I remember wishing my students a good break only a week ago. I was aware of the coronavirus, even with my almost-total avoidance of news media. I had heard about Italy and China, the various cruise ships, and I knew it was coming here. I spent Saturday having a birthday party for my spouse. We had a dozen close friends over for board games all afternoon and evening, played Jimmy Buffet records, and enjoyed the sunlight. Sunday we went to a film, walked in the park because it was another warm day, and went out for dinner. Monday we went shopping at our favorite places and ate out again. Tuesday we visited the local botanical garden and sculpture park and had our regular board game night. It was a lovely few days that I felt I needed to relax and reacquire some equilibrium.
Wednesday I came to the office to get started on my long to-do list. Almost as soon as I arrived, a colleague found me and delivered a long rant about how the college should close immediately to "flatten the curve." I was not prepared to think about any of that and I reacted with intense anger, though not directed at him. I felt the way I did during January/February 2019 when the college closed for the polar vortex and other weather events at total of nine days, including an unprecedented entire week. The feeling has something to do with loss of control, which I absolutely hate, and also grief. I tried to grade lab reports, but I seem to have lost the ability to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time. It didn't help that our faculty Slack channel blew up with rumors after that same colleague talked to our Provost and we got a hint about the impending doom.
Today hasn't been much better. We had an emergency all-faculty meeting this morning to hear the plan, which is to extend spring break another week and transition all courses to distance learning starting March 23. Questions remain. A lot of them. I am particularly grateful that our Provost acknowledged that some classes, such as those with a lab component, are going to be difficult to transition. During polar vortex, no one ever said that even when I pointed out that I had lost 60% of my lab periods to date. Then, it felt as if my work was not valued, that I was expected to just discard all the work of building an awesome experience for students and pretend it didn't matter. This time, I felt seen as opposed to dismissed. We still don't know what we're going to do about the labs, and they are a big concern for me because I'm mostly teaching labs this semester, including one upper-level course that is more than half lab.
The official announcement went to students and parents after the meeting, but so far no students have contacted me. That's good because I don't know what to tell them. I did finish grading that set of lab reports. It feels like all I've done for two days is talk to frightened, overwhelmed colleagues and look at these damned lab reports that no one will care about. The students won't even get them back, I'm guessing.
I'm weepy today. Anything sets me off. However, this is probably better than the anger of yesterday. I am reminded of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Yesterday I absolutely went from denial to anger. Today I'm firmly in depression. (I don't know what happened to bargaining. Maybe I'm bad at negotiation.) One of the impulse purchases I made Monday was a plush sheep. I've been holding on to it at home like a life preserver and I'm thinking of bringing it to school with me tomorrow. I'm calling it my emotional support sheep (meaning no disrespect to those who have actual need of an emotional support animal) because somehow it does help me feel better. That sounds ridiculous. I'll try to get a photo tonight.
ETA: photo
Bon courage. I passed through the stages pretty quickly, hit acceptance yesterday afternoon when we got the final news of what was happening. (Being "allowed" back on campus after break - with appropriate social distancing - will go a long way for me in mitigating the suck, because I like most of my colleagues and it will be good to have someone to talk to).
ReplyDeleteI am very sad about losing the rest of my ecology labs for the semester (as I expect will happen). I like this crew a lot and was really looking forward to doing the rest of the field labs with them. Oh well.
My hope now is that by fall, things will be under better control, and we can have a more-or-less normal semester. (I would not be surprised if we cancelled in-person classes for summer semester, especially if the "big peak" that is predicted for June hits then).
I have an emotional support stuffed bunny in my office; brought it in last August (on the advice of my grief counselor, when she learned I liked and had stuffed animals at home) after my dad died. I think we're beginning to realize how important "transitional objects" remain to some adults. I know Bunny helped me a lot during the fall, even just sitting with Bunny in my lap helped.