Harrowing: Inside the "emotional hellscape" where professors have to teach rooms full of unmasked students
ยท Sep 7, 2021 ยท NottheBee.com

However bad you think you have it, just count yourself lucky that you are not among the embattled college professors out there on the frontlines facing down hordes of students without masks on their faces:

Matthew Boedy, an associate professor of rhetoric and composition, sent out a raw emotional appeal to his students at the University of North Georgia just before classes began: The Covid-19 Delta variant was rampaging through the state, filling up hospital beds. He would teach class in the equivalent of full body armor โ€” vaccinated and masked.

So he was stunned in late August when more than two-thirds of the first-year students in his writing class did not take the hint and showed up unmasked.

It was impossible to tell who was vaccinated and who was not. "It isn't a visual hellscape, like hospitals, it's more of an emotional hellscape," Dr. Boedy said...

Certainly, some professors are happy to go maskless. A smattering have resigned in protest over optional mask policies. Most, like Dr. Boedy, are soldiering on. But the level of fear is so high that even at universities that do require vaccination and masks, like Cornell and the University of Michigan, professors have signed petitions asking for the choice to return to online teaching.

So completely petrifying. It is hard to overstate the bravery of our professorial class when facing a virus that statistically doesn't hurt college students and has an available vaccine.

They are basically national heroes.

Somehow, some way, America's professors are going to get through this and come out stronger on the other side (probably with tenure).

Don't give up, you stunning and brave educators!


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