The semester is over: Thoughts
Very few people even come to this blog; I think mostly it's porn sites trolling me. But I write anyway. Many, perhaps most, people in higher education claim this to be worst semester we have ever spent. Perhaps. Perhaps collectively; I would not say that for individuals, because Fall 2001 would have been really horrific for people in the Northeast, and there have been regional national disasters that have wrecked havoc (wreaked?) on colleges and universities. But COVID affects everyone, at some level. We are wrapping up final exams, thankfully before Thanksgiving, and in the midst of grading at my college. I have been told how bad it is every day since August 1. Many of my colleagues said repeatedly, "We're going to shut down after two weeks, the cases will be so high." We did not. Cases did not get "spikey" until last week, and there are a few reasons for that I'll get into below. Many faculty prepared their classes in case of shut down in September.