It's an unusual day on our campus, and not just because some of my colleagues are wearing jeans and plaid flannel instead of their normally natty attire. It's Pandemic Day, except we're not supposed to call it Pandemic Day but something less frightening like Emergency Test Day, but I announced to my classes that I'm calling it Don't Panic Day. I for one am definitely not panicking. For one thing, I don't have time to panic. How can I possibly be so busy on a day when I'm not actually meeting with my classes?
Except I am meeting with them--just not face-to-face. All professors are supposed to be conducting their classes via "alternative means" today, except for those that can't possibly afford to eschew face-to-face meetings for one day. My African-American Lit students read a classmate's paper and responded to it via e-mail, and very insightful those responses were. My film class watched part of Singin' in the Rain and had a sort of slow-motion e-mail discussion of particular techniques. Almost everyone participated and no one cared what anyone else was wearing.
Best of all, though, no one actually had to get sick. In my book, the best kind of Pandemic Day is the one on which I can mark the pandemic absent.
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