Everybody seems to have a different day. Just got a mass email from the new University president commenting on the last year, noting that today (March 11) is the anniversary of the WHO declaring a global pandemic. I have other dates. March 13, 2020 (Friday) which is the day the university told me to take Monday and Tuesday to prepare for on-line only delivery of the last several weeks of Winter 2020. That Monday (the 16th) is the day I've been thinking about, since that was the first day I stayed home when I would normally have gone to the office.
As inconvenient as the last year has been, I have to say I'm having a blast. As someone averse to human interaction, particularly with strangers, this enforced social distancing thing is great. While I'm not really any more productive at home than I am at work (and it is certainly inconvenient being separated from my books and teaching props and so on), it's a lot easier sitting down at my desk in my jammies and trying to work than having to get washed and brushed and dressed like a human, going to work, and then trying to do it.
Once I'd worked out most of my early technological difficulties (in particular, I tried to be a good little camper and use the tools the university told me to use, especially the ones they'd spent I don't know how much money integrating into the secure LMS, only to discover three weeks into the term that it was Just Not Going To Work the way it should have), bought some extra equipment (my own document camera, which actually now that I'm using regularly isn't really doing the job--no zoom, which is going to be necessary if I keep doing this; a green screen--likewise; some extra books, pens that camera well, etc.) things are going fairly smoothly.
The house is still a disaster area. Probably more so, since now they're a year's worth of Amazon boxes to trip over, but this is sort of how I live. Except for really, really needing to do something about my kitchen sink. Literally.
Now the uncertainty. Will we go back to in-person in the fall? I'm guessing not, since even if they ramp up the vaccination rate they won't be anywhere near 70% by September, and as long as anyone has any serious objection to potential exposure, we'll have to delivery partially by remote teaching anyway, I say call it now and let us plan rather than let us wonder until mid June or whatever it was like last year. And in Arts we just do not have the room capacities to accommodate social distancing properly (let alone coordinating people entering and leaving rooms by the single doors available). And so far no one, thank heavens, is advocating trying to hybridize (as so many of my colleagues around the world have done, teaching to largely empty rooms while simultaneously present over the internet).
So now I have to reboot my computer, because a year into it I have finally gotten around to trying to connect to the school shared network from home, which will further make things a little easier. But in the few minutes I had while waiting for things to calm down, I thought I'd officially mark the pandemiversary with something.
