Ever since my second year of college, I knew that I would be taking on my senior year thesis project alone. It would be the hardest two semesters ever with weeks of seemingly endless research, reading, and writing, but I admit that I still romanticized the process quite a bit.

Thesis seemed like such a landmark in one’s college life: Late nights in coffee shops, being locked away in Rizal Library for hours, and writing drafts with blockmates in our department’s reading room. What comforted me was the knowledge that just because I would be writing a solo thesis didn’t mean I was doing it alone. I would have friends to go to, an org room sofa to nap on, and company to struggle with.

Due to the COVID-19 lockdown, I didn’t get that. Instead, I was in my room 24/7 with a blinking cursor on a blank document. There was no one to drag to Gonzaga for lunch, no coffee shop sounds to remind me of where I was. I would be going through my senior project online, alone, and incredibly lonely.

Enter “Study With Me” Youtubers. This genre of YouTube consists mainly of livestreams or long videos of people doing school work. These videos are accompanied by lo-fi or classical music or no music at all. Some Youtubers even use ambient sounds like rain, fireplace crackling, or just white noise of the cafe, library, or room where they’re working.

Personally, I love Study with Me videos without music. I prefer videos with tags like “library white noise” or “writing sounds.” These videos gave an impression that there was someone else in the room working with me, as someone who worked on my thesis mostly late at night. The sounds of paper shuffling, pen scratching, and keyboard tapping mimicked study dates with friends after classes.

Aside from companionship, accountability is a huge factor in Study with Me techniques. The peer pressure that came with working in public spaces around other people is close to non-existent during work-from-home setups. Public Discord servers like Study Together! try to recreate that setting by allowing users to share their screens or turn their cameras on. It hopes to keep students from clicking into unrelated tabs or picking up their phones, among many similar temptations.

When my friends and I do working video calls, I turn my camera on and share my screen. Regardless of whether or not my friends were watching the stream, they were working and could see what I was doing so I felt pressure to work.

There are, of course, dangers to Study with Me. Videos can go for up to 12 hours or even longer. Medical student and Youtuber Soony Sun talks about how videos like these can fuel “toxic productivity” and give viewers a false image of what productivity should be like. For Sun, the videos could leave an impression that putting in long hours to study without doing much else guaranteed success.

During my thesis writing, I made sure to purposely choose videos that were at most three hours long. I would also choose ones with breaks included or just pause the video to take short breaks.

When I finished my thesis, it felt right to mention Study With Me vloggers in my acknowledgements. Study with Me Youtube gave me a sense of companionship and comfort when taking on a project like a thesis felt never-ending. My thesis ends where it starts: In my room during a global pandemic. But I’ve realized that I’m not alone; there are many people out there who can study with me.