Ooooh, Friday the 13th. Are you spooked yet? It’s a time when silly little superstitions like that, given way to as flights of fancy in a simpler time, might be acknowledged. I wouldn’t have noticed it at all this year —
“Because time has no meaning?”
Well, sure, random interlocutor who has appeared in this bit of text even as I write it in the CMS, but that’s not what I meant.
“Because you don’t look at calendars anymore?”
Well … right, but, really, who does? And, anyway, what are you doing here, you made-up phantasm of a person I’ve created to fill yet a few more pixels on the page?
“I’m here to be spooky. Boooooooooooo!”
Yeah, that’s not going to work because, as a rule, I run a lot of lights around the house on Fridays to help create some energy and festiveness, so —
“OK, fine. May as well explain how you noticed today was Friday the 13th, oooooooooo!”
Right. Well. Anyway. The local talk station host mentioned it yesterday evening. He started in on the whole thing, as one does, and he got about a sentence into it, and you could hear it coming in his voice, when he stopped —
“Because it put him out of sorts?”
No.
“Because his electronics died? A byproduct of Friday the 13th gremlins?”
No.
“Because he — ”
He realized no one has any use for it right now.
“So he did some conspiracy theory stuff?”
No.
“Full moon?”
No. We’re not even close to a full moon right now, anyway.
“Then what did he do next?”
He talked about basketball.
Anyway, another week in the books, and we’re one week closer to the Thanksgiving break and some time off and then virtual learning and more work from home. And we’re going to make it.
I’ll say right here, I was skeptical of the whole thing. Bringing students back from all over the nation and points beyond? I’m no public health expert, of course, but it defied common sense. To some degree, as it turned out, doing all of this flew in the face of the best advice actual public health experts would provide. But the university put a robust system into place for its nine campuses and 100,000-plus students and all of its professionals and they’ve pulled it off. I was skeptical, but if you’d asked me to draw out a best case scenario this summer it would have been surpassed in every way. I’m pleased to be proven wrong.
Sure, some people got sick, but there were contingencies plans in place. It’s in no way authoritative or exhaustive, but I have heard of one student who was hospitalized with Covid-19. More often, those who did test positive were quarantined and worked their way back to health. I’ve heard a few anecdotal cases of long haulers, but hopefully they come through it OK and sooner than later. To bring back all of those people, though, and see it work as well as it did, even as the case counts are starting to tick up these last two weeks (while they’re surging throughout the state and the region) is something of a positive.
The moment the university brought students back in August they made them all get tested. Immediately, the university became the largest testing center in this state. I don’t know if they’ll share that tidbit on the campus tours, but the parking lot outside of Assembly Hall and the dozens, if not hundreds of people who worked it, are big players in the state’s Coronavirus history now. The university continued a testing pattern throughout the term that added more and more data to the system. It wasn’t perfect. Nothing is. On this campus alone there are 46,000 students in a normal term — probably a few less this fall — and they’re all human and that’s injecting a lot of chance and habit and decision making into the best-laid plans. This is why I was skeptical. There were some problematic instances. Greek Life had a few problems, some of which were simply structural. Other things, well, yeah, they’re college students. And we all remember being 19 and how wise and considered our decision making was at the time. A few things were more forehead-slappy, but ultimately, it all worked.
We have five more days to go, but we also have a dashboard that tells us the university did better than the community, in terms of percentages. Part of that goes to the aggressive and proactive approach the university took. And part of it, I think, has to be that you’re dealing with a set of people of a certain age who, by and large, are trained to do what’s asked of them. Also, the university laid down the law on that quickly and convincingly, and continues to do so. Anecdotally, I heard of more mask difficulties with faculty than students.
And so I was skeptical. All we have to do, I said in April, is account for and rewrite human habits for everyone. People want to be social. They tend to gather close together. They have no idea what six feet means — even when you say it several times. People hug and carry on and have a good time and basically do everything that an airborne communicable disease is ready to exploit.
But here we are. And it was tough and demanding and upsetting, sure. It’s been tiresome, but it has had its moments. Students, generally, did not have the experiences they’ve come to expect or envision. Compromises had to be made in that sense, but they got a world-class education and by-and-large. Also, the working student media had an entire year’s worth of content put before them without even trying. It’s a rare and weird thing. And coming to terms with that is a lesson of its own. The students, though, they helped keep each other safe. Problems aside, they did it.
So now we turn our attention to next week, the last week. The university is offering go-home tests to students, which makes sense. One assumes there will be some clear literature on what that means and doesn’t mean. Communication, as ever, has proven to be critical and difficult.
I was very pleased when I thought up the idea of go-home mitigation testing three or four weekends ago and then learned, the very next week, that it was going to be something the university offered. I, too, have learned to think like a public health expert, at least on this one obvious thing. (Who among us hasn’t tried to be an expert this year?) Today it occurred to me that whatever a student might have caught last this week is something they’ll take home with them at the end of next week. And, again, no public health expert, but I wonder if that’s something that could have been controlled for in some way. And I wonder if that’s something the actual experts tossed around this summer when they were making all these plans.
Anyway, five more days of classes. Just four more days on campus for me, and it’s really a wind down week, anyway, given the general feel of things right now. By this time next week I’ll have oversaturated my hands for the last time for a while, I can wear fewer masks and I won’t have to maintain two separate laundry systems for around-the-house-clothes and cootie-clothes. I’ll still work and do all of the Zoom meetings that life can throw at me, but I won’t need a complete decontamination procedure at the door.
Have some sports television my students produced last night. Long on football, which, it turns out, Indiana might be good at:
And you know what we’re good at? Talking? They talked Masters, because it’s November in Augusta, too. This was a well-done program if you like hitting little white balls with elongated sticks.
And you? And your weekend? What’s in store? Anything new? Nothing new here. It’ll be very similar to every weekend since March. But, suddenly, it feels like it won’t be the same, but its own change of pace. Weekends are so often about what’s on the other side of them. And if that applies to weekends it should apply to weeks too. And what applies to the other side of next week is a welcome change. Nothing superstitious about that.
