Of all the changes brought about by the continuing COVID-19 epidemic, here is a minor one that made me a bit nostalgic today:
Students may never again know the anticipation, relief, and sheer joy of a “snow day”.
Now that educational institutions have figured out that classes can suddenly switch to “remote-only” delivery, the tendency seems to be to do this at the drop of a hat - or a snowflake, in this case. Don’t get me wrong: From a teacher’s point-of-view, I’d much rather be able to keep delivering lessons so that we don’t get too far behind on the syllabus… But there is just something a little magical about Mother Nature suddenly handing out a little surprise “holiday”.
I don’t know any student who doesn’t (or, well… didn’t) look forward to snow days. For that matter, even most faculty seem to have their spirits lifted a bit by the prospect of an unexpected “day off”. These things don’t happen very often where I’m from (Northeast Arkansas / Southeast Missouri area). We usually have rather warm winters with little to no snow accumulation. And sometimes we get ice - but that’s a different story.
I remember when I was quite young we had a snowfall that one could measure in “feet”… It blew and drifted several feet high - taller than me at the time. My friends and I spent that particular snow day (it was more like a “snow week” that year) building snow forts large enough we could crawl around in them from “room” to “room”. Actually, these were a lot more like “snow caves” that we built by tunneling through the huge drifts. We were like Tolkien’s dwarves delving the Mines of Moria. Luckily we didn’t find a Balrog at the bottom like Durin did - just some cold dirt and dead grass. I’m sure there were snowmen and snowball fights, but I remember the tunnels. Oh, and fresh snow cream when we finally went inside to warm up.
The snow that fell here today as I’m writing this won’t be measured in “feet”, but it was absolutely more snow on the ground than we’ve seen in several years. And of course, all of us in academia in any capacity are staring out windows fantasizing about what could have been if only we hadn’t discovered Zoom. I’m sure somewhere out there students are quietly slipping away from their streams to build snowmen and get into raucous snowball fights. I hope so, anyway. Fight the system! Or at least declare a snow day now and then.