Fall 2020 was my most difficult semester of teaching ever: more difficult than my first terms teaching at UW, Grinnell, or Whitman; more difficult than the fall I was pregnant; and more difficult than my return to teaching after maternity leave.

Why so difficult? Given the state of the world, surely that must be a rhetorical question – but there are reasons. Since I was on sabbatical this spring when COVID-19 struck, the fall semester was my first experience with remote instruction. Although my husband and I made a calculated risk to take our daughter back to daycare, it was my first experience teaching while working from home. Out of concern for the strange circumstances for students, as well, I had decided to experiment with Grading for Equity. (I’ll reflect on that in more depth another time.)

I am a planner by nature, and I struggled tremendously with the need to adapt my plans – and fill in the gaps – as the semester progressed. I have never felt as anxious or inadequate as I did mid-semester.

I started the semester with optimism. On the first day of classes, I wrote on Facebook, “Teaching a synchronous, discussion-oriented class on Zoom is not as different from teaching in the classroom as I expected.” I also shared a memory from 2011: “The first day of class reminded me why I love my job. I really am fried though.” But even on that first day, there was evidence of the additional friction of teaching online: “Biggest difference noted so far: I can’t just say, ‘turn to your neighbor…’ Zoom breakout groups are lovely, but they have a lot more time overhead.”

I observed in week 3 that I still hadn’t found the rhythm of the semester. Even under normal circumstances, it takes a couple weeks for me to establish new routines. But this fall, I found myself struggling with my tools in a way I never had before: from managing Zoom breakout rooms effectively, to making sure sound was enabled while recording screencasts on my iPad, to figuring out how to implement specifications grading in the Canvas gradebook. (The last was quite a project, and one I hadn’t anticipated being so difficult. Probably I should have figured it out before the semester started, but I ran out of time.) I worked hard to include students in Asia, for whom our regular class times were in the middle of the night, though in retrospect, my energy would have been better spent elsewhere.

Week 3 itself was particularly interrupted. I attended a virtual funeral for my paternal uncle on Labor Day, September 7. (His death was unrelated to COVID-19.) On a more positive note, I felt I had the freedom to participate in #ScholarStrike on September 8-9, just as I had participated in #ShutdownSTEM over the summer.

And on Friday, September 11, the smoke blew into Walla Walla. That started a week of no sunshine and no outdoor exercise. By the following Monday, I was already starting to feel burned out. For me as for many of my students, my sleep deteriorated.

Compounding the loss of sleep, I received some negative student feedback about one of my classes via a colleague. I started to grow anxious for my students who were not turning in work on time; midterm grade notices were due before the break on October 1-2.  And I realized that I would need to replan the entire middle of my HCI class – partly to account for having formed project teams at the start of the semester (a good decision for other reasons) and partly to account for the impossibility of in-person observation and collaboration. Not since grad school had I felt so inadequate or so unprepared.

The insomnia and anxiety made for a downward spiral, just when my energy and creativity were needed the most. I cancelled classes and meetings more than once because I was too exhausted to inflict myself on other people – a first for my career, and hard to come to terms with. I found myself grateful that I had established a pattern of Friday “team workshop” days in HCI. I was pretty frank with them about my mental condition – perhaps more than I should have been, though I did get at least one note of thanks.

Near the start of October, I described the fall semester as a Kobayashi Maru – “a no-win scenario, a test of one’s character or a solution that involves redefining the problem and managing an insurmountable scenario gracefully.”

At the time, I was thinking only of the “no-win scenario.” But I said it better than I knew, because it was around then that I had a breakthrough. I found a counselor online, resumed journaling after a long hiatus, and started learning how to meditate. I talked to anyone who would listen. Most importantly, after two urgent care visits and one with my doctor, I finally found a medication regime that let me get some sleep and pull myself back together. I never would have dreamed of resorting to medication before, but it was exactly what I needed to break my downward spiral.

It wasn’t easy, but I solved the problems in the HCI syllabus one step at a time, adjusting the readings, adapting the assignments, and finding new prototyping and collaboration tools as needed. I developed better practices for managing synchronous class sessions in Zoom. I accepted the limitations on what I could do this semester, and I gave myself permission to not care for a while about the problems of the College as a whole. (I still cared about my students.)

I never really got into the rhythm of the semester, but I got through it. I even made it through over eight hours total of meetings with major advisees by the end of spring pre-registration – still feeling okay, since I had planned well enough to spread the meetings out over nearly three weeks. Once I had chosen the current research papers for HCI, and revised the end-of-semester schedule for Discrete Math, my anxiety evaporated. Classes ended early this fall, just before Thanksgiving, and that was that.

I’m still taking medication for insomnia and anxiety, and I hope to sort out the next steps during this long winter break. I feel rested enough, but I miss being able to have a glass of wine with dinner.

And after all that, I’m looking forward to my spring classes – Software Design and Computer Networks – which I have elected to teach online. I feel much better prepared to plan for the semester, and I will have an extra week in January to do so. I’ve also been grateful to have two extra weeks in December to rest and focus on new initiatives – but that is a story for another time.

Happy holidays!