The world (well, parts of it) are now three weeks into the largest social experiment ever. And it looks like this will continue on for at least another 4 weeks, but probably it's more like 6-8 weeks. The Chancellor announced that all classes would be taught online until June 30, but Nevada State is extending that through all non-lab summer session courses. I've also been watching a lot of the data dashboards for updates and predictions of the overall curve, and they all indicate that things have a long way to go.
Life for me is going well. I have food, shelter, and a paycheck, and am grateful for all of them. In terms of the day-to-day life, I'm doing okay. I've already developed less than stellar work/life habits. I've never really worked from home that well. I'm easily distracted and not as focused as I am when I'm in a "work" environment. I'm getting all of my work done, but everything takes longer than it would normally take if I were in the office. And this isn't just issues related to transitioning to online teaching and grading everything online (though those things also slow me down). I'm more inclined to stop and watch a YouTube video at home than I am at work. (Which isn't to say that I never take a 5 minute break at work and watch some quick clips of something that interests me. It's just that at home, my 5 minute breaks last 10-15 minutes.) I've also got more access to food, which then leads me to snack a little bit more. At work, when I start to feel hungry, I'll look at the clock and think something like, "It's only an hour to lunch" and then keep going. At home, that becomes, "I guess I can eat now" followed by an extra 5-10 minutes of rummaging around to see what I would like to eat.
My general life habits are a little wonky. I wake up at the same time, but there's less of a sense of urgency about getting up. So I'll sit in bed on my phone and pet Thor or whatever for a little longer than normal before rolling out of bed. But then I don't have the same morning routine. I'll do the usual things, except I skip getting changed and then walk over to the office to begin work. And then sometime around lunch, I'll finally get changed. I've debated forcing myself to put on my usual work garb to see if I can mentally trigger a work response, but so far I've decided not to do that. I do get outside for a little bit by taking a short walk or something, which in some way mimics walking from the Dawson building to main campus and back. I'm still trying to decide what types of habits I actually want to have, which is probably part of the problem. Once I know what I want to do, I will probably be more successful at it.
Of course, with the end of the semester only about 4 weeks away, it's hard for me to want to invest into building a schedule that I'm going to dismantle anyway. Classes are going okay. All my videos are posted to YouTube for MATH 127. A number of students are checked out of the class at this point, which is somewhat normal. I think I've lost a couple extra in the transition to online. Those are the students that would show up to class and not do the work. Since there's no class to show up to, they've basically checked out. But of the students that are still engaged, I'm seeing an uptick in the number of them that are trying to make up late assignments and things like that. I think watching this play out is an interesting aspect of online education.
I haven't heard much from my ART 240 students. They're all set up with assignments and the last part of the semester was going to have very little teaching in it to give them space to work on projects, and so I'm just grading things as they come in. There have been maybe a couple questions over the last few weeks, but they're all pretty independent at this point.
My upper division classes are the only ones where I'm doing live teaching. Both of those are going well. The students are good, which makes it all go better. I can trust that the students are paying attention and are engaged in the material. Those classes are more or less unchanged from what we were doing when we met in person. I don't have quite the same level of interaction (some students have to type into the chat box, which slows things down, and even those that have microphones are preferring the chat box), but it's still going okay.
After some discussion, the math faculty are going to skip the AXIOM conference next year and look to do it the year after. There's just too much going on right now. We weren't able to land a math faculty before everything went sideways, and so we're likely not going to be able to finish that search now. That means for the Fall semester, we will be operating at 60% (3 out of 5 full time faculty). There's just not enough person-power to make all of the things happen.
I'm spending a lot of time (again, not operating at full potential) working on more course materials. We're still expecting to move forward with the changes to how we teach the entry level math course, so I need to keep pushing that one forward. I think things are coming together pretty well, though. It's just a bit of a time sink.
As far as my sabbatical plans go, they're still moving forward. At least the class side of things is moving forward. I'm expecting to be able to register for classes on Monday, and I've not heard yet that there will be changes to the offerings. At some point, I'm going to need to visit the UNLV clinic and get a tetanus shot, because I think it's been more than 10 years since I last got one. I may have gotten one before my first Mexico mission trip, but I'm not 100% on that, and I don't even have documentation of it anyway.
But all of the plans I had for part 2 (working somewhere) are definitely upside down now. I'm pretty confident that I would be able to do volunteer work with the Southern Nevada Health District. My contact there was interested in our program and has wanted to be able to get students involved (even though we don't have students yet). So this would be a way for me to get started on a few things. My preference is still to find a casino or something, but with the casinos shut down now and with their likely slow re-opening process after things start to open up again, I'm not sure if there's going to be interest in bringing on a random person for pay. And I don't feel good about volunteering my services to a casino. At least the SNHD has a noble cause that I can get behind.
What else am I doing with my time? I'm cooking more. I've gone back to some old things, such as candied grapefruit peels and pickled onions. I've tried some new things, like gochujang glazed pork ribs (the glaze turned out well enough that I'd make it just to have the glaze, and then consider the ribs to be the by-product). I've made a number of hashes. And saucy things served with rice (though I'm out of rice right now). It's very different doing grocery shopping only once a week. I'm used to just running to the store whenever, but I'm preferring not to increase my health risk and so I'm also practicing the idea of working with what I have. The one thing that I've wanted to try but haven't yet worked through is a no-knead dough recipe that I've been interested in for a while. I just haven't taken the time to put it all together.
Other things I'm doing: Some piano (though still not consistent), some reading (data science book), online board games (board game arena), yard work (which I normally don't do), taking walks, other usual time-wasters like 2x speed YouTube... So I'm keeping myself busy.
Pau-Pau was laid to rest in the cemetery yesterday. My younger brother sent me some pictures. They were limited to 10 people in the enclosed spaces, and were spread out when they were outside. I was wondering when it was going to happen and how. It's just such an odd time with regards to this sort of thing. But I'm glad that they were able to do something, even if it was very small and perhaps a bit awkward (maybe surreal might be a better word there). It does concern me a little bit, but it's in that space of a clash of culture and circumstance. I think back to the ebola outbreak 5-6 years ago, and it was hard to get people to not to touch the corpses of their deceased relatives, as it is part of their culture to have that connection. For myself, because of the timing I was never expecting to go, and am okay with not getting to see the body one last time. I might have gone back under more normal circumstances, but I might not have. I don't know. It would have been like her 100th birthday, where the time exists because of her and is about her, but a lot of it is also just spending time as a family.
Thor update: He's curled up next to me as I'm lying in my bed at nearly 10 AM. It's been interesting to be at home all the time and see what his patterns are. Unsurprisingly, he mostly sleeps during the day. Because he's a cat. And that's what cats do. But he is getting more and more comfortable being touched, and also being held (though only under certain circumstances). I'm still playing around with closing the door to the cat carrier while he's in it. He does freak out a little bit when he discovers he can't open the door, but he keeps going back in, so I'm hoping that over time he'll just accept it.
I've already hit the "rest of life" quick list of things. so I guess I'll get out of bed and start doing some stuff now.
