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.