One of the great things about distance learning is the ability to sleep in! (Well, maybe not for some teens...) It's so refreshing to not have the alarm going off telling me it's time to drag myself out of bed. As a result, I'm actually getting about 8 hours of sleep a night! So exciting!!
It's funny what my alarms are now being used for. Alarms to start classes, especially on days with my prep as there's definite down time between classes and a chance to lose track of time. There's also the alarms for when to be sure my daughter is "awake" for her classes. Some she can still lay in bed for, others she needs to be more up and functioning for. I'm also a huge fan of the timer. I love that I can have music playing and set the timer to stop music before I need to prepare for my next meeting. Ah technology, how we love thee.
0 Comments
As an introvert, Gen-Xer I'm right at home being right at home. For my soon to be 16 year old daughter and my students, not being social is not in their nature. But I do believe they have a lot to be grateful for.
I've thought about how this shelter in place would have worked when I was a teen. We had books for all our classes so I imagine we would have been required to stop by school maybe once a month to pick up work and return work. There was no internet at that time. Email was something being talked about when I was in college, but internet wasn't yet widely available. There was one computer in my parent's house and we (my brother and I) had maybe two games on it. There was one TV in the house and when my Dad got home the news got turned on. Cartoons were on the fewer than 10 channels we had for a few hours in the afternoon and Saturday mornings. In college you had to call home collect and hope your parents took the call. Or you if you had a phone with your roommates there was the process of claiming your calls on the phone bill and having to pay for your calls (usually long distance so $$$). I was limited to calling home once a week, usually on Sundays. Now we've had a technological explosion that can be mind-boggling. It's more common for there to be multiple TVs and devices in a house. We can be connected to others on a variety of social platforms. We can have group FaceTimes (which has been a savior for my daughter's mental health). Now I text with my parents often and still call once a week. With my family 5 hours away I'm so grateful for the connection that we have with today's technology. It's nice to know though that my brother and his family are so close to my 70+ year old parents -- less than a mile away. I haven't seen my family since New Year's. Being so far away that's not uncommon for us. But then I think about what this weekend should have been. My daughter should have been in final rehearsals at school this week. She should have been stressing over set and prop completion. I should be preparing for my parents to stay with us so that they could see her in her school play. I should be getting to wish them a happy 50th anniversary in person. Now the play's future is completely unknown. I can still call my parents and wish them a happy anniversary. Now I wonder when I'll see my family again. Until then, I'll be grateful that we're as connected as we are in this time we're in. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
July 2021
Categories |