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.
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