First-generation students have been a focus in higher education research over the past ten years. However, limited attention has been paid to engineering students who are the first in their generation to enter university. The paper reports on data collected as part of a longitudinal study of first-generation engineering students at a South African university during the early stages of the pandemic. First-generation students, who already face multiple difficulties in their educational journey, were confronted with a juxtaposition during the lockdown. As engineering students, they are inducted into technical approaches to problem-solving via systematic and analytical exploration. Levi-Srauss contrasts this notion of the ingenieur, grounded in the Enlightenment belief in the superiority of rational scientific reasoning, with the bricoleur, who finds solutions by “doing things with whatever is at hand”. With the lockdown period being less amenable to structured problem-solving, students often had to resort to more improvised approaches to accommodate their studies and their shifted precarious everyday routines. The study not only adds to literature on firstgeneration engineering students, but also provides insight into the ways in which these students cope with obstacles over which they have little control. In the process a picture of resilient agency emerges that challenges a narrow deficit view of students with limited resources
