Post date: Jun 09, 2020 6:3:1 AM
in the end, it was a failure;
i think so, anyway.
then again, nobody higher up had any better ideas and we were all fixated on just keep it going and it will all work out. when the semester ended and i pulled down the drop-down menu on the "enter grades" page on my faculty tab on my university website, i realised ...
... it was all a matter of 1's and 0's, yes's or no's. in the data format of the university, at that time, it was "pass" or "fail."
so i don't know if it worked out or it didn't. maybe it doesn't matter anymore.
at a certain point i felt like i stopped being an academic, and instead became a vlogger of slightly related topics (mandated by a formerly binding syllabus). i was a reluctant content manager to a reluctant audience who, having paid for the paywall in advance, only wanted the tl;dr version and be left alone to cope with the new world disorder.
nobody was happy. then again, that wasn't the point, was it?
...
it's not laziness, on their part. i don't think that at all.
i think most college students felt lost, maybe cheated .. or otherwise 'furloughed' or even 'fired' from their lives. nowhere have i heard that any student thought that this was great and that they enjoyed it ... except for a bartender/manager/friend who was working through college, between shifts, and suddenly got all the free time he ever wanted to dig into a subject as deeply as he wanted.
on a whim, more than a month ago, i sent him a link to an online research seminar meeting page. he later asked me what i thought about what the speaker said, in this one part. (i actually didn't attend; not my area, but we ended up talking about abstract structures over text for a bit.)
well, he's an optimist, so good for him for finding a way to enjoy this time.
...
i wonder if my students learned anything after march 15, not more than three months ago.
i wonder if that's when they just started scrambling and flooding their web calendars with appointments and to-do's, all the while trying to figure out why they weren't on campus. suddenly they were reduced to children again in their parents' house. maybe they just wanted to be the free, independent people that they used to be, with equally free young peers.
that's how i imagine it, anyway.
twenty years ago, when i was their age ... it would have been unthinkable for me to move back in with my parents, even for the good of society and public health. i'm absolutely certain that i wouldn't have done it.
i'd have thought about taking a semester off and saving money and taking as many courses at cheap local public universities where i was living and pooling money together with people, just to be free. i'd have considered all kinds of little jobs and maybe it would amount to enough to buy my freedom, to pay my own way.
the truth is that when i was young, i didn't have a lot of idle time. i was studying when i wasn't working, and i remember filling my schedule with as much work as i could fit, barring classes and the bare minimum to get my coursework done.
on random saturdays i'd just spend my time at the public library. there was one particular branch that had a great graphic novel selection, and i'd just veg: read a fast-paced story, stare at the printed art. afterwards i'd buy a coffee and sit in a cafe for hours, scribbling thoughts into notebooks and wishing i were more creative.
how do writers ever write? i wondered.
the friends i made were the understanding sort. they accepted answers from me in the form of: "here and there" when they only asked, "how's it going?"
questions aren't so much information requests as they are social constructs of culture. my friends who were into science were the only ones who would accept my occasional answer of "well, it's not the worst day of my life." it helped that i would spend more than a few seconds before responding, which to them was my thinking about it.
...
i'm thinking, remembering such memories, and each time a student attended my videochat office hours, which was rare, i was dumbfounded. it was the same revelatory experience that one has, re-entering civilisation after a few days of solitary wilderness. (among other things, it is good to remember that conversation has rhythms and that you have to re-learn how to sync.)
i remember i asking them how they were, if they missed campus, if they had a desk and time to think and plan, maybe be idle? did they have time for an afternoon walk sometimes, because ... at least until recently, don't even inmates in prison have time outside, by law?
some of my students probably wondered if i've gone nuts and wondered about how i was faring in the city that they left. maybe some thought i was creepy and felt like i was intruding into their hastily-made privacy. maybe some didn't know what i meant by idle-ness.
others understood right away: the loss of privacy due to necessity and close quarters, the loss of sponteneity of just walking, as there remain no havens but home, maybe a public park at best. they were the ones that spoke about it in averted gazes and hushed tones, that they lost something and mourned it, wondering if they will ever experience something like it again.
it's a wonder how anyone had a good idea in the neolithic age, before humans stopped with the communal dwellings, leaving space ... both physical and mental ... to let ideas creep into a newly welcomed void.
some would argue that the plague was the best thing that happened to isaac newton. then again, he was well off and had a country estate. the rest of us have to wait in line, whether it be for bread or kale or just what the school district was able to package up with volunteers' hands for free.
i wonder if the mechanics of campfire ... not making one or maintaining one, but simply staring at one in a group formed in a circle, a communal structure lacking eye contact. nowaways, other than my fiance, i never spend much time looking at someone eye to eye. i feel like the pandemic induced an autistic side of me that i wonder if i'll ever shake off.
...
every time i actually sit down and start typing something other than an email, it comes gradually but consistently: i'm tired. i don't know exactly how, but i'm tired.
i've never been as tired as i've been now.
i wake up tired and i go through the day tired. in the evening there is a littler respite before the tiredness comes back.