so then... :-\
Everything Is True
Ada Hoffmann's author newsletter
I was planning to write about something happier and more full of interesting ideas, but in case you are curious, here is what just happened at the place where I work:
Queen's U cancels in-person exams amid student concerns over COVID-19 surge | CBC News
Queen's University announced Sunday afternoon it would be cancelling all in-person exams for the rest of the year. Leading up to the announcement students expressed concerns about attending exams as cases in the region rose steadily — with many suspected to be the omicron variant.
I'm not sure I can even write about this yet; it feels very raw. I’m paywalling it more for privacy than out of any sense that my thoughts on the issue are worth paying for. I just know that I spent the past several days trying to do what I could for a very large number of students I am responsible for who were scared for their safety, under the purview of an administration that was very insistent I could only do certain kinds of things to help them and not others (and which later completely reversed those orders overnight, but too late to help the students in my class), while also dealing with misinformation that was being passed back and forth between the students about what was and wasn't going to happen, and being asked to explain and defend things I didn't have any control over, such as the physical conditions inside exam halls.
As a writer I feel like I ought to tie this up into some moral, or at least connect it to some theme or value that's important to me. The selfishness of schools that wanted to bring people back before it was safe; or the weight of moral injury that inevitably accrues to anyone in a position that affords them any scrap of power in a pandemic like this. I don't know. I can't draw any of those tidy conclusions right now. There's no meaning to this. It's just messy and (literally) sickening.
And now I have exams to grade, I guess.
(I'm not closing comments, but I'm going to ask that you not comment with opinions or advice about what I and others ought to do, or ought to have done, in this situation. Comments of sympathy, or sharing similar experiences you have personally had, are fine. I don't normally set boundaries of this type on the comment section but this week I am feeling fragile. Thanks.)