Happy Labor Day weekend, friends!
It’s been a while since I last sent a newsletter. As you may recall, when I kicked this off in March, I said it was experimental. I was looking to see how it would go. I got eleven straight weeks of newsletters through spring and into the first week of June, but then “travel summer” hit. By that I mean that our summer travels began in mid-June, and for a while it seemed like I was away most weekends. That put a stop to the newsletters for a bit.
After travel slowed down, I came back to the heavy lift of preparing for the most challenging fall semester anyone can recall. The good news is that the fall semester has started well, if weirdly (masks, etc.), and that I’ve rarely enjoyed beginning-of-the-semester teaching as much as I am right now. It’s great to be with students who want to be here, learning, despite the COVID challenges, and it’s great to spend so much time doing what we’re here to do, rather than just the “meta-work” behind the scenes that makes it possible. (I am grateful for that meta-work and do think we’ve provided a safe atmosphere through reasonable requirements for students. You can find my thoughts on that here, but I’ll add that I think schools with a long history of establishing and enforcing behavioral requirements with community good at the center will do better with this.)