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.