Oh to own a private island!

What this college really needs is a private island, preferably in a tropical location where the surf and sun can compensate for the hassles of transporting all our teaching materials across the sea. If only our illustrious Founders had been more forward-thinking! Maybe someone should strong-arm the trustees into buying an island before January....

I feel like I'm on an island this morning, sitting in my office in a building so quiet and still that I could be the only living person in the Mid-Ohio Valley. I've probably spent more time alone in my office this semester than ever before, and I know I've eaten more peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches than I have since childhood, when a PB&J was my daily lunch except on those rare occasions when Mom slapped some cream cheese down in place of the peanut butter. The pandemic has put a serious damper on our going-out-to-lunch habits, and the advantage of PB&J is that it doesn't have to be refrigerated so I don't even need to leave my office to fetch my lunch from the fridge.

My office today is as cold and quiet as a crypt and I may as well be in a crypt considering the way we live these days. Our state is heading toward tightening restrictions so I probably ought to go to the grocery store and stock up on staples before the hammer falls, but I suspect that the entire population of the county will be shopping this week. It's hard to maintain a safe social distance in an aisle crowded with shoppers in the irrational grip of toilet-paper panic.

So I sit in my office grading papers and leading Zoom review sessions for whoever shows up. My 8 a.m. class has nine students, eight of them female; which one do you think showed up for this morning's review session? We ladies had a nice little chat about what to expect on the final exam and how to strategize in response to various sample essay questions--it was as if we were on our own little Zoom island, with the rest of the world banished to the waves.

By the end of the week they'll all be banished back to the home towns while I retreat to my own forest fastness--my crypt, my cave, my private island that lacks only sun and surf to make it the ideal place to ride out the next stage of the pandemic.