Omigod, Omicron.
Feeling Free to Panic
Omicron is cause for concern, not panic, says Joe Biden, and I don’t doubt he’s right, but instinctive responses being, well, instinctive, I can’t help it. Beneath my public smiley face and an upbeat aspect, I’m wringing my hands. This year, the seventeen kids I currently sit around a table with in person are getting quality creative good work done, before we go remote again. The pessimist in me is all but certain this will happen.
Like many schools, ours went remote from March of 2019 through June of 2020. It sucked. The students who came in as freshmen last year I have only really gotten to know this year. A crop of seniors graduated last spring, and over time I watched them fade and flatten from vibrant three-dimensional beings to sullen images trapped on my computer screen. When it came to instruction, I couldn’t plant seeds for all the ground we were losing. Bi-weekly hour-long Zooms were scheduled torture sessions, me yammering away to a sullen Brady Bunch tic-tac-toe screen of adolescents. Of course, some decent work came out of it, because decent work always finds its way, but more often, I presided over a bunch of half-assers half-assing it, which I totally got because I was half-assing it, too. I couldn’t find the energy, and I definitely couldn’t access the joy.
And now, Omicron. Oy. We are all exhausted by COVID protocols, the pandemic landscape on loop like a sixties cartoon.
Still. I am determined to re-enter the belly of this variant beast with faux cheer and fortitude. Survival has taught us the survival skills that we’ve grown weary of/good at. I am going to feel free to panic as needed, because I come by that panic honestly, but the optimist in me- who always tamps down the pessimist- comes by resilience honestly, too.