Day 87: The Feeling After Every Zoom Meeting
Day 87: June 21, 2020
Global Cases: 9, 038, 937 ; Deaths: 469, 604
Egypt Cases: 55, 233; Deaths: 2, 193
Nagwa Kassabgy
Senior Instructor, IEP Program Director
Department of English Language Instruction
I wake up at 6am as always. Too early. I decide to try to go back to sleep for another hour; one hour less in the long boring day ahead of me. I try to remember what meetings are on my calendar before I try to go back to sleep.
Meetings have suddenly become the most interesting part of the long, uneventful days.
I can’t go back to sleep, so I get out of bed and go straight to the kitchen to make my coffee and start the day.
My first thought: I miss my students. I do hope they are all safe and well. I’m glad they all did very well at the end of the spring semester. They worked hard, particularly under the current circumstances of high anxiety and stress. They deserved the excellent grades they got. I’m happy for them.
In a flashback scene, I see them in Zoom, at least those who had their cameras on. Not all of them wanted to switch on their cameras. I missed them and every class I told them I wanted to “see” them, but I let them do as they wished. I remember “seeing” them in Zoom gave me such a weird feeling. I found myself bending forward toward the screen closer and closer and closer, thinking and hoping I might really “see” them.
I remember we chatted for a few minutes at the beginning of each class, but it was way different from chatting with them in person. I asked them about how they were doing in this lockdown. I told them to take care and to look forward to better times for everybody. They shared their worries and their fears. Some of them said this online teaching was confusing them and that they were being given too many assignments and getting too many communications through too many different channels from different professors. I empathized. I love my students.
As I sip my coffee, I check my calendar. One meeting with colleagues. Two online conference sessions I registered for in the afternoon since this is a different time zone. One session is titled “Orienting Students For Online Learning: Creating A Holistic Program To Build A Foundation For Success”. Sounds quite interesting. It’s good to see the word “success” in the title. This should be good. I also look forward to the three sessions I registered for on Thursday.
For The Caravan‘s previous diary entries in Arabic and English go to our COVID-19 Special Coverage page.
I finish my first coffee and I start to get dressed for the upcoming Zoom meeting. I loved Zoom when we fist switched to online teaching. It was so easy, so many useful options, and so smooth for synchronous teaching. However, I now hate Zoom. It’s as if it’s the reason it’s keeping me away from my students.
The face-to-face encounters, the eye contact, the body language, the physical presence, and the warmth of being together in the classroom. I miss the comments I can’t help overhearing and the side talks in the classroom. I miss having to look at a student questioningly because s/he is looking at his cell phone. None of that. It’s just staring at a screen that contains faces, often only names, in boxes.
Awful. I read an article titled The reason Zoom calls drain your energy. And yes, it’s very true. Every Zoom meeting leaves me feeling worn out – and hungry. But that’s another story – hungry all the time.
I pray this pandemic ends soon and people go back to their normal, safe, happy, productive, and free life. I pray that everyone with COVID-19 recovers well and soon. I thank God my family are well. Everybody, please take care and stay safe.
To my meeting.
