Are we ready for a return to campus? I know that this is the question floating through students’ and instructors’ minds, through the airwaves, and all over social media. We’ve gone through 18 months of mask wearing, vaccinations, sanitization stations at every corner, people fighting in the aisles of supermarkets over which direction to go, and grappling over rolls of toilet paper, all without skin-to-skin contact.
Everyone is tired. Still, everyone has adapted in a remarkably admirable way (toilet-paper scrapping not included). I’m always impressed with how people will stand up with their shoulders high and try to go along with what has to do be done once it sinks in that there’s no choice in the matter. It reminds me of the stories about trees in the forest sending energy and nutrients to other trees around them that may not be as healthy or strong. People, as snarky as they are, also have an extremely touching ability to stand together and fortify each other, two metres apart or not.
I’ve written about how I feel that taking classes online was causing students to retreat further into themselves, not just with literal isolation from the community but by lack of contact with their fellow students. I started to notice this when I saw that the only one turning on their camera during online classes was the instructor. Students preferring to interact by only using the chat section is making things difficult—without having faces and body language to read it’s much more difficult to get to know people on an intimate level. There were some attempts at group projects in a few of my classes, but without being able to meet each other in person, the results were interesting, to say the least. Not to say they didn’t work out, but the frustration felt by all filled our communication cloud, causing all of us to long for those days of sitting at library tables and watching each other’s facial expressions, enjoying each other’s laughter and rants.
There are, of course, safety concerns. How many of the students have been vaccinated? What about these variants that keep showing up? One positive thing I noticed during the pandemic was that because of all the caution and mask wearing, I didn’t get a single regular cold or flu last year. I know that going to school in the winter before seemed often to be a regular cesspool of germs, since the pressure students felt to not miss a single class usually overrode staying home and practicing self care. Perhaps these last two years will be a great lesson in that respect, and masks will be appreciated and used for their obvious protection against all sicknesses one could pick up at college.
Everyone knows that we’re not out of the woods as far as COVID-19 goes. There are new variants popping their ugly heads up all the time, talks of third doses of vaccines… COVID will continue to be the big news story of the day for a long time.
But am I ready to hit the campus again after an almost two-year back-breaking fight? Am I ready to hug a friend that I haven’t seen in two years? Am I ready to get a coffee and sit in a desk at Camosun again?
You bet your ass I am, and I’m looking forward to it.