As of February 10, 2022, Nevada has lifted the mask mandate. I can't say that I'm surprised. But whether the decision is a good or bad one is certainly debatable. I can see both sides. The political will to keep fighting to hold the mask mandate in place is waning. If it were only about political will, my perspective would be different. But it's not just political will. Infections are way down. According to the Southern Nevada Health District COVID Dashboard, the 7-day average for new cases has fallen from a high of nearly 5000 cases per day in early January to somewhere around 600 cases per day, and this number is expected to continue to fall in the next few days, probably down to around 300 cases per day (but we will have to see -- I don't think it's known what the baseline level of infection will be).
In response, the campus put out a notice that we do not have authority to set our mandate higher than the state's mandate. Which means that we have no more maks mandate. But the language of the announcement included references to thinking about the community that we may impact (primarily students of color, which is a community that has been disproportionately impacted by COVID). And it also stated that we've got around 90% vaccine compliance among the students that have in-person classes. So we're in pretty good shape there.
The morning after, we had our first in-person convocation in about 2.5 years. And pretty much everyone had their masks on. Pretty much every area of campus had people out from COVID over the last couple months (including both professional staff and students), and so it feels like people are interested in being extra safe for a bit longer.
Classes are chugging along. Two classes have had their first exam. The other classes will have their exams in the next couple weeks. The MATH 127 exam once again has caused significant difficulty for students. This is not that surprising. I have no reason to think that these students have had the best math education over the last three semesters. So we're once again going to have the conversation about how they studied and what changes they want to make moving forward. That conversation is coming up this Tuesday.
The STAT 152 exam went okay-ish. It's hard to know how well it went because I don't have a lot of history with this class. I don't really have a good sense of the places where students may tend to struggle or which concepts are commonly problematic for them. So it's going to be a learning experience. It's somewhat more awkward with only three students because I don't have as many data points from which to extrapolate.
The MATH 352 exam is coming up next week. This is an upper division course, and the work I've seen on their write-ups makes me feel moderately confident that they'll do well. I don't think there's too much that they should find difficult, but I've done this long enough to know that surprises happen.
The MATH 182 exam is next week. I'm a little worried because their problems seem to be more algebraic than conceptual. And sometimes students overlook the importance of making sure their algebra is solid when the ideas are there. In other words, I hope they actually do the practice problems.
My FLC on efficient work habits drew a big enough crowd that we split it into two groups. The first group met this last Wednesday and the next group meets next Friday. The feedback from the first group was positive. There's clearly interest and optimism for the topic. I just hope that the next couple meetings where we actually discuss processes will be fruitful.
Outside of work, life stuff is good. We got to hang out with friends in outdoor settings, and it's good to see friends. I'm looking forward to more/new opportunities to do things as the world (hopefully) continues to move through the end stages of the pandemic. We're continuing to try to get out on short hikes and that sort of thing, and we're starting to poke our heads into some of the local ethnic markets, which is something that we did together as we were starting to get to know each other. And so that's been fun.
Other stuff: Thor has been throwing up a little. It's not quite frequent enough that we've taken him in to be looked at, and there's no obvious trigger and no pattern to it. So that's something we're going to continue to monitor. The piano remains unplayed. The basil is still not growing bushy but instead only seems to grow upward with relatively few leaves. I'm almost certainly doing something wrong, but at this point I'm not really interested in investing more careful thought into it, and will just continue to do what I've been doing as if it's going to change something. I've been playing Nerdle for the last couple weeks. It's been a good and relatively short diversion in the evenings. I'm sure there are other things. But they aren't coming to mind right now, and I'm ready to move on to the next thing.
