Well, it’s been almost a year and a half or so since the pandemic started and we at SUNY Binghamton largely switched to online remote learning. All of this became possible for the masses through the widespread introduction of Zoom, the ubiquitous video-calling platform. I actually advocated more than others among the TAs I was working with in the Spring 2020 semester that we switch to online synchronous classes, thinking the face-to-face interactions with the students was essential to their ability to learn, after all it always has been for me. But now, after two and a half semesters and one inter-semester session, I’m ready to be back in person.

Sure, teaching remotely gave me the golden opportunity to deal with my relative isolation in Binghamton and do my work from my parents’ house in Kansas City, something I’d hoped might be possible in my first semester at Binghamton when my homesickness was at its most virulent. I still would much rather live and work full-time in Kansas City, in a city that has become home to me through decades of experience, but at this moment in my life, in mid-2021 at the age of 28 my work is still centered on that much smaller city in the Susquehanna Valley in the Southern Tier of New York.

But the impact of teaching first from my apartment and later from my parents’ house had a number of more unwelcome side effects. When I’ve been in Binghamton over the last year, I’ve largely been in isolation, about as alone as a guy can be. It’s a bit unnerving in the first couple weeks, but by the end of my second month of it this winter, when I’d wake up in the morning after after having had similar recurring dreams of home, I knew I needed a break from the monotony of solitude. Being alone like that for that long really made me generally melancholic, perhaps more so than usual, something I often tried to treat with the best medicine I knew: work.

During those two months that I was in Binghamton this Spring semester, February and March, I worked most weeks for 5 to 6 days a week, spending a good 14 hours at my desk. This semester in particular was a tough one, I was studying for my comprehensive exams, one of the biggest turning points in the life of someone in a PhD program, one which could make or break my career. I kept myself going with the thought that once I got that done, and once my dissertation proposal was accepted by my committee, it’d be just up to me how much longer I’d need to make the long drive east every August and January back to that “Valley of Opportunity” as Binghamton was once called, to complete my degree. I could set things on my own terms, and finish my work to the best of my ability in a timely and efficient manner.

The only problem was, after two months of working 70 to 96 hours a week, I was burnt out in a very big way. I’ve been in that funk for the better part of the last month or so, it’s why frankly I haven’t gotten much done. I’ve taken some solace in the fact that I got back to Kansas City at the end of March, on the morning of Palm Sunday, and have been able to take breaks from my desk to enjoy my favorite haunts here in town, to see my family, my friends, and to take my dog for walks around the neighborhood. Sitting here now, I’m annoyed that I haven’t done as much as I’d hoped in the last couple weeks, but as much as it may set me back by a little bit, I know that I’ve needed a break.

So, on that warm late-August day in humid Binghamton, NY, when I don my suit and tie again and step back into the classroom, onto my stage, I’m going to enjoy the moment, because it’s one I’ve really been looking forward to. This will be the start of my 5th consecutive academic year working as a TA, having begun in the Fall 2017 semester still not entirely knowing what I was doing.

In the last couple weeks, I’ve tried to restore a bit of normalcy to my Zoom classrooms, by playing a bit of piano jazz as people are coming into the meeting before class starts. I’d started this in Spring 2020, on Valentine’s Day no less, with an outtake of Oscar Levant playing Gershwin’s “They’re Writing Songs of Love, But Not For Me” as a bit of a humorous sigh to being single on that romantic holiday, and the idea seemed to work. So, as the pianist, usually Duke Ellington or more recently Jon Batiste, sets the more mellow mood of my classroom, one where I hope the students will feel comfortable to join the conversation, and come away both having learned something, and having had a good time.

But even as we move back to fully teaching in-person again, I want to suggest that we keep some of the things we’ve learned and improvised into working during this time when education was conducted over Zoom. Firstly, I want to keep the option of remote teaching in the cards, to allow students who are unwell to tune into the class via Zoom, or better yet to tune into office hours over Zoom. In the event that I get accepted onto a conference’s program, and they decide despite my requests to the contrary to schedule me to speak on a Friday, that I could still maybe teach the class remotely for the week if needs be.

Also, let’s continue to have conferences and lecture series be conducted with a virtual part. I’ve been able to attend conferences at universities across the US, as well as in Italy, New Zealand, and the UK since the pandemic began, something that certainly wouldn’t have been as possible before. Virtual conferences have in some ways helped democratize academia, allowing for scholars who even in normal circumstances wouldn’t be able to travel long distances to still attend conferences, to have their voices and research be heard, or to hear fantastic scholars from around the globe.

I’d like to think I’ve made the most of the last year and a half, no matter how awful things have been. Now, at the end of teaching for the Spring 2021 semester at SUNY Binghamton, let’s hope the coming Fall semester proves to be a much needed return to a new normal, a normal improved and informed by recent experiences. First though, I’ve got to get through one more intersession online asynchronous class, this one of my own creation.