What to Wear to the Mass Extinction

Tomorrow I go back to the classroom to teach English classes.  I've been teaching all along, but my online classes are very different from what I'm  about to do.  My online classes are asynchronous, meaning that we don't have a Zoom session or required weekly meetings online.  There are modules, and while students can work their way through at their own pace, there are parts where they need to respond to classmates, primarily with discussion threads.  I am available to answer questions and give feedback, but I don't create curriculum.  Often, my primary role is that of grader.

Tomorrow I meet my classes at Spartanburg Methodist College.  It began life as a junior college, but now it has some bachelors degrees.  A fair number of students still take classes and then transfer to a bigger college, so in that way, it's similar to a community college.  But the campus is huge and aesthetically beautiful, unlike most community college campuses.

I have more freedom in teaching these classes than I have ever had.  For example, I get to choose my own books.  People outside academia might think that faculty always get to choose their own books.  But for a variety of reasons, that's not usually the case, particularly with part-time faculty; book orders often have to be finalized before faculty are hired.

I have the syllabi printed, ready for copying at the campus tomorrow.  I have no limits to how many copies of classroom materials I can make--that, too, is different.  I will get the key to my office, which I share with another person.  I will have a key and my own desk!  That, too, is a very different set up than many adjuncts have.

Even though I'm in a much safer place, in terms of where my house is located, I've continued to read and research climate collapse, which I'm convinced is happening much faster than I once thought it would.  It's sobering to think about the fact that all it takes is a summer of fires like this past one, releasing so much more carbon into the atmosphere, undoing any momentum we had, which was fairly minimal.

At one point, I thought that much of the grimmer climate collapse stuff would happen after I died, but now I'm not sure.

It's strange to think that we're staring at a mass extinction event that will likely include humans, a slow moving mass extinction event, and here I am, finishing syllabi, thinking about what to wear tomorrow, buying shoes that can be worn with skirts in the winter.  It's no wonder that humanity isn't very good at risk assessment.