Disasters

 It was an exciting week, and not always in a good way.

Last Saturday evening, I was home alone as Cypar finished his week of second shifts. I had made some holiday cookies, eaten some leftovers for supper, and was just washing the dishes before settling onto the sofa for some knitting and Netflix. I had noticed on Friday night that the faucet in the kitchen sink was dripping a little, but on Saturday night it suddenly got much worse. About halfway through the dishes, I could no longer shut off the flow of water at all using the hot tap. I had hot water at full blast coming out. Luckily we have a double basin sink, so I could run the water to the second basin and keep my soapy dishwater in the first basin. I wiggled the handle - no effect. I wiggled it again and it broke off! I tried not to panic. I quickly finished the last of the dishes, let the dish water drain, and tried to see how to reattach the handle. I found some pliers in the basement and tried to turn the valve with them, but I couldn't find anything that would move. I looked under the sink for the water shutoff valve and found that we had none. The only way to turn off the hot water was to turn off the water heater so I went to the basement and did that. Thankfully, it worked.

I spent the rest of the evening worrying about what else could go wrong, but in the morning Cypar went to the hardware store and bought a new faucet and some shut off valves. We successfully replaced the faucet and installed a shut off valve on the cold water supply under the sink. We wanted to do the hot water supply also, but the pipe is different on that side and wouldn't work with the valve. We might need an actual plumber to do it for us.

Monday was also eventful. Cypar brewed a beer while I worked on class preparations at the dining room table, so I had a good view of the process. The grains go in a big cloth bag, and the bag goes into a very large pot filled with hot water. The grains are soaked in the hot water for a number of hours, until all the sugars have moved out of the grain into the water. After this, the bag needs to be removed and squeezed with fresh water to extract the last of the sugars which are then added back into the pot. Well, although he has never had this problem before, while lifting the bag of grains out of the big pot, somehow Cypar caught the edge of the pot and tipped the whole thing off the stove. Five gallons of hot, sugary water spilled onto our kitchen floor and found all the ways to drip through into the basement. Luckily, he wasn't hurt and nothing else was damaged. We spent the entire afternoon cleaning up: soaking up the hot liquid with rags, then scrubbing the floors, then wiping down the basement walls and ceiling, then doing many loads of laundry. The only thing I wasn't able to clean satisfactorily is a bit of the dining room carpet that got splashed. We may have to have the carpet professionally cleaned to fix that, but really the carpets haven't been cleaned since we moved into this house so it wouldn't be a bad idea anyway. Cypar was so distressed he said he should give up brewing. I said I didn't think it was as bad as that, and on Tuesday he went to the brewing store to get more grain so he could try again on Wednesday. Wednesday's batch was brewed without incident, so I think we're back on track.

I should be surprised it took this long

 (Started this post on Monday; now it's Friday.)

Back in August, when we were frantically trying to figure out what was going to happen vis-a-vis classes this fall, everyone here was betting the whole in-person class thing would not last more than three weeks. And then the third week came and went. The fourth week came and went. The weeks kept passing with nothing changing. We started thinking, hey we might make it!

"Ha, ha," said the Universe.

Yesterday our Governor announced new rules, which include prohibiting all in-person college and university classes starting Wednesday. We were so close! We were scheduled to end on Friday, with all the students returning home for Thanksgiving break and then one last "virtual assessment week" after that. I managed to squeeze in all the lab activities for my big general chemistry class, finishing last Thursday. Those students took their last exam in person on Friday. My upper-level class had only one lab period left tomorrow, and most of them had already finished all the experiments, but there was going to be an exam Thursday morning.

So I had to revise the plans for this week while I was not sleeping last night. The general chemistry students were going to come in to the lab this week just to check out of their drawers and return our lab kits (damn, were those a good idea!), but now they all need to find time to do it either today or tomorrow. Some of them are in quarantine and can't come at all, but thankfully that's a small number.

The other class now needs to come in tomorrow and check out instead of Friday. There are about 30 lab reports I'm expecting, and I told the student they should turn in as much as they could, but to talk to me if there are reports they can't finish by tomorrow afternoon. It's going to be pretty ugly, I expect. I'll have to muster up some more patience and compassion from somewhere. I assigned one less experiment this year compared to normal, so they really all should have been done about two weeks ago. But I know I have at least two students who have not completed the lab work; well, now they have no choice but to be done.

And I need to figure out what to do about their exam. I had only started writing it last Friday, but now it needs to be different because it can't be in person. That means through our LMS, and I sure-as-hell don't trust them not to cheat.

(Finished on Friday)

It's been a strange week. I made it through the chaos of lab checkout Monday and Tuesday. We finally got word on Tuesday that faculty would be allowed to work in our offices and labs the rest of this week (until December 11, according to the current plan). I've come in my normal hours every day, and I taught my classes through Zoom which wasn't so weird since we were doing that anyway. I spent most of one day writing the exam and posting it on the LMS. Although it isn't finished yet, I think it's going to be all right. I set up each question as a separate "quiz" so the students can do them in whatever order they like, and there will be a generous time limit for each question that will cut down on searching the book or the internet for answers. 

The building has been so quiet, so empty:

I am sitting in my office now, just waiting for six o'clock, the deadline for the students to turn in their lab reports electronically. I could just go home, but I want to use the school printers to print out hardcopies of anything that comes in. I've already heard from one student who had a computer crash this morning and may not be able to turn in his four reports on time (I'm not very sympathetic, since they've had the whole semester to get these done; why does anyone have four reports left on the last day?) and one student who lost a data file (collected a month ago; again, why did you not write the report then?). I think there are maybe four others still out there? I tried to count up everything I have in the stack this morning, but may have missed some in the jumbled pile of things at home. I've been taking stuff home almost every night, just in case we actually can't come back to campus after this week.

Tomorrow I plan to take the whole day off from school work. I am going to sleep late. I am going to read a book. I will knit and watch dumb TV. I will grade the piles of assignments next week, although I'm staying home to do it. I am not going to campus next week at all.

Trying to relax

 This week, two students in my upper-level class were required to quarantine. One was in my classroom on Monday while the other attended via Zoom, unexpectedly. Then Tuesday I was notified that they were both out for two weeks. Until now, this class has avoided the quarantine issue pretty well, so we've been lucky. I spend six hours a week with them in the lab, and last week we started the lectures-in-the-classroom part of class (previously, the small-group activities had all been through Zoom). The difficulty is lab, of course, as we have all known since the pandemic started. I spent so much time last summer going through the experiments and photographing everything, and I had hoped not to need any of that material, and we almost made it. But now, not.

So I spent half of one day putting together a Google Slides file of one experiment that both students need to finish the course. I organized and captioned dozens of photos and a video. They won't be able to do any of the work in the lab, which means they'll miss using the HPLC themselves, but I can't do anything about that. One of the students had only just started the penultimate experiment the day before he was sent off, so I spent half of another day setting that one up for him as a Google Slides file. If they get out of quarantine on time, they'll be able to attend the very last lab period which gives them just enough time to clean out their lab drawers and check out, but no time to do any lab work. I am glad I had the materials prepared (nearly), but sad that I needed to use them.

With those two out, and two other students finished with all the experiments, lab was kind of quiet the rest of the week. The truth is, we are nearly done for the semester. Only two more weeks before Thanksgiving Break, and after that there is one last "virtual" week in which I only have one class period scheduled for both classes, and no labs. I'm giving the last exam for General Chemistry next Friday, and the last exam for the other class the next week. There are no Final Exams this semester. I feel utterly exhausted every day. I don't want to get up in the morning (but I do) and I don't want to go to campus (but I do) or teach anybody anything (but I do). I'm still holding things together as best I can, although I do a lot of crying in the evenings at home and some days I'm awfully frustrated with everything and other days I'm despondent. It's just a slog to get through the days to have a little respite Friday and Saturday evenings.

This weekend, our local undergraduate research conference happened virtually. Talks were on Zoom, posters were on Slack. I was in lab yesterday afternoon so I missed the keynote and the first few talks, but I made it to the Friday evening poster session and chatted with our students who were presenting. Then I attended the rest today from home, although I confess I wasn't paying a lot of attention. I graded a bunch of lab reports while keeping one ear on the presentation because that was all I had to grade this weekend and I hoped to finish early and have time to read a book or something tonight. I've accomplished that and I feel a little lost now. I never was very good at relaxing before the pandemic, and now I don't really want to do anything. I basically want to do NOTHING. That's hard for me but I'm so tired I can just sit on the sofa and stare at the wall for 20 minutes.

I haven't bought any yarn since March, because I have plenty and I'm knitting so slowly that I haven't needed any. I bought some online this week and it arrived yesterday. My plan is to make mittens for the staff in the Registrar's Office. I just decided last weekend that I should do something to show my appreciation for them, they've had the worst time of anyone on campus this year. Can I make six pairs of mittens? I don't know. I'm going to try. It gives me something to do that doesn't make me angry or sad.

Make jam

 The end of last week, I was feeling that I was at the end of my rope. I just did not want to get out of bed or do anything anymore. Some of that was the usual Friday tiredness, and some was the six-month crisis fatigue, and the rest was just ... I'm done with all this.

Of course, I did get out of bed on Saturday morning (albeit later than normal) and I had breakfast and went for a chilly but sunny walk in the park. I felt somewhat better after that, but still not really happy. After all, I had piles of lab reports and other assignments to grade and it takes all weekend and then I just go back to class on Monday and do the same thing again next week.

For lunch, I thought I'd try one of the weird green fruits that came with our Imperfect Foods box last week. We didn't order them, but I had a suspicion they were stowaway guava because I remembered seeing guava in the offerings online. I didn't photograph them but they looked like this (from Google image search):

They were firm when they first arrived, but starting to get squishy and bruised by Saturday. I cut one open but it didn't really say "eat me!" I thought I might get out the dehydrator and dry them in slices, but I also thought those wouldn't be eaten. Then I thought of jam (who can say why?) and found a video recipe on YouTube that looked approachable. It was this one, for what it's worth: 

So I made the fruits into jam. It took about two hours and there was a lot of cooking time where I could be working across the room and just check on things now and then. The fruit smelled really nice while cooking. The most intense part was cooking the fruit puree with sugar because it has to be stirred constantly so it doesn't burn. While I was doing that, I thought I remembered having bought some canning jars a few summers ago when I thought I might learn to can vegetables and never did. I went down to the closet in the basement and found those. And then I did the thing where you put the filled jars in a hot water bath to seal them up, and miraculously it worked! My first jam and my first canning experience.

I'm not saying it cured all my malaise, but it helped a bit. I felt a little accomplishment. A little lessening of the hopelessness. And now I have jam that I can eat, or give away as gifts. Better yet, I know how to do it again.

Apparently there is a 6 month "wall"

 This is what I've been hearing more and more these last two weeks or so: that in any long-term crisis people hit a wall at the six-month point and suddenly feel terrible in new ways. The Twitter thread from which I took this post was helpful:

"If you can meet your obligations and be kind to your loved ones, you get an A+." 

It's week 8 of the semester here. It should be our fall break, a blessed run of days with no students, no meetings, more sleeping, and some attempts at fun. We don't have fall break this year, so it's just more of the same awful work, with additional chaos and stress. I went home last Friday evening and just cried out of exhaustion and despair. I have discovered a sudden inability to deal with emails: students wanting me to fix some score or schedule an extra meeting or "can I please take the quiz I forgot about?" Requests from various offices, colleagues at other schools. They just gather in my inbox until I find the energy and the words to answer, sometimes days later. Never?

The latest stupid idea from our safety committee is allowing any student to go into quarantine on campus for two weeks before Thanksgiving, presumably to protect their family members back home. We received, as usual, a Friday afternoon email from the Provost requesting comments on this proposal. I sent a summary of my department's comments this morning (basically: please don't do this because it will make our jobs so much harder than they already are) and I included what we all believe, that the decision has already been made and there's nothing we can say that will change their minds. The Provost responded by scolding me, saying that we shouldn't assume just because the decision goes against our wishes that our comments would not be taken seriously. Whatever, dude. He's telling me to trust him, and I just don't. He's brand new and I don't even know him, the hell I'm going to trust him. We've been screwed over this whole time and not once has anything the faculty have said made an iota of difference. I'm not going to argue about it.

Today it's absolutely all I can do (maybe more) to just be here and teach my classes. I've made some progress reading a few student papers I need to have read for later in the week, and I'm bracing myself to survive four hours of class in the afternoon (and then more tomorrow and the next day and the next), but that's my limit. 

Checking in (Week 5 Teaching)

All I seem to do is work and sleep. I work full days in my office at school, with the office door closed and never leaving except to go to class, the printer, or the restroom. When I get home in the evening I have barely enough energy to consume whatever food there is (eternal gratitude that I have BAM who cooks for us), maybe sit for an hour knitting and watching mindless TV, and then fall exhausted into sleep. On weekends I don't go to campus, but I do spend most of the day working on my laptop (usually grading assignments).

One good thing is that I've been sleeping more. I almost wrote "better" but I'm not sure the quality is there. Most of the time I sleep eight hours without interruption. The past two nights something must have been bothering me because I had to get out of bed and read for an hour before I could sleep again.

Classes have settled into a routine, but you know that only invites disruption in 2020. I had the first general chemistry exam on Friday, in person. Two students in quarantine took the exam over Zoom ahead of time and I hoped that was all, but two hours before the exam started I had three more go into quarantine, and today I have a total of 12 in quarantine (so far). My class is otherwise online, so the students aren't spreading virus to each other there, but most of them are first-year students living in close-quarters in dormitories on campus. It is starting to look like the campus managed to hide from COVID-19 for almost four weeks, but now we've been found. The administration is still reporting only 16 cases since August 1 but without doing any testing that must be just the tip of the iceberg.

Yesterday the new Provost sent around two proposals for spring semester, asking for comment. One was to push the start date later by one week and cancel spring break. I almost expected this, since other schools have already announced this is what they are doing. It is annoying because we've already submitted spring class schedules and might have made different choices if we had known, but even two weeks ago we were told things would go on as originally scheduled. The second proposal is to insert a three-week mini term in the semester break this winter. I think it's ridiculous, but apparently someone thinks this is a way to make more money. As long as I'm not required to participate (what course could I convert to a three week term while working as hard as I am right now?) I guess I don't care what they do with that.

Bottom line: I'm focusing on getting through each day as it comes and I don't have energy for anything else. I'm not very happy but there isn't time to feel sorry for myself. 

Almost through the second week already

 It is Thursday of the second full week of classes. It has been mostly okay so far, although I do sometimes feel a sense of impending doom. The college has reported only five cases of COVID-19 among students, faculty, and staff, although we aren't doing any testing so nobody knows the real number of infections. I've had a couple of students sent to quarantine because they were in contact with someone.

My General Chemistry lecture of 65 students is down to 63, but we have mostly gotten used to the Zoom format. The worst part (for me) is that only about half the students are automatically assigned to their breakout rooms, and every class I have to manually sort the rest. At least I'm getting faster with that. I think the class is going surprisingly well. Students are participating, some stay after class almost every day to ask questions, and they are mostly turning in the work. A handful have already visited my virtual office hours too. I made my first online quiz last week and it was a bit too much. Four questions, three of which required students to upload a photo of their written work. It took hours and hours to go through all of that and manually grade each question. This week's quiz is shorter and hopefully will be quicker to grade.

I have met all my Gen Chem lab students now. Half came last week and the rest came this week. I haven't taught the fall lab in a long time and it's kind of neat to have the raw beginners again. The first day was mostly checking in to the drawers and the kits, and then a lot of safety rules, but they also got to do a little experiment activity. 

My other class is also meeting on Zoom because the students work in teams and that isn't practical in the classroom with the distancing requirement. I only have 12 in that class, so three teams of four students. They are pretty good about working together, but it's slower than when I did the same activities in person. Today I even figured out how to do some comprehension checks during the breakout room time. I asked each team to use the Ask for Help button when they got to a certain place in the activity and then I popped in to their room and we talked about the stuff. One team had to wait a few minutes for me to finish with another team, but otherwise it was okay.

That class also has in-person lab, and we're able to be there all together. That has been fun. I haven't had many students for the past three or so years, and suddenly I have 12 and it feels like a real class again. There is more conversation going on, I guess. 

In all my lab sections, students are good about wearing their masks and cleaning but bad about distancing. They just don't do it even when I say something to them. My upper-level class sits together in the hall before lab, basically shoulder to shoulder despite the multiple prominent stickers telling them to stay 6 feet apart. And honestly, I don't know if it matters. They live together and eat together and probably spend all their out-of-class time together. The labs at least have excellent ventilation so I feel pretty safe when we're all in there. I'm not taking any extra precautions in lab beyond wearing my mask, washing my hands, and trying to stay distant from everyone when I'm not actively working with a student.

I'm still spending all day in my campus office. It's just so much easier to work here than at home. I keep the door closed and only go out two or three times a day to heat up lunch, visit the printer, or go to the restroom. I am trying to prepare classes enough in advance that I don't need to come in on weekends. I can grade assignments at home on Saturdays. Today I felt sort of caught up for the first time since we started and I rewarded myself by unboxing this desk toy I bought 18 months ago (I had to go check my receipt to remember!)

It is seven cubes made from seven metallic elements: aluminum, titanium, iron (actually steel, if I remember correctly), copper, tungsten, magnesium, and zinc. They are super exciting to hold because of the differences in density and thermal conductivity. 

If we are going to have a big virus outbreak on campus, it could be any day now. The three-day weekend coming up for Labor Day is probably going to show whether campus life is going to continue or not. Several other schools in our area are reporting huge increases in positive cases since reopening. So, we'll see how it goes.

The first days back on campus will set the tone for the year.

 We had our annual all-day faculty meeting Tuesday, through Zoom. Even though those in charge had promised it wouldn't be all day, it was 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. with only a short lunch break. I stayed home and "attended" while knitting my pandemic shawl. At the end of the day, I reached the bind off, so I can say that I made this whole shawl during the pandemic break.

Wednesday was the official "first day" of classes, but only the first year seminar actually met. I spent that whole day in my office with the door shut, trying to feel prepared for my classes. I keep thinking of more things that need to be done, so it doesn't feel like I'm making any progress.

The whole building has been stickered. Each of the four stairwells is designated either "up only" or "down only" which has made a quick run downstairs to the nearest printer a much longer trip. I save up as many print jobs as I can before I make the trek.

Thursday I had an 8 a.m. upper level class, in person. One of the students attended through Zoom, but the rest of us were in the classroom. Students had assigned seats, no two at the same table. They all wore masks correctly without complaint, and they wiped down their tables before and after class as if they'd been doing it for years. I tried to get the students to talk more than I usually would by asking them to take turns describing what they liked best about their previous chemistry classes. I found it hard to talk for the whole hour through my mask. I wore one of the chemistry-themed ones I bought online. It has the elastic ear loops and a nose wire, but it kept slipping down my nose so I spent a lot of time pulling it back into position. I know I'm not supposed to touch my face or my mask so much, so it increased my stress to do that. It was also really hard to keep going when I couldn't see anyone's expression. That was weird.

Friday I had the huge general chemistry class, over Zoom. It was scary to be in charge of a meeting that big, but things went okay. The only trouble was getting everyone into their breakout rooms for the quick team activity I wanted them to do. I had 17 breakout rooms, and I had pre-assigned all the students to rooms, but only about half of them were sent automatically. I had to manually sort the others into the correct rooms (thankfully I had printed out a copy of the list) and that took almost ten minutes. Some of the students didn't have their Zoom set to display their real names, so I had to stop and ask "xyzstud, what is your name?" and then find that name on the list. From what I can tell, the students need to add their college email addresses to their Zoom profiles and then this should work better, so I sent the class a note about this over the weekend.

On the other hand, some of the students asked questions during class. They sometimes asked questions I had literally just answered, but that's par for a first-year course. I tried to stop between topics and invite questions, and that seemed good. A handful (four or five) of students stayed after the class to ask more questions, too. As I said to someone later than evening: one down, only 42 to go!

My upper level class had lab Friday afternoon so I spent three more hours with them. It was almost like a normal lab in that class, other than the masks and the disinfectant wiping. I had to remind the students frequently to stay apart. They kept wanting to get close to each other to talk, or use the same equipment. I don't know if I can really prevent it but it raised my anxiety every time I saw it.

Our college president sent a letter to all the students while we were in lab. The letter basically said: "You students need to take this seriously and follow the rules this weekend. Other schools have had problems with student parties and if anything like that happens here, those involved will be suspended. I will not hesitate to shut classes down and send all of you home again if infections increase. If you want to stay, it's up to you to behave yourselves." I watched students from my office window this week and they seem to think that the rules don't apply outdoors. I saw one group of six young men shaking hands while talking unmasked. Several students sat around our outdoor tables having lunch together. They don't seem to understand that being outside is not magic protection. And I, for one, have no confidence that there aren't big stupid parties happening this weekend. I don't like looking at the students in my class and wondering which of them are going to disappoint me by becoming virus vectors, but that's exactly what I'm doing.

Sand through the hourglass

 Every August I feel unready for the academic year to start. I shouldn't even remark on it anymore.

There was finally action on campus. They put small tables inside every classroom to hold a bucket of disinfecting wipes, a gallon bottle of ethanol hand sanitizer (pictured; one of my colleagues is concerned the students will try to drink it), and a box of tissues. I don't know what the tissues are for. Large round stickers also were applied to all the floors and stairwells at about five foot intervals. They say "one-way traffic" and "stay 6 feet apart". We have four stairwells, and now two are Up only and two are Down only. Every room got a new capacity sign (applied with poster putty, so they're already falling) with absurdly small numbers. Half the chairs disappeared from the rooms, and some of the tables, as well as most of the hallway benches.

I worked on campus five days this week again. I went in earlier and earlier, stayed later and later, and still have a to-do list that is exhaustingly long. One day, I spent almost all the time converting worksheets into Google docs. Another day I entered all the lab assignments to the LMS. And as I work, I'm remembering additional things that still need to be done.

Our new faculty person came in on Thursday, which happened to be the same day I had scheduled the chemical waste removal. So that day I don't think I accomplished much, other than assisting the removal guy and walking the new guy around showing him where things are. Turns out, no one had been in his office since March. When he opened the door, we found the ceiling had leaked water all over his desk and his computer and the ceiling tile was ruined. Got that cleaned up, but it was not the way I would have wanted it. No one has gotten his nameplate on the door, or a mailbox in the main office. I don't even know his office phone number. It was a pretty pathetic welcome for him.

I now have 66 students in general chemistry. The thermometers for my lab kits are supposed to arrive Monday and then I can put the kits together. I packed sandwich baggies with the little stuff this week so that, hopefully, those items will not get lost or damaged. Sixty-six baggies: one strip of chromatography paper, two coffee filters, twelve toothpicks, a 9V battery, two corks, three plastic transfer pipets, a coffee cup lid, and a hexagonal nut. 

I have one student in the analytical class who will be attending remotely this semester. He just contacted me this morning about it, which is fine. So all those photos I took this summer will get used (still have to work out how that's going to be organized) at least once. I asked him to meet virtually with me so we can talk it over before the class actually starts next Thursday.

A pretty large number of students in both classes have responded to the Google forms I sent out last week asking for some basic information. Really, it was just a way to start engaging with them, but I did ask some important things like preferred name and pronouns. This week I sent another assignment to the general chemistry students to get them to do a Flipgrid and a Padlet, which are both tools we are going to use regularly. I want them to try it out ahead of time so it's not so scary later. So far, six students have done the assignment (all women, wouldn't you know).

Yes, my whole waking life is focused on school. I'm sure I'm boring, but I don't know what else I could do. It's only four days until the first class. I have a department chairs meeting and two other meetings Monday. Tuesday is an all-day Zoom faculty meeting (I could have sworn they promised it wouldn't bee all day on Zoom but whatever). Thursday at 8 am is my first class, in person. After that, it's no break or letting up until Thanksgiving.

I knit a pair of baby socks this week. I finished the ornament balls. I might start a new pair of adult size socks tonight.

Nothing feels ready

 I cannot believe it is August now. Only about a week and a half until classes start. I'm the least ready I have ever been, and it's all I can think about.

I finished the last of the analytical experiments on Tuesday, so now I have all the data and photographs for that class. Nothing is organized or in any form that students will be able to use, yet, but at least the lab work is finished. Now, for the lecture part of the course...which I have barely begun. I have a document named "Syllabus" that is mostly empty.

I staged all the supplies for the general chemistry kits on the lab benches. We're still waiting for the thermometers and the cardboard boxes to arrive, but everything else is here. I packed 65 baggies of baking soda and 65 baggies of the sand and sugar mixture, and I filled 65 1-mL bottles with Lugol's solution (it's an aqueous iodine+potassium iodide solution) as well as 65 bottles of nail polish remover. Those are all the chemicals we're using for the kits, and I'm only a little nervous about the nail polish remover because it's ethyl acetate and flammable. I hope the amount is too small to be a problem. I'll put warnings on the labels and the instructions.

On Friday, I spent the morning creating Google forms for each of my classes. We've been told to communicate with our students more often than we would have in the past, and especially to send information about class modality. I sent the textbook and required materials information last week, and since I didn't get much of a response, I wanted to send something this week that prompted a response. This week's email describes the class format, for lecture and lab, and links to the form. The forms basically ask for preferred names, pronouns, the student's goals for the class, and anything they are concerned about. For general chemistry, I also asked for them to tell me if they needed to be assigned to the same lab cohort as another student (for example, if they are commuters and carpooling to class) and I asked them to draw a picture of what "chemistry" means to them and upload it. The picture is something I usually do on 3x5 notecards on the first day of class, but I won't have the opportunity to do that this year...

...because on Thursday I received official permission to teach general chemistry online. It will be synchronously through Zoom. Because there is no room on campus that can hold the number of students I have with distancing. I asked for, and got, permission to hold exams in person. Those will be in the campus ballroom which is also being used for cafeteria overflow seating this year. Of course, everything could change by the date of the first exam (in mid-September) but I'm pretty happy about this arrangement. I just cannot figure out how to give an exam-like assessment online to over 60 students without having rampant cheating. I might still have to come up with something when the inevitable happens, but I found I can at least stop worrying about this one thing for now.

I hardly did any knitting this week. It was the first week since early March that I was allowed on campus five continuous days, and I tried to make the most of them. I came home exhausted every evening and usually only managed to stay awake until about 9 o'clock, dozing off on the sofa while watching whatever TV BAM had on. Of course, after sleeping for four or five hours, I wake up again with my head full of panic and worry and I can't always get back to sleep before it's time to get up at 6. I try to go into the living room and read a book for a while, and sometimes that helps but not always. Therefore, I only made a tiny sweater ornament from the yarn leftover from the most recent pair of socks, and I'm still working on the beaded ball ornaments, but I haven't even picked out the next thing I want to make. I need to clear space in my head for that this weekend and look through my queue.

I fit in a morning walk every day this week. It was cool every day, around 15 C. The deer were plentiful and they seem to be bunching up in herds again after ranging the park in pairs or trios plus fawns for the past couple of months. I see a lot more of the bucks now, too. Two of the biggest guys are starting to look seriously burly but those two hang out together and I haven't seen any aggression from any of them so far. Too bad I won't be able to get out there as often after classes start. I also noticed I haven't seen or heard a red-winged blackbird there in at least a month, and the cardinals have gone quiet, though I still see them. The birds now are ones I don't know, they make a variety of cheep-cheep songs, but very different from the noise of spring. I saw (and heard) the first V of Canada geese flying over the neighborhood on Thursday. 

Keep on keeping on

July has ended. It's August. That fact feels like doom sometimes, but so far I'm holding it together... mostly.

This week I put in more long hours in lab on the 2.5 days I was allowed to be there. I finished the redox titration experiment and did about half of the next one, an argentometric titration. Argentometric means with silver, so I have blotches of brown silver staining on my fingers from where I unknowingly touched some of the solutions. That will wear off in a few days. Here's one of the solutions, showing the red-brown iron indicator color.

I just have the analysis of the unknown(s) remaining for next week and then I will do the final lab experiment, which is another titration. Next week, we are allowed to be on campus every day so I should be able to get this all done by Wednesday. 

And then I have to start packing kits for general chemistry. Most of the supplies we ordered have arrived; we're waiting on the thermometers and a couple of other things. I have large bags of M&Ms and Skittles with me this weekend so I can sort them by color and pack little sample bags for the kits. I went to Lowe's yesterday evening and bought a box of metal nuts that will be part of another experiment. (Lowe's was pretty empty and everyone I saw was wearing a mask and keeping their distance. The more stressful part for me was using the self-checkout lane because apparently I forgot how money works! It took me a long time to remember how to pay using my credit card in the machine.)

Friday while working from home, I started going through the general chemistry lab schedule systematically. I updated the procedure handouts for the old experiments, checked over the ones I wrote this summer for the new experiments, revised the instructor's handbook and rubrics, and then posted links to the procedures on the LMS. I also programmed the weekly lab safety quizzes in the LMS. I only got four weeks done, but I feel like it was good to get started on this.

Only two students have responded to my email and video about textbooks. One student has emailed me four times on different topics. The other one couldn't find the book list on our bookstore website and I had to send him step-by-step instructions. I wish I knew if this was evidence that all the other students are having no problems with the textbooks rather than only these students have bothered to read my email.

I missed my appointment with the counselor on Tuesday. She called our house phone instead of my mobile and my husband (not knowing who it was) told her I was working. Then he didn't tell me she had called until an hour later. I emailed her afterward to apologize for the mixup, and she said I could reschedule, but I don't know if I will. I feel that I didn't get that much out of talking with her the first time. 

I received a summons for jury duty in the mail. Because of course. I haven't been summoned in 17 years of living here. I was summoned once in Tucson when I was about 18, and I went and sat in the courthouse for a day but didn't get chosen for a jury. The report date on this summons is in October, but I have to send in the qualification questionnaire now. I did that online today and received an auto-response that one of my answers may qualify me for excusal. I'm supposed to check back with the system "periodically" to find out the court's decision. If I don't get excused, I'm going to ask for a postponement until next summer. I just hope I get it...how do I do jury duty while teaching classes?

One thing I found odd about the instructions in the mailing was the assumption that everyone will drive a personal vehicle to the courthouse. There was a map and pretty substantial instructions for parking in a certain city lot and taking our downtown free shuttle to the court building. I would probably take the city bus instead (well, maybe not during a pandemic).

A slightly better week.

This week wasn't as bad. I know, that's not saying much, but still.

I worked a lot again. Monday and Thursday I put in about ten hours on campus, as well as part of Wednesday. I got a lot done which does make me feel much better, all by itself. I finished the trials of the electrogravimetric analysis. I did six trials each of three unknown ores. They had to stir for over an hour each, but I have five sets of apparatus so I could do five simultaneously. While that happened, I made solutions and did the first of the four titration experiments, a redox titration with chromium(VI). I did four standardization trials one day and then twelve unknown trials (two different unknowns) the next day. I would have done more trials but I used up all the chromium(VI) solution, and I would have to standardize again if I made more. This is the endpoint color, kind of blue-purple.

On Tuesday I had the virtual doctor appointment, with one of the PAs. She was kind, and asked lots of questions. The virtual thing was strange but no stranger than teaching a class virtually. Anyway, she and my doctor don't think I'm close to menopause because I'm not experiencing any other symptoms. The PA thought it could be a thyroid problem, so Wednesday on my way to campus I went to the lab and had some blood drawn for those tests, which all came back totally normal. Therefore, my doctor recommends mindfulness and stress management techniques. Sigh. I mean, I'm glad there's no huge medical problem! But, it would be easier to have something that could be treated in a more concrete way. Instead, it kind of feels like "this is all in your head" so snap out of it already. I have another appointment with the counselor on Tuesday and I'll see what she says.

Today I went to one of the local basic hair salons (it's a national chain, no frills) and had my hair shortened by about ten inches. I do this every other year: get it cut as short as I can while retaining the ability to make a low ponytail. Then I do nothing while the hair grows out again for two years or so, which is when it starts to be annoying and hot. I knew I was due for this haircut in June, but I wasn't brave enough to go right after salons reopened. I had almost decided to wait another year, or maybe until Christmas, but I suddenly changed my mind. The place I used two years ago is gone but these chains have outlets all over the city. This one had an online check in thing so I found the location with the shortest wait time, checked in there, and then drove over. It was pretty slick. I did have to wait about 5 minutes in the shop after I arrived because both stylists were busy with other people, but there was no one else waiting. I feel much better now. The hair should stop tangling in my clothes (and face mask!) and it should be cooler. So that was a successful adventure.

I immediately changed my clothes and washed my hands when I got home, just in case. 

We received several messages from the Provost this week. One was about being flexible with students who are experiencing issues and maybe can't do class work the way we would normally expect this fall. Another was the long-awaited announcement that the college has purchased a site license for Zoom and we can all sign up for accounts. It feels like this new guy is starting to make things happen, and that's good. On the other hand, I received access to my department budget yesterday and found that our equipment purchase and equipment repair lines were eliminated and the supplies budget was cut 20%. I don't know how well that's going to work out. It's hard to teach chemistry without buying stuff.

Today I made a screen capture video for my Quant students describing the textbooks and other required materials for the class. I usually just send an email listing the ISBN and brief comments, but I wanted them to hear my voice this time. I made a Google Slides deck with pictures of the books and the most important details and then I just talked through that (for 11 minutes, which I know is "too long" according to the experts, but I don't care). I'm going to do one for General Chemistry too, but those students don't know me already so I want to put a little more time into preparing what I say and how I say it. 

I've been working on those knitted ornaments. Each one has taken about two hours, start to finish. I have made five so far in different combinations of yarn and beads. The yarn is leftover from a hat I made a long time ago and the beads are leftover from various lace projects. Each ornament only uses up about 4 grams of yarn, but 100 beads, so I will run out of beads first and then need to decide whether to buy more.

Time is even more wobbly than usual

I can hardly believe another week has gone by. Time is just...totally weird right now.

I worked another 2.5 days in the lab this week. I finished the first two experiments for Quant and got things set up for the third. The experiment I was working mostly, each student starts with a different indicator solution (they don't know the identity), so I repeated the whole procedure for each of the six indicators we had ready. This way, if it comes to it, I can give different students different data and they won't all have exactly the same analysis. It seemed to take forever to get through these. These solutions do look pretty, though. This is bromothymol blue:

All of the next experiments require students to analyze replicates of an unknown substance, and I'm not entirely sure how that's going to work for me. For the one I am starting next week, I have five sets of equipment so I am making five samples and going to try to run them all simultaneously. Hopefully, that won't take all day and I'll be able to do at least two or three different unknowns before moving on. All the other experiments are titrations, and I haven't figured out a way to titrate more than one sample at a time.

I also need to put the data together for students at some point. Right now, all the photos are in my Google drive, notes are written in a physical notebook, and spectra are on a flash drive. I need to start putting that together (I'm thinking of using a Google Slides file for each different set) before I forget all the details. There's also all the lecture prep I haven't really started yet...

Sunday afternoon I had my little knitting group scheduled. It's just me and two other faculty members. They asked me to teach them how to knit...goodness, that was two years ago!...and we've been meeting at my house about once a month since then. They are both making simple potholders - very, very slowly - but really this is an excuse to get together and talk. None of us has many friends here; I think it's hard for us to make friends as adults. We've been meeting virtually since March. Anyway, only one of them showed up this time. We emailed the other person afterwards and it turned out she had had an emergency (I hesitate to be more specific on the interwebz). I was relieved to hear from her, but sad that things are not going well in her life. I almost wrote the common line about "let me know if there's anything I can do" but I didn't because (a) the number of things I could actually do and would be willing to do at this point is pretty small, and (b) if it was me, I would read that as a sort of empty offer and I don't want her to feel similarly ambiguous about it. Instead, I wrote about how much I valued her friendship and wanted things to be better. We're going to try to meet virtually again soon. 

Tuesday morning I had my counseling session. The counselor was nice, I guess. I haven't ever had counseling before so I didn't know what to expect. She suggested that my troubles could be hormonal, that maybe I'm in perimenopause, and I should talk to my physician about some tests. Since my bad episodes only last one or two days, she didn't seem to be too worried about me. She suggested a book on stress management, physical exercise, and using an app for mindfulness and meditation. We are going to talk again in a couple of weeks to see how I am doing. I did feel better after talking with her. She reminded me that it's been a very stressful time (which I knew, but somehow it helps when someone else says it) and that I am grieving the loss of our staff people (which only happened two weeks ago - another weird time-thing - it feels like longer). I have a virtual appointment with my doctor (actually with his PA) next week to follow up on the hormone angle. I don't expect that to be productive since I don't have any other symptoms of menopause yet. 

And after that, I went back to the dentist and had my filling replaced. It was not a big deal and didn't hurt at all after the Novocaine or whatever they used. My mouth was numb until suppertime, and that was that. Everyone there was super-nice to me. They asked me all about how I am preparing for fall semester and how I feel about school starting. I was surprised at how much I talked, since I don't normally do a lot of chit chat. Maybe I was feeling more open after the counseling. 

Imperfect Foods has changed our delivery date because they have drivers for our area now, I guess. All our boxes so far have come by FedEx on Saturdays, but soon that will change to Wednesdays. It looks like tomorrow's box is on the previous schedule and then we don't get anything next week, with the next shipment scheduled for the Wednesday of the following week. I'm hoping that with an IF driver we can start returning some of the packing material and cold packs we've been collecting. BAM used some of the cold packs when he bought ice cream this week, but there is a limit to how many we really need. These IF deliveries have been really nice these last few weeks. We got mahi mahi and salmon last week and also ate some smoked salmon from a previous box, and I felt very virtuous for eating so much fish!

I finished the retirement gift scarf this week. It has been in progress since late April, but I really enjoyed the pattern. I like double knitting. I like having the design develop on both sides at the same time. The pattern is Crystalline from Knitty magazine. Being an old crystallographer, I was attracted to the panels featuring different symmetries. I hope my colleague will like it too. I need to figure out whether I should drop it off for him at school, or take it to his house, or mail it. 

I have been working on the second of a pair of socks this week and making pretty good progress. Tonight or tomorrow I will start the next thing, which is going to be some Christmas ornaments. They will use up some yarn I've had in stash for a long time and make good gifts. Since I didn't go anywhere fun this summer I didn't collect anything for people, and I'd like to have something more to give family and close friends than just a random book from the person's Amazon wish list.

This can't be what winning looks like

Another rough week. I keep reminding myself that I'm healthy and safe, and sometimes that helps. 

This week, I worked in the labs on campus 2.5 days. I feel pretty good about what I accomplished. I finished one of the analytical experiments and started working on the next one. I tried out a bunch of simple general chemistry experiments for students to do at home, wrote procedures for them, and compiled a list of materials. I will be making kits to send home with them so they can do these activities wherever they are. I bought 50 small digital kitchen balances so each kit will have one and my lab manager is ordering all the other supplies now. So for the fall semester, I have six in-person lab experiments, five do-at-home experiments, and three back up experiments the students will be able to do at home with their kits if we have to go fully online sometime and can't continue the in-person labs. I just need the students to be able to pick up their lab kits during the first week - otherwise I guess I'll be mailing out 50 boxes somehow.

We faculty met our new Provost Tuesday afternoon. He held a two-hour Zoom meeting and he took questions from the attendees as well as talking about the questions we had submitted ahead of time. I didn't feel like he gave many answers. Most of what he said was "we're working on the plan for that" and promises to share the plan soon. He also spent the last twenty or thirty minutes talking about what he thinks are the problems with the small liberal arts college model (basically the way financial aid is distributed) and how he thinks he can fix us by making some changes like adding revenue-positive graduate programs. Well, I will try to give him a chance, but I feel as if I've heard all of this before. 

I had a dentist appointment Wednesday for a regular cleaning first thing in the morning. I had to wear a face mask of course, and call from the parking lot before I could come inside. The hygienist measured my temperature (new), oxygen levels (new), and blood pressure (not new). My blood pressure was surprisingly high, and continues to worry me. I normally have nice, low blood pressure, so it was quite startling. I had to do a mouth rinse with some truly disgusting tasting solution. The hygienist said it was salt or sodium bicarbonate, with mint flavoring. The rest of the cleaning was as in the before times although she wore some extra gear for protection. The dentist recommended that I replace one of my old amalgam fillings. I had one replaced last summer too. They are probably close to forty years old, but no one told me that replacements were a thing. I assumed they lasted forever, you know? At first, I thought I would wait six months and do the replacement at my next regular visit, but then I started worrying: what will the pandemic situation be like in January 2021? Will dentists be open then? Will I have time then? Will I even be employed and have insurance then? So I decided to have it done right away - I'm going back next week.

Thursday I was on campus getting some more lab work done. At about 4 p.m. a thunderstorm rolled in and it was quite nice to see some rain after the week of heat and intense sun we've had. But then the electricity went out, so I couldn't keep working. I stood around with the lab manager for twenty minutes or so to see if the power would come back, but when it didn't I went home. I wasn't able to download this week's lab photos before the storm, so I don't have any to show you here.

Wednesday was the worst day I've had in a while. I started crying for no apparent reason in the shower. After the dentist I cried most of the way home in the car. I was so upset that I called the EAC from home and made a counseling appointment for next week (same day as my filling, so that will be fun). The man who answered my call was very calm and nice-sounding. He just asked me a few questions like my name, phone number, and employer and scheduled the appointment. They aren't doing in person sessions at this time, but I had a choice of telephone or virtual (Zoom, I suppose) and I chose telephone just because if I cry again I will feel less exposed if the counselor can't see me.

Part of me thinks there is something wrong even beyond the pandemic and associated stress. I know I felt almost this bad for a while last January, and there have been times in the last few years when I didn't feel good but it didn't seem like something anyone could help me with. I couldn't even explain what the problem was. Over time, I've started feeling more and more guilty that all I do is talk it out with BAM, and he doesn't deserve that burden (although he doesn't complain). Back in January, the bad feeling lasted more than one day, and I called the EAC one morning before class to get an appointment but no one answered. I was annoyed that the supposedly 24/7 service wasn't, and I didn't try again. Until this week. I can't even describe what I feel bad about, and that's sort of frustrating. It's just a general badness, a hopelessness, a sense that things are not right. I don't feel like I'm bad or that I will harm myself, not anything like that. Just a feeling that everything is wrong and I can't make it better. Usually, after a sleep I wake up feeling normal and fine again and I can't figure out what happened.

So we'll see if this counselor can help me. Meanwhile I have to continue preparing two classes with their labs for next month, while COVID-19 cases are surging all around here again, worse than March and April. It makes me angry that all the sacrifices I've made in staying home for the past four months are wasted because of the idiots who are out there behaving stupidly. I'm angry that I'm going to have to go back to school in a few weeks surrounded by people who might make me sick and that those people are endangering not only the health of everyone else but also the learning experience for all my students. I think my job is hard enough to do well under the best of circumstances and now I don't look forward to any part of it. Until sometime in June I actually had some hope that we'd be able to beat this virus, but I think the virus is definitely winning now. At least our governor made face masks mandatory as of next Monday. She's on my side and I'm on hers.

July: Time to Panic?

This has been a weepy week for me. I seem to be even more fragile than usual, getting teary at just about any provocation. Of course, there is a lot of provocation happening, but I still feel weak and stupid. BAM keeps telling me to go easy on myself, that there's a pandemic out there and it's okay to not be fine. That makes me cry, too.

I didn't see C on campus. Word is, terminated employees are only allowed back on campus with human resources supervision, so she had to schedule a day next week to come clean out her desk. I emailed her personal account to ask if I could pack for her or bring stuff to her home but I haven't had an answer. I left a gift bag with a card and the Queen Anne's Lace shawl on her desk.

The faculty in general are pretty angry about the staff terminations. We have not been told who was let go, so we keep finding out only when our emails to specific staff go to someone else. A group of us started compiling a list, just so we know something, as there has been no messaging about what positions no longer exist or who to contact instead. Three of my favorite staff are on the list. The administration seems to assume the faculty are completely absent from campus, physically and mentally, right now. 

My lab manager is furious at how all of the staff was treated. She would quit if she didn't have a child in college using our tuition exchange benefit. I don't blame her, either, although the thought makes me nauseous. The department would not be able to function without her. Maybe, for a couple of weeks not during a pandemic, but definitely not now. I remember what it was like when our previous staff person quit and there was a month gap before our current person started. I worked seven days a week just to have minimal labs prepared in addition to my other work, and none of the other stuff like ordering, inventory, maintenance, and compliance was done at all.

I worked in the lab two and a half days this week. I made all the unknowns for quantitative analysis first because I was worried we would need to order more supplies, but I had enough. Then I started photographing the lab experiments as I do them. I'm working backwards from the last-scheduled, in case we switch to fully online partway through the semester, hoping that the students get to be in lab in person for the first few experiments, at least. I plan to take the photos and put them in order in a Google Slides or something like that so the students can follow along, read the data from the photos and do the analysis themselves. I took my old digital camera because I thought it would be easier to transfer files from that to my office PC rather than my iPhone, and it is but the quality of the photos is surprisingly poor. I think I'm not getting the auto-focus to work properly and I don't have the motivation to repeat everything again, so I'll probably just annotate the photos when they're a bit fuzzy.

The other days, I spent time working out some experiments the general chemistry students can do at home or in their dorm rooms, on the weeks they are not in the lab. Our current plan is to split each lab section into two groups and have them alternate coming to lab, but they need something to do on the non-lab weeks. I found a book while I was unpacking my office that has a bunch of home chemistry experiments and I'm modifying those. I plan to make up little kits to check out to the students so they can take all the supplies with them and be ready whenever we might switch to fully online. The biggest question is whether I can buy sixty or so small digital balances in time, because most of the experiments require a balance. 

It's July and every year I feel like a switch is pulled July 1. On that date historically I go from "no problem, plenty of time, enjoy summer" to "OMG I have so much to do and there's only a few weeks left!" I felt the threat of July all week this year, but the level of panic does not seem to be worse. Or maybe it is and my weepiness and my inability to sleep a full night are signs that I'm pretending not to recognize. I haven't slept past about 4 a.m. in at least a week now. For a few days I was getting out of bed and reading on the sofa until it was the normal time to get up, but the last several days we've had such hot weather (temperatures above 30 C, lows only down to about 20 C at night) that I started getting up an hour earlier so that I could take my walk before it got uncomfortable to be outside. This works, but now I fall asleep watching TV at 9 p.m. and still wake too early. 

Next week we have our first meeting with the new Provost. He asked us to submit questions ahead of time on a Google Doc, and people have been typing those in all day today. It would be amusing if most of the questions were other than "How is the college going to keep us all from dying next month?" So that meeting should be interesting. 

Today is fired.

This week I did some more unpacking the office. I was there all day Monday and emptied most of the boxes, which meant making a pretty enormous mess. All the books fit on the shelves. I found my desk supplies and was able to fill up the organizer cart.

I went in again Wednesday afternoon and finished emptying boxes. I got most of the files put into drawers. The biggest remaining pile is stuff I need to go through carefully, to maybe shred or maybe scan, like old committee papers. I've already dumped my recycle bin at least five times and on my way out that night I took a box full of papers to the shredding bin, so it's not like I'm keeping everything. I just need to look at things carefully first and I didn't have a chance to do that at all when we moved out last year. Keeping focused on cleaning up this mess helps to distract me from the despair and fear of the pandemic, so that's good I guess. Here's the status after Wednesday:

Yesterday afternoon was the college annual budget presentation. Like many schools, our fiscal year begins July 1. The Board of Trustees met and approved the budget yesterday morning and I do appreciate our administration keeping their word to communicate with us as soon as possible. The news, however, was grim. Perhaps the worst budget situation we've had since I joined the faculty. We've been using our savings the past three years, trying to buy time for the fundraisers and recruiters to shore up revenue, and that hasn't worked. We have a huge debt because of the building projects and steadily decreasing enrollment, and now a pandemic. The senior leadership team had already announced voluntary reductions in salary a month ago (10%, which unless they are getting paid even more outrageously than I believe, is hardly enough). No raises for anyone now (as if!). No retirement contributions. Thirty or so staff positions eliminated.

My lab manager's position was not eliminated, thank the gods! but has been reduced to 30 hours per week. As supervisor, I had to sit in on the conference call between her and the Provost this afternoon. My staff person was far stronger than I would have been in her place. I'm only grateful that I was informed by the Provost yesterday and had time to negotiate (well, beg, really), because the original plan was to put her on a 9 month contract which would mean my department would have no staff support for the summer months (summer classes, summer research, all the prep work that happens during those months like hazardous waste disposal) and I argued that we needed her too much. I suggested the 30 hour week instead, and the Provost got that approved overnight. I still don't know how we're going to function. She and I will talk on Monday and start sorting it out.

That call was difficult enough, but afterwards the Provost called me back and told me that our building assistant is one of the people whose positions were entirely eliminated. C has been our secretary forever. She has worked at the college for 42 years! She knows everybody and is beloved by all, as far as I can tell. She is the absolute best, and does so much from handling our mail to scheduling rooms to just being fun to talk to. No clue how that stuff is going to get done now. She's had a rotten time with the construction - last summer they made her move her office three times for no good reason, ending up in what was basically a biology closet - and she never got angry. She has listened to me bitch and moan about whatever I thought there was to be upset about for all these years. I cried on the phone, and the Provost cried, but what good is that? I won't even get to see her again because we aren't authorized to be on campus on the same days next week. If I were her, I'd pack my stuff and be out of there over the weekend, anyway, so I wouldn't have to cry with everyone all day. I'm looking through my FOs to find a suitable gift. I might give her my Queen Anne's Lace shawl. I think she deserves more than a pair of socks. 

This day, this week, this year is fired.

Moved Back With My Own Kind

Being on campus was not as weird as I expected. It felt almost like coming back after a long weekend or a holiday, but everything looked pretty much the same as I remembered. There were new signs posted on the exterior doors with the mask requirement, and I had to call Campus Safety to get in to the building where my temporary office is. It was almost empty of people, but that's not unusual in the summer. I saw some of the Physical Plant staff, and the Mailroom person, and one faculty colleague who said he was also on campus to move offices.

On Wednesday, I was there for about three hours in the afternoon. I packed all my books and most of the files from my file cabinet. I had kept all the boxes from last year's move so I was able to reuse them. I filled 21 boxes that day.

On Thursday afternoon I was back to finish. Our Logistics person had already moved the first boxes out of there so I had room to work. The last eight boxes were not packed with much organization. I had to take down all the plaques and things on the walls, all the papers from my door and bulletin board, and I basically dumped all the contents of my desk drawers into boxes, willy-nilly. I know that's going to be hell to organize later, but I just wanted to be done once I had started. I was surprised that it only took about an hour. This is "Winter Camp" empty:

I am taking the five-drawer file cabinet in the back right and the short bookshelf in the front right to the new building. I do not get to keep that Steelcase desk that I've had for 17 years, and I will miss it a lot even though it's beat up and old. I hope the next occupant of this office appreciates it! I will also miss my faculty and staff neighbors from Winter Camp. It was a nice experience to interact with them on a daily basis this past year. It gave me a different perspective than when I was only in the science building every day.

Next I went over to the science building to check things out over there. I carried my small carpet and a tote bag of loose items with me. I saw our building secretary and my lab manager for the first time in three months and had nice chats (masked and at a safe distance, hopefully) with both of them. I wandered through all our labs just looking at "my" stuff. It felt good to be "home" again.

The Logistics team showed up with the rest of my boxes, so I helped them arrange those in my new office and then I started unpacking. This next photo is the new office, with most of the stuff in a pile just inside the door. Half a dozen or so additional boxes are out in the hallway.

I used LibraryThing both times I packed to keep track of my books. (I have all my books in the database and already tagged to designate the ones in my office versus at home.) Last year, I tagged each book with a letter corresponding to what box it was packed in, and I repacked in those same boxes this year. LibraryThing made it easy to generate a list of what should be in each box, and so far I'm only missing one book (I think I brought it home last summer and forgot to update the database). As I unpacked, I deleted the box tag from the database. I know, this is somewhat excessive, but it makes me feel much better to be organized. It's like I have control over a small part of my life. I emptied four of the nine book boxes before I had to quit for the day. Logistics should have brought my file cabinet over today so that next week I can start reloading it. I will also take my new desk organizer to campus next week; it has been in my spare bedroom since March.

Working on this helped me to put out of mind tor a short while that we're still in the midst of a pandemic, that all is not right in the world, that I don't really have a clue how fall semester is going to go, and my other worries. It felt good just to do something, make something happen. 

Ready?

Tomorrow I am planning to return to campus for the first time since March 23. It will be my first time going anywhere in three months. I have been permitted to go to pack up my things in my temporary office and have them moved to my new office in the new science building. I'm feeling nervous about it, because I don't know what it will be like on campus, but I think I am ready to take this step.

Last week I had to begin doing the daily COVID-19 self-screen, which is an online survey with questions asking about symptoms and travel/contact with others. Every day before 9 am I have to submit this survey. On Wednesday there was a strong thunderstorm here at midday, and some tree limbs fell on the power lines about three houses down from mine, taking out our electricity. We were without electricity for 27 hours, until late afternoon on Thursday. For all that time, I didn't have internet and I was trying to conserve phone battery as much as I could. On Thursday morning, since I couldn't do the self-screen online, I called Campus Safety to ask what I should do. The dispatcher filled out a paper form for me. Then I got a nasty-gram email from Human Resources, scolding me for not doing the online survey. I answered that I HAD done it, by phone, and they said "well, you should have called us, not Campus Safety!" Well excuse me, jerks! I could have done nothing at all, but I made an effort and CSO had no other instructions so I think we did admirably! 

I'm making a list of what I need to bring home from my office to work on for fall classes. When we evacuated in March, I only brought one box and one tote bag home, and it was only things I needed for my spring classes in progress. I'm only allowed on campus Mondays, Thursdays, and afternoons on Wednesdays, so I'll still need to do the majority of preparation at home this summer. I need textbooks, and files from my office computer (I could use the VPN to remote in, but it takes a long time and is clunky. Much faster to just copy things to my flash drive when I'm there.)

I'm required to wear a mask at all times and to sanitize everything I touch (I don't know how that's going to happen, unless someone has left cleaning supplies for me). A few weeks ago my PhD alma mater had "germ keys" for sale in their alumni e-newsletter, and I bought a bunch of them (from a somewhat-shady Ebay seller based in Hong Kong). They look something like this:

They are for pressing elevator/keypad buttons and opening doors without touching. They haven't arrived yet, but the tracking information says they are being processed by Customs at the port of entry. My plan is to possibly engrave them with people's names and give them to my department colleagues and other people I like. In the meantime I am thinking of wearing a pair of thin winter gloves for opening doors on campus. I have to dig around in the box of winter accessories in the hall closet to find them.

In other news, we received our first box from Imperfect Foods on Saturday. I signed up in mid-April and was on the waitlist for about seven weeks. It was kind of fun to pick out what we wanted one night last week, and everything arrived in pretty good shape although the box looked like it had been dropped upside-down a few times in transit. The blueberries had escaped from their container and were rolling around loose. One of the tomatoes was slightly smashed and another had a black bruise. Everything else seems fine and it has been a joy to have an enlarged variety of produce in the kitchen. If this helps us cut down on the number/length of trips to the grocery store, I'll consider it a win. We set up our second box yesterday and may have gone a little overboard, but I like that we can say "never send us cilantro" (or whatever), and I like that there is much more variety available than I was expecting.

The college still hasn't given more information about fall semester, other than the change in semester calendar. We are expecting that there will be limits on the number of students that can be in the lab at a time, and I'm hoping that number is 12 so that we can have our usual-size sections. I participated in advising for incoming first-year students the past two Mondays and now we have 21 registered for both sections of General Chemistry lab. The Registrar emailed me yesterday afternoon to ask what I plan to do about it, and I said I wasn't sure I should increase the section capacity (normally we have caps of 24, but if I can't have 12 students at a time this fall, I shouldn't do that) and I wasn't sure I could add another lab section. If I add another lab section, that will increase the total number of students in the lecture section to at least 60 and up to 72. That's not good for me (I teach the lecture). I told the Registrar I hoped to have more clarity before the next advising date, which is thankfully not until middle of July.

A bad week

This will be sort of random.

This past week was hard. Last weekend there were all the protests for Black Lives Matter after George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, followed by the rioting, looting, police misbehavior, and all that. Even here we had a riot with fires and looting downtown, followed by two nights of curfew although the protesting has continued daily. The National Guard came in and set up a perimeter downtown with their big vehicles and military equipment and it wasn't good to see that we've come to that during a pandemic.

Yeah, remember the pandemic? Still happening.

On Monday afternoon our governor suddenly canceled her stay-at-home order that was supposed to last another two weeks. Businesses are starting to open, retail on Thursday, dine-in restaurants next Monday. Of course that is a good thing for business owners and employees, but the virus is still out there and this increases the probability of more infections.

On Tuesday I was notified (by about six different emails) that my science faculty colleagues and I have permission to return to work on campus, starting June 15. We had to do some online training related to COVID-19 safety, which actually was good. That was due by yesterday Starting next week we all have to do an online self-check before 9 am every day whether we're coming to campus or not. After June 15 we're allowed to come on certain days of the week to keep occupancy less than 50%. I get Monday, Thursday, and afternoon on Wednesday.

On Tuesday I learned a friend was laid off. He worked in student activities for a small college in California. He lost his on-campus housing at the same time, so now he's planning to move back to his parents' house in Pennsylvania because there are no jobs open. Colleges and universities are not hiring. I want to help, but what can I do? I don't want him to move in with me, and he'd rather live with his own family anyway.

On Thursday the college president announced that we will be starting fall semester one week earlier than previously planned. 

On Friday the college president announced that we have eliminated fall break and will end the semester on the Friday before Thanksgiving. The whole week of Thanksgiving will be break, followed by a week of "virtual assessment" which I think means online final exams. This makes our 15.5 week semester (already shortened a year ago from 16 weeks) now only 14 weeks. Over the last three years I have needed to cut two full weeks out of all my fall semester courses, and it is maddening.

Friday afternoon I attended the college's Vigil for Racial Justice on Zoom, which was organized by our Student Senate (good on them!). I cried (who cares about my tears). It was really nice. The chaplain prayed, the president gave a good speech, the director of the diversity center spoke, and we had a moment of silence (actually more like 5 minutes of silence) while a presentation of the black lives lost played on screen.

The virus is still out there. I'm still facing the probability that I will teach all my courses online, from my second-floor spare room or from my campus office/bunker. Everything is on fire and it's all unfair, but especially unfair to non-white people so why do I think I have anything to complain about? Last night I had trouble sleeping again, so I got up and read a book for an hour or so and then fell asleep on the sofa until 6 am.

There were some nice things this week. Let's see...I put up the umbrella and lawn chairs I bought last week and I look forward to enjoying them.

On Friday I got to chat over Zoom with a friend from college I haven't seen in years (how is that possible?) It was so good to see her, and talk for an hour. I kind of miss having friends.

Last weekend BAM and I played Tales of the Arabian Nights over Zoom with some friends here in town. And we had our regular game group over Zoom Tuesday night. 

Today after lunch I spent two hours cleaning maple seeds and other debris out of the gutters. It felt useful to climb the big ladder and scoop muck and flush the downspouts. I got muddy and sweaty, scraped my knee on the ladder. I had to strip off all my clothes in the garage and take a second shower afterwards. I saw my neighbor, who was also doing yard work. 

I really want things to be "normal" again... but I don't also. Things weren't so great before the pandemic, for a lot of people. I don't want to just forget all of that because it doesn't directly affect me. I'm confused, and worried about the future, and overwhelmed by my work responsibilities (but I feel guilty because I have a job when so many people don't). Half the days I don't want to face getting out of bed, but I do because at least I can go for a walk in the park after breakfast and that calms me. What am I going to do when I can't take that walk every day? When winter comes again and it's dark and cold? When the virus finally catches up with me or people I love?