View this Coronavirus Story

Story Title: Covid Entry

Contributor Name: Anonymous
Created: March 22, 2020 at 9:27 PM

Story: What are your experiences teaching & learning in the time of coronavirus?

Hey Adam, 

The longer the stay-at-home order goes on, the more I have thought about the last day we met up for coffee. Even then, a day before my classes were switched to online, we both seemed to be relatively calm. I’m writing to you now to describe some of the ways in which maintaining that calmness has become increasingly difficult. 

The classes that had no changes in assignments have proved to be the most difficult to keep up with. In my case, that is only two, but any small set back makes me worry about these classes the most. Though my other classes have changed assignments around to accommodate, I find it difficult to make it to the zoom meetings. The first few meetings I missed simply because I lost track of time. Maybe many professors noticed students were not making it to them or they were having similar issues because I now only have one class that continues to do them at the usual class time. This has brought me much relief mostly because I don’t stress myself out by thinking about what I might have missed in the meeting when I missed one. Now the only thing I have to keep an eye out of is the wifi connectivity. We share a network with our neighbors. In total there are four of us using it for classes. Whatever issue there is usually resolves itself within twenty minutes or so, but this makes it unreliable. 

Being placed on furlough at work should have left me plenty of time to focus on schoolwork, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way. Since I’m not going out even for classes, this has cut down a lot of my expenses, however I’m beginning to worry I won’t be able to find a job once I run through the money that I have now. Most of the money I’m spending now is going towards groceries. I’m very glad I picked up beans and rice before those flew off the shelves. The only thing I’ve really had trouble finding is tofu and flax milk. There’s usually something to replace those with, like pea milk or some of the fake proteins, but these run a little higher than what I usually shop for. Anyway, I know that at least with groceries you might be having more issues than I am. You always buy your beans canned and I’ve seen no canned products in a while. 

It’ll probably be after your birthday that I’ll get to see you, so I’ll make sure to cook up something to eat. I’ll even make sure it has beans. I know we still have text and email to communicate through but it’s not the same as sitting across from you while reading to each our favorite bits of the books we’re reading. If your computer hadn’t broken down a week into the stay-at-home order, we could have skyped. Dillon and I have been on a mean exchange of PDFs through email the last couple weeks. That’s been nice, but I’ve stayed away from emailing you longer documents since I know you’d have to read them on your phone. 

Though I hope I get to see you Dillon and Andrew soon, I do have my family around every day. We’re actually having meals together almost every day. Mauricio and I will try to have lunch with mom before she goes to work. Once she has left, we usually sit and talk for a while longer. I think this might be the most I’ve ever talked to him and mom. I hope things are going well with your family too.  

Keywords/Tags: Not Provided

Contributor Comments on the Story

Not Provided