Responding to the Virus: A Final Week on Campus
Let’s just say that it has been quite a week. The week before a break is usually filled with excitement. However, this week was quite a bit different. At the beginning of March, President McCartney activated the COVID-19 incident response team (CIRT). Since then, we have been getting frequent emails about how the college is reacting to the threat of the now pandemic. This past Tuesday, the CIRT made the difficult decision that following an extended spring break that the spring semester would be completed remotely. This was in some ways expected since many other colleges and universities including Amherst College and Harvard University had already made similar decisions. At the same time, I think it also came as a surprise to us all.
Before proceeding with the rest of this blog post, I think it is critical to acknowledge how extremely fortunate I am relative to other Smithies. For starters, I live within driving distance and my parents were able to pick me up and help me move out. Secondly, I have wifi at home, a laptop, a tablet, and I am generally comfortable using technology. Furthermore, I am a first-year and thus have three more years to look forward to. Given this relative privilege, this blog post isn't meant to be a rant or complaint. I just wanted to share my personal thoughts and experience.
My emotions have been all over the place. I have been quite sad knowing that I will really miss my college friends and just being on campus. I was disappointed to realize that uke club’s spring jam would be canceled. The idea of remote learning is a bit daunting even though I have taken fully online courses in the past. I am currently concerned about not being able to collaborate as well. It has also just been scary thinking about quickly the virus has been spreading. Overall it has been a busy and exhausting week. That said, professors have been extremely understanding and accommodating. Professors have taken the time to check-in in order to understand our current concerns.
There were also some really great parts of this last week on campus. For instance, we had an absolutely wonderful (and emotional) final uke club meeting. Hubbard house also had a fun senior banquet. We ordered fried rice from Oriental Taste which was really good. At the senior banquet, the juniors shared superlatives and the sophomores read prophecies. There was also the fun tradition of personal and house wills. I also got to go downtown for dinner with some friends on my last night on campus.
On Wednesday, we learned that all courses are mandatory S/U. S/U stands for satisfactory/unsatisfactory, in other words, pass/fail. Since it is mandatory S/U, the classes will still count towards majors and minors. Furthermore, these courses won’t count towards our S/U limit. This alternate grading format has pros and cons. Yes, it eases some of the stress of remote learning. At the same time, students must really take control of their own learning. I personally enjoy my classes and am willing to put in the work since I care about actually learning. That said, I see how motivation must be more intrinsic than before. On the other hand, students who successfully manage their remote learning will be well prepared for future endeavors.
I know this was sort of a disorganized blog post as I wrote it over the course of this roller-coaster of a week. At this point, I am safe and sound at home. There is still a lot of uncertainty about how this semester will progress. Looking forward, I definitely plan on keeping this blog active despite not being on campus. Unfortunately, some of the things I had hoped to blog about have now been canceled. I do envision a few blog posts like this that are sort of progress type reports. I hope all of you are doing well in this crazy time.
