Working Through the Pandemic (Ebenbach)

So much of a person’s experience of this pandemic is determined by work. Doctors and grocery deliverers, for example, have to work harder than ever and put themselves at greater risk during an already stressful time. Still—at least they have a sense of purpose; restaurant owners and performers, meanwhile, are sitting in idle anxiety about when/if/how they’ll be able to get back to it. And many other folks, in order to keep their jobs, have had to figure out how to do what they do—therapy, religious services, education—in a whole new way.

As for me, I teach at a university, and I’m also a staff member at the university’s center for teaching and learning—which means that I work with faculty and grad students to help them be the best teachers they can be for their students. More inclusive, more aware of their students as whole human beings, etc. Well, the “teacher development” part of my job has changed a lot over the last few months, including in ways I didn’t expect. Specifically, at first I had to learn how to live almost entirely in the moment, which was kind of great, and now I have to learn how to live almost entirely in the future, which is kind of terrible.

When spring semester went virtual all of a sudden, nobody knew anything about the future. Would Covid peter out in a month? Would we still be dealing with this in the fall? Nobody knew. All we did know was that a huge number of faculty and students had to get set up to do learning online right away, whether or not they’d ever used any of the relevant technology before. We were working overtime just trying to help people to do the things that were right in front of them. It was exhausting, but in a way it was also nice—I had a sense of purpose, and was so focused on the tasks at hand (mine and the faculty’s) that I couldn’t spare a thought for the future.

Now things are really different. We got through the spring, and now at the center for teaching and learning we’re all working overtime to get the faculty ready for the fall, which may be totally online, or partly online and partly in-person, with the in-person people (so to speak) masked and six feet apart. Our university hasn’t decided yet, and it’s a complicated question—but most schools (including ours) seems to be leaning toward hybrid models, which is to say that many classes will have some people who are physically there and others who are attending virtually. To me, this sounds like dropping a pedagogical disaster right into the middle of an all-you-can-eat buffet for the virus. I don’t know one person who thinks that this kind of hybrid class would, medically or educationally, be as good as a class that’s completely online. And yet it’s probably going to happen at a lot of schools this fall.

The whole thing fills me with anxiety and dread, honestly—and, because of my job, I can’t not think about it. All day I have to talk to faculty about their anxiety and dread, and try to brainstorm ways to make the fall a little better. Which brings me back to my own anxiety and dread. (I’m going to be teaching, too!) In other words, it’s June, but I am nonetheless deep into September. And, with the way this academic situation is shaping up, I don’t know anybody who’s excited to be in September.

Consider staff on my campus: a lot of people will probably have to be laid off if we don’t bring in revenue from tuition and housing. That means opening the campus up—but it also means saving those jobs via exposing the workers to unsafe working conditions. It’s a nightmare only capitalism could love. In other words, there’s a bigger conversation we ought to have about why we allow money, because we live in a country with an inadequate social safety net, to drive us into the pandemic in ways that are mentally and physically unhealthy.

But for me personally there’s also a question of what happens when I shift from a present of trying to deal with what’s in front of me—hard enough—to contemplate the possibly even harder future ahead. I’m in no hurry to think about that, but that’s my job—so I’m going to have to.

David Ebenbach is the author of eight books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, including the poetry collection Some Unimaginable Animal, the novel Miss Portland, and the short story collection The Guy We Didn't Invite to the Orgy and other stories. He teaches creative writing and literature at Georgetown University, where he is also a Project Manager at their Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship. You can find out more, if you want, at davidebenbach.com.