I'm thinking that a whole lot of classes in the fall will open with remediation of what was supposed to be taught in the spring, for a couple of reasons. As this professor notes, it's next to exhausting to have to try to teach via online conferencing, and it seems likely the other end of it will as well.
I can't say I saw this before we started the large-scale work with online meeting and instruction, because I didn't. I can say I was leery of it and didn't want to try because I didn't think I'd do it very well. Looks like I might have guessed right.
Honestly, if they offered me early retirement right now, I'd be about 80-20 in favor of taking it. This semester - well, its second half - has just burned me out and also made me feel like what I do is utterly useless and meaningless in the face of....well, everything. I am privileged to be able to stay home but to me that means my job could go away without affecting society much.
ReplyDeletethat's not a good way to feel.
I re-started counseling (went a bit after my dad died) because I realized I have to figure out some way of defining myself separate from my job, because sooner or later (sooner if my university is one of the ones that winds up on the chopping block because of this, later because I will retire eventually) I won't HAVE a job to heavily define myself at.
I don't have a spouse or children to help with the "meaning" thing either, and that makes it harder.4
Defining purpose and worth in terms of jobs, careers or other people all eventually carries disappointment. The theological perspective finds it in God through the testimony of the Holy Spirit. Counseling, of course, is a great way to learn tools to listen for that testimony.
ReplyDeleteAs a practical matter, I wonder why schools at all levels bothered with "distance learning" when the greatest portion of their students will not retain content or be benefited by it. Perhaps better off just calling it a wash and looking for a do-over.
Well, then they wouldn't have had a justification for paying us, would have had to break our contracts, and we would have all wound up fighting for the same small pot of unemployment money.
ReplyDeleteI mean, I may still wind up unemployed in another year or so, but I'm unwilling for that to come any faster than it might.
I just wish I felt more USEFUL. One of my colleagues was bemoaning that we didn't have a different sort of PCR or we could have probably volunteered to process the swab tests. Heck, even I, an ecologist, could have learned to do some of those lab procedures.
That's a point I hadn't considered. And bigger schools would have had to justify why they were still paying their eight vice-presidents of diversity when there was no one on campus but they weren't paying their professors...
ReplyDeleteIt is tough to find a niche when the skills needed most right now are so specialized.