Hello rainy Monday [rowing, teaching]
Sep. 28th, 2020 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterIt really hasn't rained all that much here over the last month or so, and the morning rain on the Hudson wasn't especially heavy rain. Nice to get out there on the river.
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After Saturday morning's long row, most of the weekend was devoted to work. While I was working on the week's lecture videos for my General Biology class on Saturday, I got a frantic message from a student in my research course due to some Covid testing scares. I am mostly mentioning this in the abstract because from my conversations with students so far, it seems that many students that are getting sent to quarantine or to isolation this fall are having a really rough time of it. It's different from the spring, when everything was new and we all went into lockdown at the same time, so we had that feeling of solidarity. Now it's just individual students who are impacted, and there really aren't any good options.
While I'm sure that for some students it isn't a big deal to have to bop back home for 2 weeks, for others, it is an ORDEAL, for a hundred different reasons. I keep reiterating to students that there's a reason our college places them on Medical Leave when they're required to isolate or quarantine. (note, isolation = positive diagnosis; quarantine = precautionary measure)
As I was commenting to some of the students, and as I commented to S last night, the students' relationship to their education this year is profoundly changed and different compared to other times. And these times will be very memorable for me as well as for them.
It's really important to take the time to keep acknowledging this with each other. These students are very keen to learn, in a different way from many other groups of students. Their energies are focused and determined in the midst of dealing with things that have a huge amount of mental overhead.
Early Saturday evening I then had to race out of the office to try and make it to the grocery co-op before they closed at 8 pm. I made it with time to spare, then rode very slowly the rest of the way home, past countless noisy neighborhood parties in the city.
A number of those neighborhood parties are associated with one of the other higher-ed institutions in the area. I don't know why the students at that other higher-ed institution think it's okay to keep having parties. They've already had a couple of larger outbreaks this year, and the institution is borderline in terms of whether they can stay open at this point.
So we'll keep doing our best here at this small liberal arts college.
I wish I had a better idea as to whether the county health department's standards for contact tracing are actually adequate. I'd like to be able to trust them but I don't feel like we have quite enough evidence right now to say so one way or another, and I fear for the worst.
From what information I've been able to gather so far, it sounds like the criteria for "contact" for positive college students is spending greater than 15 minutes in close proximity with other people (< 6 ft), unmasked. Students are masked in classrooms, and spaced out from each other, but I'm not completely convinced that these measures are adequate for preventing spread.
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After Saturday morning's long row, most of the weekend was devoted to work. While I was working on the week's lecture videos for my General Biology class on Saturday, I got a frantic message from a student in my research course due to some Covid testing scares. I am mostly mentioning this in the abstract because from my conversations with students so far, it seems that many students that are getting sent to quarantine or to isolation this fall are having a really rough time of it. It's different from the spring, when everything was new and we all went into lockdown at the same time, so we had that feeling of solidarity. Now it's just individual students who are impacted, and there really aren't any good options.
While I'm sure that for some students it isn't a big deal to have to bop back home for 2 weeks, for others, it is an ORDEAL, for a hundred different reasons. I keep reiterating to students that there's a reason our college places them on Medical Leave when they're required to isolate or quarantine. (note, isolation = positive diagnosis; quarantine = precautionary measure)
As I was commenting to some of the students, and as I commented to S last night, the students' relationship to their education this year is profoundly changed and different compared to other times. And these times will be very memorable for me as well as for them.
It's really important to take the time to keep acknowledging this with each other. These students are very keen to learn, in a different way from many other groups of students. Their energies are focused and determined in the midst of dealing with things that have a huge amount of mental overhead.
Early Saturday evening I then had to race out of the office to try and make it to the grocery co-op before they closed at 8 pm. I made it with time to spare, then rode very slowly the rest of the way home, past countless noisy neighborhood parties in the city.
A number of those neighborhood parties are associated with one of the other higher-ed institutions in the area. I don't know why the students at that other higher-ed institution think it's okay to keep having parties. They've already had a couple of larger outbreaks this year, and the institution is borderline in terms of whether they can stay open at this point.
So we'll keep doing our best here at this small liberal arts college.
I wish I had a better idea as to whether the county health department's standards for contact tracing are actually adequate. I'd like to be able to trust them but I don't feel like we have quite enough evidence right now to say so one way or another, and I fear for the worst.
From what information I've been able to gather so far, it sounds like the criteria for "contact" for positive college students is spending greater than 15 minutes in close proximity with other people (< 6 ft), unmasked. Students are masked in classrooms, and spaced out from each other, but I'm not completely convinced that these measures are adequate for preventing spread.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 02:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-28 04:28 pm (UTC)I don't know why the students at that other higher-ed institution think it's okay to keep having parties.
They haven't had their experience with mortality yet. It can't happen here! they're thinking.
And they're not entirely wrong:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2252699-covid-19-is-becoming-less-deadly-in-europe-but-we-dont-know-why/