Maybe this is strange and maybe it isn't, but the students I'm finding it hardest to accommodate in the current context are the ones who are getting high grades, who want to know exactly what they have to do to get a better grade, and want to know exactly how they 'lost marks.'

I have students who have lost family, students who are stuck overseas, students who have intermittent internet at best, students who work long hours in grocery stores, and students who are immuno-compromised and/or struggle with anxiety who are barely hanging on by a thread.

All of this I can relate to. I can empathize with the feelings these situations would generate, and how they would affect you if you were trying to write essays. I can extrapolate from vivid experiences of my own. I have cobbled together ok work under trying conditions. I get it.

My comfort zone as a prof is being generous with students. I work hard under imperfect conditions, and sometimes I screw up. It often takes me a long time to get things marked. I find calculating late marks incredibly depressing, so I rarely do it. That's the norm.

With my students sharing stories of incredible hardships with me, and knowing that even before lockdown began a lot of my students were struggling with various issues, taking a "how do we just get through this?" approach is obvious - and easy for me.

What is challenging to remember is that (a) not everyone is experiencing this the same way and (b) not everyone is coping with it in the same way.

And (c) there is no clear message, either from schools or from the wider society, that we are in such an exceptional situation that normal rules of careerism should be suspended. Students didn't get the memo because there was/is no memo.

Some students might be hanging by a thread, and getting the highest mark they can get is their way of coping. Perhaps what they need from me is to behave as if everything is normal. Maybe doing their schoolwork perfectly is controlling what they can control. Who knows.

These students are facing a very tough job market, most have high debts. They want to go to law school or do an MBA. They want to get into teacher's college. They have been told over and over again that the way to succeed is to ace everything. Their fixation is not surprising.

Nothing in their experience or in the discourse around them has prepared them for the idea that something might be more important than doing well at school, or that there might be long term effects of the current moment that might nullify the advantage high marks get them.

I'm trying to remember all this as I strive to accommodate their demands. Their response, their insistence on reading this situation in a way that kind of astounds me, is valid and understandable.

The baby is awake, so that's the thread. FIN