SIP Day 46, wearing a white cotton blouse and olive-colored skirt, writing from my home office; 87 degrees outside today
It’s the second-to-last week of classes and about this time every semester I become extremely nostalgic, knowing that the end is near and realizing how much I will miss this most recent batch of students.
This year has been so much harder in some ways–moving to fully online before I really felt that I knew my students and that we had the ease of having established class norms. It is also the first time that I haven’t had my class over to my backyard, to sit together and nibble on some garden produce and discuss weighty topics of environmental history, such as “What is wilderness?” and “What are the costs of preservation?” It’s not nearly as easy to discuss these ideas while in a Zoom session, nor did it feel that we were relaxed enough to just “talk” together due to the fact that the entire country (if not the entire globe) is in stasis due to COVID-19.
It’s my hope that the students will take away something that will stick with them long after the class is over, despite it being such an awkward semester. I know it will be one that I will never forget.
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Finished Reading: The Nightingale. It was a bit formulaic for my taste, but still a moving story of the French resistance during WWII. Would be a good poolside or airplane book, and sucked me in and kept me interested despite the difficulty that I’ve had focusing on novels this month.