Thursday, August 06, 2020

Plan all things

So, listening to the news, hearing about how some schools that have started up (K-12, not universities, but still) ALREADY have students and teachers needing to quarantine, and I realized, if that happens here, I will have to be prepared to go from 0 to "teach fully at home" in about five hours if there is someone who shows up in my department who is infective.

The biggest issue: I suspect the contact-tracing call comes in the afternoon or evening, after I've come home for the day, and I'd be told not to come back to campus for ANYTHING at all for two weeks.

(Again: this is how people without family nearby have a hard time. While I GUESS if someone had to quarantine, a spouse would have to quarantine too, if you had siblings or close cousins or whatever in another household, you could lob your campus keys to them from a safe distance and have them go get your stuff).

So, first I thought: oh crap, that means hauling all my textbooks AND the webcam/mike I use for recording lectures with to and from home with me every day. Better invest in a rolling suitcase! (why are textbooks so heavy? The Principles I one we use feels like it's 15 pounds).

I also should probably make a clone of my flashdrive I use to teach from - or at least put everything on it in cloud storage somewhere - so I can access those files even if I leave the flashdrive on my desk - which is something I could easily do. (That's on the docket for today, then - I have my extra little flashdrive that holds all my patterns now, I could also download the important teaching stuff on to it and just keep it at home).

Next, I had a brainwave - maybe the old webcam on my laptop still works? Even though I've not been able to take a photo from it in ages because of the death of Flash?

So I logged onto Zoom through my campus account. No, the picture quality is not as good but that doesn't matter much, and the microphone still works, so in extremis, I could use that to broadcast lectures from home.

Textbooks would be the next issue. My ecology book is already at home from this spring, maybe I leave it here? The Principles I book would be an issue because it's a new edition but maybe I check my online login with that textbook company, and maybe I could use the online edition if I needed to.

That leaves stats. (Fortunately, for Policy and Law, I just have readings of articles that are available as .pdf files.) I suppose I could card home the OLDER edition of the textbook - they are similar enough - and use that as a reference when I need one.

But WOW do I hate this kind of contingency planning. I mean, I suppose I should be glad I'm good at it but I wish I were using this to plan something fun instead. I hope someday again it's possible to use it for something fun.


That doesn't solve the problem of "fresh food" but maybe it's still kinda legal for me to do pick up at the curb? I don't know. Or maybe I could authorize someone to pick up for me and have them leave it on my porch?

Or maybe I just eat crap out of cans for two weeks.

I hate all of this so much.

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