Couch 212: The French Vanilla couch

It will be interesting to see if zoom can handle all these courses moving online.

I asked my T today if she had thoughts of closing and she said that she wouldn't. She has her own practice. We joked that I wasn't about to get within 6 feet of her on a good day. The other thing is that she is dealing with an out of state hospitalized college student, so I was really worried that between covid19 and her son, I was about to lose support.

No, the other way around—he married Rita Wilson before he anthropomorphized a soccer ball.

But she wasnt with him on the desert island. Youre getting your reality and movie timelines confused!

No, I just forgot I was reading ex-hanksterese.

Yeah, you were making SENSE

In 20 days it will be a year since my T terminated me. I am still angry at him. I realise what he was doing was peiming me to terminate why else stop saying it takes as long as it takes and start saying dont you think Its been a long time? And still cant forget he said If i leave it will be a better use of his time.

I must be planning to eat my feelings because i have 6 bakery items in my fridge where i normally have 1

My attending asked me to stay home sick today because I’m coughing and febrile and look like crap (pale, bags under the eyes). I’m sort of glad because I’m exhausted and tired of working through this, but also I’ve been having a hard time and the distraction of work is good for me.

Also I can’t sleep.

What a sensible attending, i worked in a private hospital where another nurse came in sick we said she should go home the nursing super just told her take paracetamol halfway thfough the shift she collapsed and had to be taken to the public hospital.

Make sure you redt

'I must be planning to eat my feelings.'

Hugs, BCM. I'm not sure what today holds for me. I spent most of yesterday's session crying, and today I ache all over.

Mr Chill and Mr Poopy-pants or as @@ knows them Hemingway and Proust. You cant see my eldest daughters dog by the bed. He absolutely adores mr Chill but the feeling isnt mutual and he tries to keep a safe distance.

They are beautiful cats, BCM. I love black cats...but the tabby is particularly handsome.

The tabby is my youngest daughters cat she found him in a drain near the park as an older kitten. He was quite feisty.

The black cat can open doors by the handles and knows how to open louvre windows but he doesnt have the strength

Arent all cats beautiful even the hairless ones?

I think i am feeling lost.

Hugs if you want. I very rarely cried in therapy i used to cry when i got home sometimes but it made me feel odd.

Uuuugh I’m already bored. Maybe I should have just gone in today, sick or no.

Agreed. One of my friends on Facebook has a hairless cat and post photos of him in various shirts. It's adorable!

Sorry to hear, chihiro. You are doing the right thing, though.

Hugs, BCM. That's an awful thing for him to have said to you...

T just called me and said that because I'm sick we'll have to meet via Zoom tomorrow. (He makes me contact him before I call in sick because he doesn't want me missing work for mental health stuff, so I emailed him yesterday to tell him that my attending wanted me to call in sick today.) I don't really like meeting via the computer but I guess there's no other choice.

Stay home. Get well.

I have a feeling many of us are about to get very familiar with Zoom.

I am trying to decide what my son's summer program coordinator means when she says they are "prepared to be more flexible than usual" with their refund policy. I asked- if they cancel the program, will we get a refund? You know-before I send them a sizeable check. That answer does not make me feel comfortable just sticking the check in the mail right now for the early payment discount.

I just found out that our university is taking a pretty huge financial bath issuing funds to pay back scholarships for students pulled home from their travel abroad programs, as well as helping with travel funds and planning to get them home and trying to figure out how to accommodate lost credits and local enrollment. Which is the right thing to do. But whoa, that alone is going to rock the financial picture for a long time.

Since we have a few instructors here. Just came across this. Good advice:

Below is from a post by one of my friends who teaches at a local university. Good advice for those faced with transitioning to e-learning.

So I attended a workshop to try to get us very quickly prepared to teach at a distance until the end of the month. There are a few things I've learned that I think are important to share:

1. Be kind to yourself and your students. Everyone is stressed, even if they're playing cool. That includes faculty. And that's okay.
2. Many universities have a considerable number of pedagogical experts that, quite frankly, I have only been dimly aware of until yesterday. Be kind to these people. They are suddenly slammed.
3. You will not recreate your classroom, and you cannot hold yourself to that standard. Moving a class to a distance learning model in a day's time excludes the possibility of excellence. Give yourself a break.
4. Prioritize. What do students REALLY NEED TO KNOW for two weeks. This one is hard for me. But we have to strip it all the way down--in my campaigns class, that means I need them to post infographics on their research and now post narrative context and slides. But I'm going to punt on presentations because we just don't have time. Which sucks. But these are not normal circumstances.
5. If you're making videos, student viewership drops off precipitously at 5 minutes. Make them capsule videos if you make them. And UPLOAD to YOUTUBE because it TRANSCRIBES for you. Do not assume your audio is good enough or that students can understand without transcription. This is like using a microphone at meetings--I don't care if you don't need it, someone else does and they don't want to ask.
6. Make assignments lower or no stakes if you're using a new platform. Get students used to just using the platform. Then you can do something higher stakes. Do not ask students to do a high stakes exam or assignment on a new platform.
7. Stay in contact with students, and stay transparent. Talk to them about WHY you're prioritizing certain things or asking them to read or do certain things. I've moved to doing that in all of my face-to-face teaching anyway, and it improves student buy-in because they know content and delivery are purposeful.
8. Do not read on best practices for distance learning. That's not the situation we're in. We're in triage. Distance learning, when planned, can be really excellent. That's not what this is. Do what you absolutely have to and ditch what you can. Thinking you can manage best practices in a day or a week will lead to feeling like you've failed.