Sphinx

I could honestly weep. This is our ‘welcome week’ before teaching starts on Monday, and today I was meeting – f2fip! – my new personal tutees. I have been trying to imagine what it must be like for them, making the transition to university in such extraordinary circumstances, and really wanted to ensure that as their tutor I could offer some degree of calm reassurance, a bit of a community, some essential guidance for the first couple of weeks while they find their feet. Well, it’s possible that I have succeeded in making them feel more confident and on top of things, in contrast to their shambolic tutor. For I was indeed the one to turn up half an hour late for the meeting because I couldn’t find my way into the building because of some very misleading signage…

Yes, great plan, Nev: emphasise the importance of leaving lots of time to find your way around Exeter’s non-Euclidean campus in the most dramatic way possible, then illustrate the dangers of relying on computer systems by failing to persuade the AV equipment to wake from its six-month slumber. The one bit of my own advice that I did follow successfully was the regular checking of email, as that’s how, after I sent out a message to reschedule the meeting on account of being unable to persuade the door to recognise my key card, I got the helpful offer from one of the students who had found their way inside to come and show me the way. Maybe they can all now bond over condescension for the elderly and bewildered.

Positives from today, other than the fact that it’s over? Having spent two hours this morning establishing that, no, the university does not currently have any system capable of simulcasting a seminar (I assume this means that if one student has to self-isolate, we take the whole class online – but I haven’t seen this stated anywhere yet), I was pleased that just firing up my laptop to run Teams did give the students who couldn’t attend in person a reasonable idea of what was going on, even if it clearly wouldn’t work for proper discussion and debate. And I was delighted that past me had topped up the stocks of espresso beans before abandoning the office back in March, even if he had inexplicably failed to get in a bottle or two of gin.

Well, as I was saying to myself two days ago: no plan survives etc. Yes, the student record system will suddenly allocate a couple of extra students to me, whom I haven’t had a chance to contact in advance. Yes, the timetabling system will randomly double book them into different meetings so I have to make instant decisions about which one I think they should attend. No, no one at all will participate in my carefully constructed ice-breaking activities online, either because of the ‘creepy treehouse‘ thing or because they’re all waiting for someone else to go first…

And as someone remarked on Facebook, we academics will work ourselves into the ground to try to deal with this, without anyone even needing to say ‘what about the students?’ Positive spin: they’re already finding their own way around, and we can get through this together. But I so wanted to be calm and reassuring, at least for today.

Update, having now calmed down a bit… One interesting thing to reflect upon, besides my own haplessness, is the contrast between f2fip and online – it’s not just that a ‘meet the tutor’ event could have been done online (and I know friends in other universities who are doing precisely that), but for students who hadn’t arrived in Exeter yet it was online (and that’s not an option we’ve ever offered before). Moreover, the online people got a meeting that started more or less on time, even if what they got was me explaining that everything was a big mess and we’d reconvene in half an hour, whereas the meatspace students got to sit around wondering where I was. On the other hand, it was lovely to see actual faces rather than just initials on a Teams screen…

What about plague precautions? The students, bless them, dutifully kept their masks on until seated with the regulation distancing, and asked my permission to remove them, so there was the opportunity to emphasise the vital importance of keeping them on in corridors, entering and exiting lecture rooms etc. The windows were open – they open only an inch and a half, so I’m not sure how much ventilation was being contributed, but better than nothing. And otherwise the campus was eerily quiet, though not quite as Ballardian as I’d hoped – no alligators in the ponds yet…