Pandemic. Social distancing and quarantine. Relocations and job losses. The breakneck shift to online learning. My own bout with COVID-19. It’s been a rough semester.
I want to thank you all for hanging in there. I can’t tell you how much I miss our Tuesday and Thursday mornings together and how much I miss listening and talking to you about some great (and maybe not so great) books. Fingers crossed, masks on, hands thoroughly washed – – we’ll be back together on campus.
For your final writing exercise, here’s what I’d like you to do: write a letter from yourself on Thursday, May 14, to your pre-pandemic self. Looking back over the past couple of months, what advice, consolation, warnings would you give to that earlier version of yourself, the one for whom COVID-19 was not even a term and who had no clue about the massive disruptions about to commence. You can add this as the last entry in your reading journal by Friday, May 15, at noon.
By Tuesday, May 19, I’ll have read all of your journal entries – – collective and individual – – and be in possession of your final grades. I’ll post these to iLearn. (The final COVID-19 indignity – – having to travel back in time to the 1990s to navigate and use the iLearn interface. Ay dios mio.) If you’ve done pretty much all of our writing exercises – – the short bits on Yesika Salgado, the journal entries on Annihilation and Jemisin, etc. – – you will earn an excellent grade.
At this point, it looks like almost nobody will be on campus in the fall. (There may be a very, very few studio and lab courses held face-to-face for some period of time.) Some of you may be swimming smoothly in the online environment, others may not find it so salubrious. In either case, I urge you to stick with it. You are all smart, important, and lovely human beings. And, as we emerge from the Hydroxychloroquine-saturated ruins, we’re gonna need every single one of you to help rebuild things – – and rebuild them better. Until then, stay safe and healthy and sane.