Little things COVID has changed that make sense but you might not have thought about #4,362: you can't send flowers to someone in the hospital. Oh yeah, duh. Of course.
Post by weedyburton79 on Aug 11, 2020 14:07:02 GMT 1
We finally made the decision as a family for our son to return to campus. We wrestled with it all summer, but the university is taking as many reasonable precautions as can be expected. In addition to mandatory masks and physical distancing, they have converted all dining to mobile app ordering and pickup, he has to do daily health self-assessments, temperature checks at Health Stations around campus, participate in the university’s contact tracing program, etc. He is at peace with the decision and excited to get back into a school routine as opposed to the work routine he’s been on all summer. He is not going to participate in pep/marching band, and he is not going to work at the campus restaurant as originally planned.
He will be in a double with one of his friends. It’s basically an apartment (it’s actually a former assisted living facility that the university took over years ago and converted to dorms)… they share a bedroom, and have a full kitchen, dining area, living room, and bathroom all to themselves. Seems like as good a scenario as we could ask for, short of him having a (cost prohibitive) single.
There is no fall break and no family weekend and no mass gathering activities for the semester. He moves in Aug 17, classes start on Aug 18, and continues straight through for three months. Classroom instruction ends the week of Thanksgiving when he comes home that Tuesday. His exams are all online and taken remotely from home the week after Thanksgiving, then he’s home for a month and a half and doesn’t go back to campus until the Spring Semester starts up in January. He is also taking his car with him this semester. That way if things go sideways and he needs to get home, he has a means of exit beyond us driving down to get him or putting him on a plane. Fingers crossed everything goes as smoothly as possible.
The challenge for remote learning options is that he is a double major in Music and Media Production, neither of which lend themselves to a distance learning model. So in person with restricted class sizes and precautions are the best option to keep moving forward with his degrees.
I’m still a little uncomfortable with him going back, but I realize there is no right answer. It feels a lot like when he got his driver’s license three years ago… I trust *my* kid because I know him; it’s the other people on the road who make me nervous.
Seems like education is to become The Great Health Experiment in the U.S.
You're so close to the action like this! I don't know, I kind of like it. It's better than being surrounded by frat boys when, oh I don't know, The Cure plays outdoors.
You're so close to the action like this! I don't know, I kind of like it. It's better than being surrounded by frat boys when, oh I don't know, The Cure plays outdoors.
Actually, no. I disagree with myself. It's better for not every social contact to be CUR(e)ated so we have to mix with everyone, not just people we want to mix with.
For me, a big part of the fun in going to these outdoor events is the opportunity to meet and meet up with other people so that setup isn’t really conducive to my ‘concert-going’ style. That said, at this moment I’d be more than happy to attend an outdoor event with a similar setup!