Semester's end approaches

 I have essentially no classes this week; finished up most of the material and in the before-times, this is when my ecology class would be doing oral presentations. I did not schedule them this semester because I would have had to work it into the syllabus in January and I had NO CLUE what things would look like at this point - I fully expected that by this point we would be online again, I thought case counts would keep rising and the vaccine rollout would be slower than it's been.

So I'm working on exams and catching up make up work for students. I had a student who was out sick one week in soils lab come in and make up the labs she missed (most semesters I offer this as an option for anyone who needs it, but it's an opt-in thing and I make it clear people need to ask ahead of time - so I can have the right materials out and can also do a little crowd-control (like: if *everyone* needed to make up a lab, I could not let someone make up three, there would not be time). Only one person took me up on it this year, but that's fine. (I know there are others who missed labs, but whatever.)

While she was working, I wanted to be in there (in case she had questions) but not, you know, hanging over her. So I put away the accumulated clean glassware. A lot of tasks like that get pushed off to "dead time" like that because we don't have enough student employees who are paid to do it, and frankly, I am busy enough I don't always have time in my days to do extra little "you're salaried so you just work until the work is done" tasks. But today I did, so I put it away.

And standing back there in the prep room, I suddenly felt - I don't know what. Mingled sadness and malaise and something I can't name.

The last time I did this this was was spring 2019, before literally all the excrement hit the fan in my life. Summer 2020? I was already at home, we weren't allowed back until mid-July and even then I remember being kind of apprehensive about going in, so stuff didn't get cleaned up and put away.

Also, there's a certain summer melancholy about classroom buildings. They have a particular closed-up smell (K-12 schools more than universities, I think, because most universities do summer programs, though ours was all virtual last summer). And there's the echoey quality of walking alone down a hall, the feeling of being the only one there. 

I remember as a kid, how that smell and feeling carried over into the first week or so of school, and weirdly, it started those last few days in June when we cleaned out our lockers and stuff.

There are some buildings - I think schools are a big one, but also the small sort of country or even small-town churches (and even city churches, just not the ones build as "cathedrals" to be works of art in their own right) - just don't seem alive without people in them. They're not fulfilling their purpose. I've been in a lot of little country churches, small clapboard buildings, some of them almost aggressively plain and unornamented (and sometimes that is related to the beliefs of the denomination that built them) and when there are people in them either worshiping together or doing work or having a potluck or attending a wedding or whatever. It's also true with educational buildings, with, again, the possible exception of very old ones built when it was a lot cheaper to make beautiful things - or ones endowed by a very rich person and basically made a temple to their donation. A classroom without a teacher and students in it is empty and boring. At best, it seems to be a room with potential - there's the little classroom library over in the corner, or easels set up so kids can paint, or colorful posters of plants on the walls. But much of the time an empty room is just empty; it is the activity it is designed for that gives it meaning.

But yes, having a lot of emotions this week about the semester ending, coupled with worries about the future. And also just a lot of emotions about other things I guess. 2020 was a very hard year and I'm just beginning to realize that and yet at the same time I try to remember things and am horrified at how few memories I have of the year, like I sustained an extended concussion or something, and I'm terrified this is a sign of beginnings of cognitive decline. 

But mostly, I'm thinking about how it's going to probably be another long and lonesome summer, me coming in to try to work, relatively few people being around, it still not really being safe to do very much, and I just kind of want to lie down on the floor. I also recognize I'm having a hard time knowing what is and is not "safe enough" and also things like 'when will we be able to unmask" - I am still masking indoors in public, but I've noticed unless it's an absolutely hard rule (like at the National Park, they were telling people who walked into the nature center unmasked that they had to wear one), most people just aren't, and it makes me feel weird and I spent my whole childhood feeling weird and different and it's not fun to have those feelings come up again in my 50s.....and yet, I don't think it's quite safe to indoors in groups of people yet. Yes, even vaccinated. (breakthrough infections are rare but not impossible, and level of infection is still higher than I'd like to see)

Also, as I said earlier: I've realized in this how alone I really am, and how some people I thought cared about me apparently do not, and that's a hard fact to accept. 

I don't know how I got from the melancholy of unused classroom buildings to here, but there we are. Maybe it's because I would LIKE to love and be friendly with many people, but sometimes I am rebuffed - so I feel like an abandoned country church or a classroom that no longer hosts students.