Practicum in the Art of Staying Present

As the pandemic worsened throughout 2020, I often thought back to a manager's meeting in February of 2020.  I went back hunting through my blog, and found this post which let me figure out that the manager's meeting happened a year ago today.  At the time that I wrote, I tried to write neutrally, hiding identities somewhat, just in case.

Now I look back and think, oh Kristin, you had no idea what was coming down upon you.  I'm thinking not just of the pandemic, but also of my job.  At the time, I had no idea that the tenure of my boss was coming to an end, and while I suspected that my school was in the process of changing, I continue to be surprised that a one campus school in Brooklyn would buy our 5 campus school in Florida.

Back to that manager's meeting:  my boss at the time was the kind of man who would say, "My sources tell me . . ." or "My economics guys say . . . ," and at meetings, he would hand out photocopied articles from non-conventional sources (non-conventional for a traditional academic setting).  I can't tell you much more about them, because I never took the time to try to trace the authors and their sources, to do the work it would take to figure out if the articles were legit or not.

I tended not to take my boss too seriously when he forecast doom, because he was the kind of doomsayer who predicted that banks would close, and we wouldn't have access to our funds ever again.  I once asked him how he saved for the future if he didn't trust banks or Wall Street, and he said that he bought silver bars--literal bars of silver, not precious metal funds.

A year ago, my boss brought up the new virus and said, "I don't know that we need to make any plans yet, but I wanted us to be aware."

I was aware of the virus, aware of the shut down in China, but at the time, I thought it was the sign of a repressive regime, not of how serious the virus was.  I dismissed the concerns of my boss.  My post from 2020 makes it sound like I was a virus denier.  I wasn't, but at the time, I didn't have as much information as I would 6 weeks later.

In an interesting swap, not much later, my boss would become a type of virus denier.  He saw the virus as something being overhyped so that there could be repressive behavior by governments.  He spent the spring expecting troops to show up to order us back to our houses.  For a week or two, I did too.  The other day, when I was looking for my rarely-used ATM card in my purse, I came across the letter that I carried that identified me as an essential worker in my school, the one that was on site helping to keep the online classes running smoothly.

As I look back at that manager's meeting, not one of those managers in attendance is still employed by my school except for me.  When I feel a bit whipsawed, I tend to think of large events, like the pandemic, like the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol building followed by the inauguration of Biden and Harris.  But my job situation has contributed to that whipsawed feeling too, and I often neglect to remember how many changes have happened at the workplace.  And then there's the matter of how many local friends have moved away.

I often say that I do OKish when I focus on the day at hand.  When I look back to think about what has been lost, I could get bogged down in sorrow.  When I look ahead to realize how hard it is to plan in the current environment, I get frozen in fear.

This past year has been a huge practicum in the art of staying present, although it might not have been how we would have chosen to be taught.  I wish I could say it was a finishing school, but I sense there are lessons still to come.