Back in the Office After a Long Time
RIP WFH.
During COVID, millions of people left their workplaces and began a new experiment — work from home. WFH was great for many people, including my husband. Without a daily 90-minute commute time, Steve gained 15 hours per week — the equivalent of one full waking day —to garden, exercise, and relax. It probably extended his life by five years.
Having Steve home was good for me, too, because he shared the caretaking responsibilities for Ian. Without school or any after-school activities, we had to work doubly hard to keep Ian occupied and social.
I had already been working from home for many years, but this was a new situation. I had to adjust to a busier house. Steve and I quickly learned that working in the same office all day wasn’t a great idea — he drinks water very loudly — but I was happy to have his company during the day. In another room.
Even as the world has returned to normal, Steve still works from home two days per week and goes in for three days. Other finance firms have been back to the office five days per week, but Steve’s company is Canadian, so it’s more laid-back. At this point, I think his hybrid life is permanent.
College is thankfully back in person. Jonah’s college life was upended by online education. Sorry to all my professor friends, but your YouTube classes sucked, and I’m still pissed that I had to pay full tuition for YouTube School.
After a little break, Jonah returned to college this semester to finish his last two classes. Woot. He said that even though the classes are back to normal, the other students aren’t. He said that the quality of class discussion and class attendance dropped significantly. He thinks that his fellow college students are much dumber than they were before COVID.
There’s been a bunch of good stuff written lately about the impact of AI on education and the workplace. I’ll talk about that next week.
I’m back in the office after a very lengthy period of WFH. I was home due to parenting responsibilities, not COVID. It’s been an adjustment.
One big change is that my immunity isn’t ready for prime time. I had to stay home from work today because of a sore throat. With a steady stream of children coming into the office for autism diagnoses, my immune system needs to bulk up quickly.
I’m also establishing new routines. In my old life, I would work for two hours, then run, then work more, then shower around noon, then work until I gradually ran out of steam around 4. Work and life were evenly distributed throughout the day without clear lines. Now, there’s clear work time and life time. I don’t have things neatly sorted yet, but I’m working on it. Once I have better systems in place, it will be very nice to clock out at the end of the day.
For the most part, I’m loving being back in the office. I’m naturally a social person, so I enjoy working within a larger community for a common goal. The office is five minutes from my house, so I don’t have to deal with Steve’s long commute. I love the mission of my work. It’s fun shopping for office clothes again. Honestly, there are almost no downsides, just learning curves.
Shopping
Brown pants with wide legs are my new favorite thing. They look great with black, pink, and light blue shirts.
I liked this pair of brown pants from Anthropologie. They have a nice stretch and are made of a good, light fabric for summer. However, they are snug around the belly — you can’t have any extra pounds around the waist. Maybe I’ll go back for them in another color after I lose those pounds.
Instead, I got this pair of brown pants from Everlane and a cute pair of brown Mary Jane shoes. They aren’t the same shade of brown, so I can’t wear them together. The shoes will work well with jeans and a blazer. I have a pair of Everlane flats from years ago that are still comfortable and in heavy rotation.
When I first got this job, I treated myself to a pair of J. Crew loafers. I figured I would wear them every day. And I am! Most comfortable pair of shoes that I’ve ever owned.
I’m a sucker for cheap clothes on Amazon. Sure, I have a 50/50 chance of returning the items, but I like to live dangerously. From my sick bed this morning, I bought a batwing sweater, palazzo pants, and more pointy flats.
And because a girl can’t have too many green shoes, I got this pair from Toms.
I also picked up some things from StitchFix — great stretchy pants — and from a friend who sells pyramid scheme clothes.
More
A lot is going on here. I’ll put together a proper newsletter for Monday, but here are some last-minute tidbits.
You can catch me talking with Rebecca Resnik about colleges and autistic children on her podcast, Cultivating Excellence Podcast.
Watching: Andor (rewatched Season 1, now watching Season 2), Last of Us, Hacks
Glad you're doing something you enjoy and are good at--those kids need your help.
I taught online for two years during COVID--our community college was closed--we couldn't even get stuff from our offices. We taught "live virtual lecture" (LVL) courses at the same times and days we would have had face to face classes. My wife Mary, a periodontist and adjunct faculty member, taught those dental hygiene courses that could be taught in such a way at the same time I was teaching our English compositions courses--we had to buy another, newer computer and upgrade our home internet service to 1 gig--otherwise, the students and I couldn't stay logged into our learning management system video tool. Of course, we weren't paid for internet access--our poor adjuncts had to bear such costs on their own.
We also had to learn to teach in that kind of environment on our own. The default for many was to video their lectures and post to YouTube--the course management systems don't have enough storage to keep video files. I'd been creating shortish videos for my asynchronous online courses for years, but the "LVL" courses really demanded a different level of engagement. I tried all kinds of things to keep the in-class group work that occupies a majority of my face to face classes going. There was very little in the way of help for any of this, alas. Though I got better at it over time, I was very happy when we could go back to campus.
It was the hardest teaching I have ever done.
One issue I hadn't thought about at first was the fact that I would be interacting with students via video while they were in their bedrooms--I became very uncomfortable with speaking to 18-year old girls in such circumstances, and let everyone turn their cameras off if they wanted--that led to more privacy but perhaps reduced interaction. Another issue was lower-income and immigrant students working from spaces that they might not be comfortable showing to others. I mentioned this to one of my students who always kept his camera on and who worked in this family's kitchen--when I mentioned that he didn't have to do that, he caught my drift and said that he'd been in a refugee camp for a couple years, so his current home was paradise in comparison. But that's not enough of an example to suggest that everyone is similarly comfortable.
COVID college was not fun for anyone. We all did what we could.