We all have those moments when we remember exactly where we were when something significant happened.
I added Wednesday, March 11, 2020, to my personal list when I was sitting in the back row at the County Board of Legislators and County Executive Picente pointed to me and said, “The Governor just closed you.”
I remember wondering what that even meant. I know we close for snowstorms or power outages, but a virus? I called the office and the College’s Crisis Response Team (CRT) was already assembling. The next week was filled with all-day CRT meetings trying to make sense of it all, each day culminating with an email update for our students, faculty, and staff. It was mentally draining to slog through so much unknown territory only to count the day’s primary accomplishment as a single email to the College community.
By Monday, March 23, the entire College was operating remotely with a few exceptions of essential staff. The CRT met all day every day for several weeks then had daily check-ins through mid-July in an effort to develop the details for creating a COVID-friendly operation filled with density reduction, 80% remote instruction, residence life protocols, centralized health-screening check-in stations, bracelets, door monitoring, testing, and other details that did not exist prior to the disruption.
Everything was new. Setting up home offices, spending all day in front of Zoom squares, and having the normal rhythm of daily life turned upside down was unsettling to say the least.
One of my most vivid memories of the early COVID lockdown was driving to the Newark, N.J., airport with my wife to pick up our oldest daughter as she caught the last flight out of Togo, West Africa, when her Peace Corps experience came to a sudden end. We drove on a dark and desolate five-lane highway at 10 p.m. with the NYC skyline on the horizon and not a single car in sight — a post-apocalyptic feel that I’ll never forget. Watching the nightly news and reading headlines trying to understand what was going on was mentally exhausting. Playing trivia games with friends via Zoom on the weekends helped ease the discomfort, but simply wasn’t the same.
The College’s Workplace by Facebook platform helped maintain some connection with the “Social Distancing Together” thread filled with random artifacts of working remotely — new coworkers and “officemates” of cute kids and funny animals and precious “throwback” pictures that we likely wouldn’t have seen otherwise. “Virtual happy hours” and different departmental strategies to stay connected despite the remoteness helped keep folks together. A virtual graduation ceremony was an emotional moment for me to consider the impact of what our students were going through and just how powerful our work is here at the College.
Summer was like living in parentheses — it was normal in a sense because of outdoor activities, but it wasn’t because there were no gatherings of any kind. At home, the relaxed pace provided an opportunity to inventory the upsides, like having both of our girls home with us and spending bonus time together, having our health, and having our jobs as we watched the devastating impact of the pandemic around the country.
As August came and the College began a new academic year, all the anniversaries of our normally robust fall semester were hard to emotionally navigate. The absence of gathering at Fall Opening, new student orientation, sunny fall afternoons with vibrant campuses, soccer games and meaningful student activities made it that much harder to push through as the pandemic continued. The holiday-spike in positive cases and deaths were a sad development that quickly gave way to a return of 1% positivity rates and the optimism of the vaccines arriving.
I now find myself in a “COVID-normal” state of mind that provides a manageable routine without getting too anxious about things. I continue to be amazed at the dedication and commitment of faculty and staff that has been demonstrated over the past year. It’s as though the respect and trust I hoped we had developed in the culture here was amplified in ways that exceeded my expectations. That seems to be how we’ve made it through together — believing in each other and holding ourselves accountable to do what needed to be done.
And now it’s hard not to look to the future. What will it look like? If 2020 was the year of the upside down — full of shock and awe — 2021 is likely more a year of transition to something different, rather than a return to pre-COVID life. While we’ll likely have a “masked normal” for an extended period of time, I believe things will change dramatically when the social-distancing guidelines are fully lifted. Until that happens, we’ll continue managing within the parameters we have with an eye toward carrying out our mission in the best way possible — striving to do our best work while being patient with each other and ourselves … and the world as we know it.
If you have any questions or comments, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.
