COVID-19, Lived Experience of the Pandemic, Teaching during the Pandemic, COVID Hopes and Fears, Psychology, Psychoanalysis
I have waited to write this missive because nothing seems to
change. Of course that is an illusion,
but there is a certain dreariness that continues to hang on – and that
I reported on in the last missive – and that will almost certainly be
present in the next. I went to a virtual
conference on “Difficult Conversations” – conversations about race – on Campus (via Zoom, of course...). The facilitator of the conference – who is
clearly very committed to talking about race – seemed almost bored as she
presented. Was it that this is what she
does all the time? Was it that she was
stuck, again, in her zoom room – wherever that is – with her zoom background
that betrays little about her while she tells of her own experience of race as a means of inviting others to talk about theirs?
In the first breakout exercise, we were told to talk briefly
about three things – our place, our name, and something else that now escapes
me. When I talked about my place – I talked
about currently feeling dislocated. This
was ironic in some ways. During the
pandemic, we have been focused on nesting.
We have worked on remodeling the “public” sector of our home. This has been fun and engaging. As I write this, I am babysitting our new
puppy who arrived two days ago. Unlike
our last foray into caring for a dog, this has been well planned and we
have been reading about and watching videos of puppy parenting for a couple of
months.
I am on campus for two days a week. On each of those days I am teaching
three one and a quarter hour classes.
For the first time in twenty years, I am teaching an introductory
course, so many of my students are First Year Students and they are bombarding
me with email questions, many of which involve my directing them to the
syllabus where the answers to their questions are neatly laid out (thanks more
to my borrowing and editing someone else’s syllabus than to my organizational
skills). These students seem to be more
intent on coming to class in person on a regular basis than the cohort last
fall – perhaps because they are younger – but perhaps the students in general
are learning that being in the classroom, rather than coming by Zoom, is a better
way to learn, even if there is a risk of infection.
I had an opportunity to get a vaccine a month or so
ago. As a mental health professional, I
was considered a front line worker. I
went online to get a time, but when it came up, I balked. I am not seeing any patients in person and
don’t see any urgency to do that. My
risk comes primarily from my job as a teacher.
I had heard that teachers were going to be in the next wave, so I
decided to wait. What I didn’t realize
was that when they said teachers, in our state, unlike others, post-secondary
teachers are not included. My ethical
decision, which had included what turned out to be a false hedge, was not reversible! I have tried to sign up on the medical worker site again,
but now they say they will call me… So
far no ring.
In my worst moments, I wonder whether our school’s
administration, which has not apparently advocated effectively for us, if at
all, and who insist that we go into the classroom while other schools are not
doing that, are in league with our Republican legislature in wanting to
eliminate a wisdom culture – something like a mini version of the cultural
revolution in China (Oh, the scale is way different and remember this is at my
worst and most paranoid/hysterical moments). When I utter some variation on this theme,
the Reluctant Wife wonders, “Why haven’t you retired?”
Similarly, my patients wonder why I didn’t take the vaccine
when it was available. Though we would
not be able to meet in person immediately, they would like to do that as soon
as it is possible. Perhaps I want to
stave off meeting in person? Perhaps, as
an introvert who grew up believing himself to be an extravert, I am
luxuriating, the way a pig luxuriates in slop, in glorious isolation?
I think, in fact, I am dislocated. I don’t like being isolated, but I don’t want
to return to being in contact. I am
overwhelmed with work, and I think that would just get worse (though I’m not
quite sure how) if there were things to do and go see? More fundamentally,
I am concerned with the state of the nation, I am concerned with the state
of the world – when we have figured out how to address the pandemic – how
will we address climate change?
As I mentioned above, we have joined millions of others in
acquiring a pet in part as a reaction to the pandemic. Kimba, named after the hero of a cartoon
series that the Reluctant Wife watched as an adolescent, is a lovely little
ball of fluff that we are enjoying connecting with. The girls have come home from their socially
isolated bubbles at their respective schools to welcome her in (Kimba, it turns out, is a chick magnet). The Reluctant Son is already here as his
school is still not having students on campus.
Kimba is very social and happy and already feels – after just a few days
with the family - to be a member of it.
The process of training a dog, and watching it develop,
will, perhaps, help restore – as will the reopening of the world – a sense of
hope. Springtime is just around the
corner. Assuming we can make it from
here to summer and an inoculation without exposing ourselves to the disease we should, at some point, be in the clear. OK, my gloomy self imagines, we might, like John Laurens in Hamilton!, become casualties after the war is won).
The Reluctant Wife and my Mother and Mother in Law have all received their
second shots. We will achieve herd
immunity. Currently, our nation doesn't have enough
people willing to take the shots when they become available to do that, but many of them
are waiting to see what the results will be for the millions who will take them
before they have an opportunity. I trust we will get there.
I trust that we will work towards herd immunity both here
and in the world more broadly. The local
newspaper recently reminded us that a local hero who discovered one of the
polio vaccines decided to donate the vaccines to the children of the world
rather than profit from them. The
current vaccines are the result of corporate efforts – and the corporations
will surely profit – but hopefully we will figure out how to equitably
distribute them (though I have heard of isolated profiteering already going on
in some countries).
During this time, I have been reading a text about Contemporary Social Theories. I will likely report on it in more detail once I have completed it. It is describing the work theorists have engaged in during the last century or so to understand the dilemmas of the modern world. Reading about how Adorno and others worked to understand Fascism in the middle of the last century feels very contemporary – and helpful. We have struggled with the issues we are currently facing in different forms. We do, in fact, have wisdom that has been achieved across time. We need to re-access it and apply it to a world that is evolving and, as they cautioned us, realize that the individual ways that something as monolithic seeming as fascism can be experienced needs to be understood as well.
In the book, I am poised to read the chapter on Lacan and Derrida, two theorists who have always confused me. The book promises to explain how they dislocated first the French Intellectuals, who, in turn, dislocated the rest of us. The author claims that our burgeoning sense of, for instance, gender proliferation and confusion is traceable in large part to them. Perhaps better understanding them will help me understand the experience of being dislocated - or perhaps it will plunge me deeper into what may become a deeper state of disorientation, dislocation and, perhaps, despair.
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