I'm picking through a stack of exams from my American Lit Survey class, trying to find some handwriting I can read without straining. Large print, dark ink, neat handwriting--it's like a treasure more valued for its rarity. It's a mistake to read the more legible exams ones first because then I'll end up struggling through a sea of scrawls, but maybe I can tackle the difficult ones in the morning after I give my eyes a rest.
In my morning class I struggled to decipher students' handwriting; in my afternoon class today I struggled to see my students. Waves of cooties are sweeping through campus, causing multiple cases of Covid and flu and bad colds and something a student called "fuzzy throat." When five out of nine students in a literature class stay home sick, it's time to make an executive decision to meet on Zoom. The problem, though, is that sick people don't want to be seen on video, and I guess healthy people don't either because I ended up trying to converse with a whole bunch of blank, silent squares. One student had bandwidth issues and kept having to reconnect. Another student had audio issues and had to share his insights in the chat. I don't know how to make eye contact with blank silent squares--it's like talking to a wall.
I keep thinking about the department chair who first hired me here, who decided to retire when his eye problems made it virtually impossible to read students' handwriting. If my vision gets any worse I can switch to online exams so students can type in their responses, which will require use of anti-cheating software but at least I'll be able to read the answer. But if we ever get to the point that I can't see my students' faces, I'm outta here. I don't mind meeting on Zoom occasionally while the place is overrun with germs, but I don't intend to conclude my career by talking to a wall.
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