End of the Term

 

2020 has been a different year for everyone.  The Pandemic has limited  our mobility and social gatherings.  It has been hardest on those whose family members were passed away due to the virus.  It has been hard on the frontline medical personal and their families.  It has been really rough for those whose jobs have been suspended or lost.  For the rest of us, we have had to adapt to working from home with that unexpected weariness that comes from staring at screens longer than we ever have before.  If there are school aged children doing their schooling remotely, I can only imagine organization and extra bandwidth need in terms of both WiFi and patience get through a day.  We have all been adapting, modifying, and overcoming to borrow from the slogan popularized in the 1986 Clint Eastwood movie Heartbreak Ridge.

At North Park University, our classes ended on Wednesday, November 25^th.  Originally, they were supposed to end on December 7^th.  We choose to clip a week off of the term for the simple reason that we didn’t want students going home at Thanksgiving, being with family friends and then returning to school.  We eliminated the increased risk of spreading the virus.  It seemed like a good plan back in July when we made the decision.  It seemed like an even better plan given the fall surge we have experienced.

The long and short of this long preamble is that for the last week, I have been doing what I would have been doing if this were a normal school year.  I am grading and preparing my grades.  At the same time, I am communicating with students that barely reached out to me during the course of the semester.  Now that it is down to wire, they are reaching to find out what they can do to catch up and still get a decent grade.  The percentage of students that do this doesn’t vary much.  It is less than 20%, but in true Pareto fashion, they take up 80% of the time.

With advising students for the next term, the way assignments, exams, and papers crescendo at the end of the term, and my natural proclivity to procrastinate make me one busy professor when classes end.   So, this is as normal a work week as I have had since the pandemic started.  I am just at home grading.  I am only reminded of the pandemic when I have to attend our Campus Pandemic Response Task Force meeting, go out for groceries, or watch the news for which, luckily, there is no time.

I touch base with my closest professor friends to see where we are and more so to share the kinds of amazing excuses or stories students seem to sling our way.  My colleague Daniel White Hodge, who teaches Communications, seems to be a magnet for such excuses and he posts them on Facebook.  Here is one of the best posted earlier this week.  It was one of the best ever:

Student:  Professor I Don’t understand the assignment.

Me: ok, which part?

Student: all of it.

Me: yes, but what specifically?

Student: The assignment.

Me: Umm. Ok. I can’t help you with non specifics

Student: what are we supposed to do. There’s work for this class?

Me:  😕😑😏

     I responded with one of my own about a student that hasn’t come to class for weeks and hasn’t turned anything in for even longer.

Student: What can I do in the next two days to... um... get an A.

Me: Create a time machine, go back, say, 10 weeks and ask me the same question.

     Like I said it is great to have a normal work week in the midst of this pandemic.