Monday, December 26, 2022

A Post-Covid Retrospective

 

dence

I survived the past two years with its burden of remote classes. All tests were administered online and, by golly, almost everyone scored an A on the tests, even for my toughest lecture class. I was fortunate that it attracted the brightest-of-the-bright. The bible thumpers (and I get a lot of them) made NO objections to course title or content (“The many Perversions of Lord Byron”). The title of the course tells what it's about, but there are always a couple of them who are mortally offended. This time, it didn’t happen.

And nobody cheated.

Okay. Maybe there was some cheating, but the remote classes presented a much-needed respite from the headaches of preparing for class and dealing with troublesome and lazy students. Rather than sitting before my desktop computer and trying to lecture before the tops of kids’ heads via Zoom, I directed my class to You Tube  to view lectures that I recorded years ago when the university outfitted classrooms with state-of-the-art audiovisual equipment. Some of the recorded lectures were mandated by a past department chair. I recorded a lot of other classes because I intended to offer them to the “Great Lectures Courses” for sale online. With the help of Anonymous Son, everything proceeded seamlessly.

Perhaps too seamlessly.

Since the Zoom classes were such a success for so many, universities across the nation have been questioning the value and “unnecessary financial burden” of maintaining offices for professors. The argument is that since Zoom classes were such a success, on-campus offices for professors are unnecessary. The Chronicle of Higher Education even presented an online Zoom discussion about this. The discussion is just one more argument for universities to cut costs to the bone. No one is willing to admit to the many downsides of eliminating offices for professors and the many hardships that a move to another location (i.e. home) would impose.

I agreed to a full-time position at this university so that I could spend less time with my family. If my office is vacated, I’d not only have to work from home but I’d also have to drag my couch back with me. I paid a twenty bucks to get two of those pointed-ears-and-no-neck-I-wanna-be-a-cop-someday Criminal Justice majors to haul it up to the third floor of the Lytton Strachey Building.

Working from home is a non-starter. Taking a nap anywhere outside of my office is impossible.

There was an informal discussion about it in the faculty lounge last year when Covid frenzy was at its worst. The women of child-bearing age were all for it. The slacker faculty loved the idea too. The rest of us had valid reasons for wanting an office on campus. Some love the pastoral setting of the campus. (They haven’t looked out my office window lately). Others said that they like being able to socialize with “like-minded people”. (Um… What?! The nonstop political posturing and frequent hissy fits keep me away from the faculty lounge. I go there only when I run out of coffee in my office, so the “like-mindedness” argument doesn’t work for me).

And one professor who shall remain nameless said nothing because he didn't want to call attention to himself. Everyone knows that he has been boinking the Kiddie Literature prof in her office for years.

Others commented that if the entire department were to vacate the floor for a semester, the university could bring in a budding decorator from the art department to give the place a makeover. When somebody referred to my office as a pig sty adorned with Grateful Dead posters, I turned and left. I don’t engage people lacking in awareness and appreciation of cultural diversity. I love my office. It’s not a pig sty. Others just don’t like the way that I keep most of my books stacked on the floor. If the university could give me some more shelves, my office would look like the Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript library at Yale.

But just a bit smaller.

The whole idea of doing away with professors’ offices is asinine. If we do away with offices, let’s do away with dormitories. Let the students stay home and take classes remotely. Their alleged minds are far away anyway. They spend most of their time online fooling with their  iPhones.

Get rid of the food court, the cafeteria, the football stadium, and the library too. The university should do away with the library anyway because students don’t use it for its vast resources. The building is just a very large climate controlled rest center. Most of the students in the library sit down in a carrel and pass out. Maybe that's a good thing. I never have to stand in line to check out a book. 

We survived Covid. YAY! Let the Academic PooBahs level the whole damned campus to save money.

Just let me keep my office.

And give me a raise.

2 comments:

  1. I'm an adjunct. I know about the "like mindedness". You have to fit in with the rest and kiss butts until you get the next contract or until they fire you. I don't know why I spent so much time pursuing a PhD. The people in my department are jackasses. Keep up the Good Fight, Prof. You are wonderful!

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  2. I started college at the beginning of Covid. Some classes were better on Zoom, but others really needed physical presence in the room. Some classes are STILL being held on Zoom. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

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