my laptop, make myself a coffee, and start my day of work. As an entrepreneur, no two days are the same, even during #COVID19. There is a lot less structure to my day, but I am still working on a number of really exciting projects including @mymoneyjar and @trendster_media. While I remain as ambitious as ever, I have really tried to embrace the value of resilience throughout the lockdown and restrictions. I have been focusing more on my personal well-being, and have put a real emphasis on personal growth. I am reading more, exercising more, and enjoying the break from the usual busyness of the day-to-day. The opportunity to slow down and relax has been great. It has been challenging, but I can honestly say that I am a better person having learned what I have learned over the last few months.

For more student stories, see: 
https://www.ucc.ie/en/media/studyatucc/graduateattributes/StudentStoriesduringCovid19.pdf

For more on the Graduate Attributes Programme, visit:
https://www.ucc.ie/en/graduateattributes/