Returning to campus

On August 16th 2021, I returned to my campus office for the first time since March 2020. Almost 1,5 years of working from home have passed, and finally we are back to our university offices.

The measures at our campus this semester are as follows:

• Everybody wears a mask, at all times. I take mine off when I am alone in my office.
• We enter with our vaccination certificate and university card. People who do not have have these documents cannot enter campus.
• About half of the courses this semester will be hybrid: some students can attend on campus (depending on the maximum number of students that can be safely spaced out in the classroom), the others will watch the livestream.
• My course (just like the remaining half of courses) will remain online because I have a larger group of students.

While of course I worry about possible contagion and the Delta variant, I am also glad to finally see some lifting of the restrictions and a possible light at the end of the tunnel. Here’s what I noticed in the first days of working from the office again:

• I love the quiet of my office. My office is very hidden on campus, and it is a nice space to work from. I also have much more space to spread out books and notes than at home.
• The physical boundary between work and home helps me setting better boundaries with my time.
• It is easier to get some steps in during the day when I work from campus, as I walk to university and then walk around to pick up copies, go to the other building, etc.

All in all, I am happy to be back to campus. I hope we will see restrictions lift further and further as the pandemic fizzles out, but I know that this pandemic is not over until it is over.