COVID-19 is upon us in the good old United States of America. Like many totally great countries, we are really prepared for a global pandemic involving a virus for which there is no direct treatment and which kills vulnerable populations a tad too easily. We’re super prepared. Mega prepared. So prepared it’s like this country is run by very competent people. Believe me.
Of course, the only true statement in that paragraph is the first one. COVID-19 is upon us. It is upon many people. And it’s here to stay for a while. In my dreams, the world rallies and kicks this ugly virus to the curb, minimizing the loss of life and paving the way for a glorious future where peoples and nations work together in harmony. They’ll build a new United Nations and form a global exploratory and scientific space organization and band together to revert climate change and pave the way for an era of nearly endless prosperity. We’ll discover new worlds, create amazing new technologies and art, and look back on the past as a shameful and pathetic time.
Dream dream dream.
In reality, we’re looking at two months of disaster. While I’m mostly locked away in my apartment, relegated to social interaction through a cell phone or my computer, a lot of U.S. Americans are running about having parties and proclaiming that everything is fine. And those of us who would rather not die must sit at home wondering why so many of the people in this country are goddamn idiots.
And so I’m writing this post. A long-winded post about my preparations for the coming mass infection in Minnesota. We’ll call this Academia During a Pandemic: Hunker Down Philosophy!
So, let’s take a look at what’s going on in this sea of isolation:
Pandemic Essentials: Beer!
If you’re going to be stuck in the house for days on end, there are two things anyone with a PhD in English needs: beer and books. We’ll come to the books later, but for now, let’s talk beer.
As many of you know, I live in Bemidji, Minnesota. Bemidji has a craft brewing company with the fairly obvious title of Bemidji Brewing. And Bemidji brewing has one of my favorite beers of all time: the Chocolate Peanut Butter Stout. I’ve only given 5 stars on Untappd to a handful of beers. This is one of them.
To prepare for the coming apocalypse, I’ve gone ahead and filled up two growlers with Bemidji Brewing beer: one with the Chocolate Peanut Butter Stout 1 and one with their new Munich Dunkel. While this won’t last long enough for the apocalypse to subside, I can confirm that I will have one glorious week of beer perfection.
Meanwhile, books…
Pandemic Essentials: Books!
I had a pretty good idea that things were going to spiral out of control in the United States right around the beginning of this week. Like any smart person, I made the decision to go where the entertainment is easy to find: Minneapolis!2 And what did I discover there? See for yourself:
Most of these were for a steal, though I probably spend more money on books than almost anything else because I absolutely have a problem that I don’t intend on fixing. The above collection of additions is probably not going to help with that…
While I don’t expect to read all of these during this pandemic, there is a weird sort of logic to my selection process. These days, I tend to have multiple agendas when I look at the shelves, including:
- Postcolonial Collecting
One of my fields of interest is postcolonial literature, which means I have a tendency to grab anything and everything from the Hienemann African Writers Series and its related Caribbean Writers Series OR anything by writers from the postcolony (especially the nations of Africa and the Caribbean). Hence the selections from Nigerian writer T.M. Aluko (Kinsman & Foreman and One Man, One Matchet), Guinean writer D.T. Niana (Sundiata), and Argentinean writer Julio Cortázar (Cronopios and Famas). - Academic Interests
Yup. I’m an academic. The title of this post should have given that away. The “Dr” in the upper left, too. And academics like to buy books of interest to their academic-y-ness. Hence Wendell’s A Literary History of America, Blount’s Animal Land: The Creatures of Children’s Fiction, Curran and Gurevitch’s Mass Media and Society, Andersen’s Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, Spurr’s The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration, McHale’s Postmodernist Fiction, and, oddly enough, Bassior’s Space Patrol.3 - Reading Kids Books
Fun fact: I read a lot of books for kids. Why? They’re fun. A lot of fun. So much fun, in fact, that I’ve been grabbing up other quirky middle grade books whenever I can. Hence Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator and a bunch of old and totally delightful looking books by Arthur Scott Bailey (The Tale of Old Mr. Crow, The Tale of Sandy Chipmunk, The Tale of Major Monkey, The Tale of Ferdinand Frog, The Tale of Brownie Beaver, and The Take of Fatty Coon.4. - Reading Star Wars and SF/F
You may recall a project I created a while back called Space Opera Novels by Women. If not, go check it out! One of the things I’ve been doing is collecting as many of the works from that list as possible, both because I’m thinking of writing about the various authors and because I’m obsessed with the amount of space opera by women out there. Add to that my moderate obsession with Star Wars and SF/F in general, and you’ll understand why I picked up all of these works: Wendig’s Aftermath and Life Debt (Star Wars), Reaves’ Street of Shadows, Jedi Twilight, and Patterns of Force (Star Wars), Lundwall’s Science Fiction: What It’s All About, MacApp’s Recall Not Earth, Mezo’s The Fall of Worlds, Unless She Burn, and No Earthly Shore, Felice’s Down-Time, Scott’s The Game Beyond, Chester’s The Crystal Eye and The Crimson Claw, Coulson’s Tomorrow’s Heritage, Outward Bound, and Legacy of Earth, Franklin’s The Light of Exile, Crowley’s The Deep, and Harper’s Lightwing, Shahar’s Hellflower, Darktraders, and Archangel Blues.
The rest of the books in those pictures were grabbed for one reason or another. Mostly curiosity. Mostly sheer amusement at finding them in a pile.
Needless to say, I’ll have a lot of things to read! 😀
Pandemic Essentials: Television and Movies!
A lot of us are going to watch a whole lot of television and movies. Some of us have access to multiple streaming platforms, and even if we only had Netflix, we’d still have too much to watch anyway. As for me, I’m currently sticking my nose into the following:
- Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Firefly
- How I Met Your Mother
- Willow (for a podcast!)
Eventually, I’ll add other things to the list. There are probably going to be a few big boxing matches on DAZN in the next week or so, and there are a ton of shows I haven’t watched yet that deserve my eyeballs. For now, I’m going for comfort viewing.
Moving to Remote Learning
Earlier this week, Bemidji State University announced the cancellation of classes for the week following Spring Break (ahem, this coming week5) has begun the process of moving all classes to remote learning. In other words, I’ll have plenty to do in the next week. Probably too much.
The hardest part of this is time. Teaching online classes is not particularly easy. Personally, I’m not a fan of online instruction, though less to do with the technological or pedagogical limits than with the personal limits. Online classes require students to become managers of their learning experience; that is, they must take charge to ensure that they learn what they’re supposed to learn. The social functions of the university are usually absent by default in online learning platforms, and there’s a limit to what professors can do to fill knowledge gaps or provide direct instruction (and lecture videos are often, well, dull). A lot of students are not suited to this sort of work. I’m not saying they’re stupid; I’m saying that the kind of instruction they most benefit from isn’t the kind that requires them to guide themselves. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but I think we do students a disservice by pushing for online instruction in non-pandemic contexts without addressing whether those students would actually benefit (or would be willing to make sufficient changes for themselves to benefit).
All of this is to say that I am quite worried about the shift to online instruction. None of my students really get a choice in the matter. Their classes will be converted to online classes in a fairly short time span. They’ll also likely have professors at the helm who have minimal experience with online classes. That puts an enormous amount of pressure on me to deliver the best possible online version of ALL of my classes. I refuse to suck. For some (Rhetoric of Social Media and Digital Fan Communities), that shouldn’t be a big problem because I already use wikis and other digital tools in those courses; for others (Argument and Exposition and my honors course in science fiction and resource infrastructure), the switch may screw things up pretty good. My honors course is meant to have presentations from county engineers, communications experts, and natural resource and water/sewage managers. I have no idea how we’re going to do that via remote without running the serious risk of tech failure…
I like to think of myself as a pretty solid professor, but I don’t know many professors at my university who aren’t at least a tad worried about what’s going to happen to their classes after next week. I’m right there with them.
On a more positive note: I will push my students for suggestions about what they want. There are a lot of technologies we can use. While educational tools may do the trick, my students might want me to use less pedagogically conventional tools to fill in the gaps. We will see!
Pandemic Essentials: Keeping Busy
All of the above is long-winded way of saying that my first order of business for surviving this pandemic is to keep busy. Much of this whole fiasco is beyond my control. As an asthmatic, I sadly have to rely on my fellow U.S. Americans to do the right thing to minimize the potential for exposure. After all, I cannot stay inside my apartment for months and months; I need to go out to get food, etc. That lack of control is something I think a lot of folks are finding difficult to deal with. Perhaps I’ll come back to that topic in a later edition.
For now, the goal is to keep busy. I’m behind on a major editing project I was hired to do (so behind), and I have another project to complete in the next few weeks. On top of that, I’ve got a lot of academic projects I want to work on, a lot of reading to catch up on, a lot of class stuff I need to figure out, and a whole lot of blog posts and podcasts to create.
Keeping busy is all I really have right now. I don’t know if it will improve my productivity or make me better at emailing people when I am behind on things or what. But I’m going to do what I can to keep this brain from thinking too much about the bananapants nonsense going on in the world.
Stay safe, y’all. If you can, vote. Please. Vote. Beyond that, think about the people around you. Help them stay safe by keeping yourself out of the path of this virus. Send COVID-19 packing!
Oh, and as always, feel free to throw down things you’re doing to keep busy, books you’re reading, etc.! The comments are open!
Footnotes
- Sweet mother of god will this be good to dig into while going through re-runs of Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Bemidji, sadly, still does not have a true bookstore. It’s criminal. I know…
- I am moderately obsessed with this show and its impact on U.S. culture in the 50s. Sadly, a lot of it has been lost to time. :(
- They were all on a discount table, and I had to get them after sitting there for a full minute giggling. I will note that the last book, Fatty Coon, worries me a little because of the language. I’m guessing the story is not racist, but when you go that far back in time, there’s always a risk.
- Let’s be honest. This hasn’t been much of a Spring Break. I know some folks from up here who have gone out of state, but most of my friends group hasn’t ventured far all week.
