My school has successfully made it through the month of September with full-time in-person learning. That is a result of superb planning and preparation, but most of all luck. Most of us would admit we didn’t expect to make it this long, and we are planning and living week-to-week, maybe day-to-day.
In my conversations with students since school started a constant theme has been that living in the midst of COVID-19 may produce emotional stress and anxiety they are not even aware of.
That’s true not only for our students but for us as well. Last week brought several reminders of how true that is in my own life.
Thursday night was our back-to-school night for parents, and we did it via Zoom because all visitors, including parents, are prohibited from campus in hopes that we can minimize risk and maximize the chances of remaining in-person with our students. As already stated, we aren’t holding our breath.
For Parents Night, the Upper School faculty met on campus and had a nice but socially-distanced dinner together before the program. I had dinner with a faculty friend who commented that he felt like he hadn’t seen me. It’s not his imagination. Even though all of us are still in school, there are fewer daily interactions than normal.
Even more pronounced than the lack of quantity is the lack of quality due to the fact that we are all wearing masks. I have a new appreciation for how good the acting is in the operating room scenes in Grey’s Anatomy. I haven’t figured out whether it’s harder to emote behind a mask or to read others’ faces when most of the face is hidden.
Last week I had a phone conversation with a close, long-time admissions friend. This fall marks the first time in years that he is not travelling and visiting high schools, and virtual visits on Zoom don’t provide the same emotional sustenance that he gets from being on the road. He talked about being genuinely sad at the sense of loss he feels.
Then there was the virtual NACAC Conference last week. Back in the spring I had determined that I wouldn’t be going to Minneapolis if the conference had been held in person, as I couldn’t see myself flying on a plane or driving 18 hours to hang out in confined spaces during the middle of the pandemic with hundreds or thousands of my closest friends. I was glad when NACAC assuaged my guilt by going virtual, and particularly glad that the organization could salvage some revenue from what has been a brutal year.
I missed most of the conference, and look forward to watching the recordings of most of the sessions. But what I missed profoundly was the chance to interact with friends, colleagues, and readers of ECA. You know who you are. I caught part of Angel Perez’s opening remarks, and my attention was drawn to all the chat room comments greeting our fellow professionals we couldn’t be with in person.
At school Parents Night has always been the demarcation between the opening of school and settling in to the rhythm of the fall. Similarly, from a professional standpoint the NACAC Conference has long been an essential component of my fall, a time to relax, refresh, and reconnect before returning to face the onslaught of application deadlines and recommendations to be written.
That sense of connection has never been as important as it is in 2020. The pandemic has uprooted our lives and put many of us in solitary confinement, stuck at home except for trips to the grocery store. That is particularly challenging for those who are extroverts, which is a lot of the people in our profession. The energy many of draw from our interactions with students and with each other just hasn’t been there, or has been harder to obtain, this year. Of course we have other societal threats and other psychological diseases that put at risk both our personal and our national sense of well-being.
In the best of times, college admission and college counseling can be lonely jobs. In our institutions either no one understands what we do, or everyone thinks they know what we should do.
One of the things I have most appreciated about being a college counselor is the network of support I have to turn to, both locally and globally. No other administrator in my school has anything like it. In the best of years it is a source of reassurance. In 2020 it is lifeblood, a reservoir of love and support from an extended professional family.
As each of us helps our students navigate their individual journeys this fall, I hope we will take some time to support each other in our own journeys as well. Back in the spring when the coronavirus was infecting the nation both physically and psychologically, part of my daily routine was reaching out to a different colleague every day to check on them and tell them I was thinking of them. That exercise was done more out of selfishness than altruism, because I needed the connection with others. I have let that habit slip, but I will reinstitute it as part of my daily or weekly routine.
The virtual NACAC conference has helped us fill our need for professional development. I hope all of us will give attention to filling our need for personal and professional connection.