13 March 2020: Boy, today was strange and hard: sending the students off with promises to do our best to continue online. But here are some things that made it better:
• My students randomly bursting into Beyonce’s “Love on Top” before class started in GWST 350/HNRS 389. And they sounded great. (It wasn’t that random: a student had assembled treat bags filled with candy for everyone and included a slip of paper with a hand-washing song in each of them.)
•Sending those same students out into the world with this (slightly censored) pep talk for how we will get through these challenges, courtesy of David Sedaris’s “You Can’t Kill the Rooster,” part of our reading for the day: “Bitch, I’m here to tell you that it’s going to be all right. We’ll get through this shit, motherfucker, just you wait.”
• A few students in my ENGL 355 class who, even as time was running out, kept pushing for us to say a bit more about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
• This exchange with Tim, who is doing his best not to act too excited about not having to drive to campus three times a week, because he knows that I am not handling the change very well.
Me: [Pointing to the brightly colored and meticulously organized tickets for the Rude Mechanicals performances sitting in the copy room that will probably go unused.] "Does THIS make you sad or are you dead inside?”
Tim: [Laughs his head off.] “Yes?”
• And most of all, a student giving me a really sweet card about how much she appreciates the class (and me). It was an amazingly kind gesture. I am getting a bit weepy just thinking about it again.
Again and again and again I make this point here in this space: I am so very blessed to get to do this work.
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