I write these “what I did during my summer vacation” posts every year, and I know there’s a certain sameness to them. Well, not this year! *heavy sigh*
To a large extent, I was ready for the pandemic. The first mention of an “unusual flu” caught my eye in the news in late December. I had paid close (horrified) attention to the SARS outbreak almost 20 years ago, and lived through the (fairly frightening) H1N1 pandemic (yes, it is classified as a pandemic) in 2009. During the latter, I stood in a line of hundreds of people for hours with my family to get immunized. My youngest daughter was still a baby. It was a sobering experience.
After that, I made sure we had a good supply of hand sanitizer, much of which I still had when it was otherwise impossible to find this spring. I dug into closets and cabinets, surprised to find how many containers remained after 10 years. I even had the foaming dispenser in my university office. So when the situation began spiraling out of control in China, I began to prepare. Let me be clear that I did stockpile important supplies, but I did not hoard anything. (What’s the difference? Stockpiling implies that you are storing things that you will later use; hoarding suggests that you have so much, you will never need or use them.)
I spent early March getting ready for remote delivery, reading reviews of high-quality mics and webcams. By the time in-person classes were “temporarily suspended” on March 13, I already had a lecture video ready to go for my class on the 13th. How seriously did I take this? Let’s just say that some people treated the movie Contagion as entertainment--I took it as a training film.
Being the designated household IT guy, I had to help my wife set up her Zoom meetings and troubleshoot my kids’ Google Meetings for school. I upgraded our home internet, doubling the speed. Knowing that I’d be spending even more time than usual sitting at my computer, I tried to make my setup as ergonomically correct as possible. (Are you feeling sore after being at your computer for too long? Check out the recording of the Faculty of Rehab Med’s webinar on five tips to create a healthy workspace.)
lying around and tell your kids not to touch it.
After rounding out the challenging Winter term, I was plunged immediately into Spring term with only a day or two to prepare. I learned a lot, very quickly, from being dropped into the deep end. My colleagues also rallied in an amazing way. I’ve been in more teaching-related meetings via Zoom in the past two months than in the past two years. (Thanks, too, to students in that spring term class who were incredibly patient, understanding, and gave great feedback.)
With spring term over, I could finally relax, right? Do what I heard that other people were doing during the lockdown? Binge-watch The Witcher? Learn how to knit? Sing opera to my neighbourhood? Nope. As usual, I worked. Among other things:
- learned about and prepared for more remote teaching (note that there is are important differences between emergency remote teaching and online learning)
- served as external examiner for an MSc student
- Zoomed (it’s a verb now, right?) with colleagues across the university on an interrupted research project evaluating and redesigning a cognitive aid used in neonatal resuscitation
Although I had a lot of work to do, I didn’t want life to pass me by, either. I won’t have this opportunity together with my kids again, so I wanted to make the most of it. In the evening, after spending too much time at our computers, we’d all go for a walk as a family. (There were so many great supportive chalk messages and pictures on driveways.) Then we’d watch a movie together, like Trolls World Tour, Onward, Hamilton, Batman Begins. Or play board games. Or Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
My memories of this time will include making Dalgona coffee (a.k.a. quarantine coffee or covid coffee). All the baking (pretzels, cupcakes, cheese buns, banana bread, nalysnyky, green onion cakes, and so many cookies).
And the “vacation” we had: a day trip to Lacombe. My old home town only had only one active case of COVID-19, so it felt very safe--like we were on a pandemic-free planet. (Yes, we all wore masks the whole time.) We did some shopping at the Lacombe Centre Mall, including scoring two dozen cannoli from Sweet Capone's. It turns out that after five months, the whole family was shopping-deprived.
Now, I can feel the weather turning cooler. There are more leaves on the ground. Yeah, it’s time. Time to go back to work and school. But it’s going to be strange going back without leaving the house.
I know that many people are struggling--emotionally, financially, and not least of all, health-wise. My family has been lucky, and careful. I now have five different face masks, among them an X-Men one and a Ravenclaw one. I don't have these because they look cool. My wife is a front-line health care worker who is concerned for her patients' health, and for her own and her family's. My kids haven't given their auntie a hug in five months. I haven't come closer than 2 metres to my elderly parents; I don't want to give them a virus that could kill them. We've all lost things this year, but maybe we've also gained some perspective...on what's important.
Stay safe, everyone.
Why aren’t you studying?
