Two observations, possibly somewhat contradictory, about pandemic living, now closing in on the end of Week 9 of teach/learn/work-from home here in PA: 1) we have actually adapted, in our own weird way, and 2) this is exhausting.
Here are three good articles that speak to the second point – in a nutshell, we have to work harder to sustain concentration the longer we videochat (my colleagues and I rack up several hours per day) and we process and perceive many of the verbal and physical cues inherent to interpersonal communication differently through this format than we do in person. This, plus, you know, the constant thrum of stress of living through a global pandemic in one of the worst-hit regions in the United States all make these taxing (plus I don’t have the most comfortable chair in my office).
There are days when I leave my office at the end of the ‘work day’ (whatever that is anymore) and I just collapse onto the couch. It’s obviously not a physically taxing or dangerous job, thank goodness, but it drains you in a different way. Hard to explain, but if you’ve experienced it, you know.
On a different note, not that I would ever want things to remain this way, but I notice that in our house we have mostly adapted to the new temporary normal (I refuse to acknowledge it as the ‘new normal’). In lieu of our usual routine, we have established a new routine that sort of feels relatively normal. New wake-up times, new work locations, but it’s the one thing we have that we didn’t at the start of all this, and for what it’s worth, that has given some structure and temporary normalcy that I think we have found somewhat comforting, even if we won’t admit it because it’s not the normalcy we want. It’s the normalcy we need and the normalcy we’re going to have to live with, however.
The above is not a commentary on how I feel about remote instruction (as a parent or an educator), but more an observation on human behavior, and how we create frameworks for ourselves even when none exist. As much as none of us in our house want things to be this way, I must admit things have settled down into a less frantic state than they were two months ago.
Stray observation 1: my undergraduate class recently came to a close for the semester, and not a moment too soon. The students were fantastic, and I’m looking forward to them doing great things in education in the next couple years, but between me still acclimating to my new ‘day job’ this year and the chaos of adjusting my class to a remote instruction environment for the second half of the semester while doing the same for my day job, it’s hard to feel as if I was able to give them the best version of myself, the teacher they deserved to have. If one of my staff members was saying this to me, I know I would tell them not to beat themselves up, but I’ve never been very good at taking my own advice.
Stray observation 2: Despite my county and the Philly/NJ/NY region being especially hard-hit by the novel coronavirus, the township in which I live remains mercifully low in confirmed cases (we have been in the 1-10 confirmed cases range for weeks now, according to the county hub; so few that they redact the exact number of cases and only report as a range). We are a suburban/rural area with enough space and low enough population density to make social distancing relatively effortless. This, in addition to consistently taking common-sense precautions like grocery shopping at off hours and regular mask usage, has helped to alleviate at least some of my anxiety surrounding this whole experience. I’ll take all the help I can get.