We're certainly giving Killer a run for his money [estwing]

Good to hear you are becoming a somewhat mobile specimen again.

you'll NEVER be as [estwing] as I am ;)

however, your latest diplo message had me yell "YESSS" aloud and fist-pump! If you're good to go on a cell phone screen, you're good to go anywhere! :)

Careful there, the next one won't bring the same kind of news [B)]

It is once again the eve of all hell breaking loose in the pitboss, and my summer vacations started, so here's an update.

The brain injury is healing. Slowly but surely. I felt great last August and started off with a 75% workload, which I had no problem doing. For a while. What got me is the accumulation of fatigue week-to-week. So eventually, before imploding, I downgraded to 40% workload (1 large class of linear algebra) which went fine.

Then for the winter, 2 small classes of stats gave me 50% workload and that was perfect. I could resume doing a bit of sport each week: yoga, snowshoe trails with the dog, a bit of jogging and biking. I'll take at least 60% next Fall.

Then we had this thing with the virus [xx(] I guess you heard.

Not to bemoan my situation — nobody I know has caught it and my job + paycheck is secure — but it was really, really hard on my nerves. The constant little itch of danger at the back of my head was a drain I REALLY didn't need. And the switch to videoconference teaching is simply awful. The entire upheaval of how we work, and the improvised shitshow that was our education ministry's lack of leadership, made it even harder. For a few days around the end, my nerves were so fried that I had trouble standing up for more than a minute.

It especially breaks my heart that ~25% :eek: of my students didn't have the technological tools and internet access, or a serene enough family life, or just the $, to keep up with school from home. I'm so glad the semester is over.

I'm curious as to how it affected you guys, what got scrambled in your lives, how you had to adapt. Here's hoping everything gets back in order, more or less, for everyone [beer1]

Bonus dick pic:

https://i.imgur.com/BtMCn4Z.jpg

Hm, it's easy to forget how people who aren't 100% but manage to function in a normal situation (I hope you don't mind me saying this, but this is what I make of the image you're painting of yourself) can get into serious trouble when they need to adapt to a new and strange situation. But the tension gets to anyone I suppose.

Nothing covid-worthy to report here. I was at the office yesterday for the first time since the beginning of March, worked from home without problems. Well, kids that needed home schooling, but thankfully they're in school again.

Oh absolutely, and for example it gave me a lot of compassion for a student I had who's got serious anxiety disorders, and wouldn't even come to class (over Zoom) for fear of a panic attack or somesuch. It's not the unease of being on camera, it's everything else forcefully piling on top of it and her drawing the line there.

It sounds cheesy, but thanks for sharing. Being pointed at these situations breeds compassion, and when you're at home in more-or-less-something-akin-to isolation takes me out of the bubble. These days it seems everything is either about racism or corona deaths in other countries and a lot less about people (although these subjects intersect, obviously).

By the way, how do 25% of your students end up without internet access? Are these people who migrated back to their parental homesteads in the backwoods of rural whatever to self-isolate? If there's one thing students here have it's internet access.

My pleasure!

Sure, most do have access to an internet connexion. Not 100% but 95-99%. They lack access in different ways though. Some don't have a PC and rely on their mobile phone, some don't have good data plans, or have to share the PC with mom/dad/siblings who also need it for work and school. Some don't have the peace and quiet to work on school stuff, or have abusive parents, or deal with mental illness in themselves or close family, which is exacerbated through the intersection of covid and isolation.

So even if they do have a PC with cable internet, other external conditions may prevent them from taking their classes on schedule and doing their schoolwork on time.

I can see how a home situation could be detrimental to studying, but if internet or computer access is a barrier for your students then studying there is very different from here. That's probably true in any case, but I wouldn't have sought the differences in lack of computer access. Anyway, good you noticed that and take it into consideration.