Life in the Zoomiverse: What we miss about the physical campus

A view from Global North.Why isn't Global South's voice not heard ? We do also have this feel of loss and even more perhaps....

As my students complain about having to work at home, I tell them that my favoured leisure time activity is 'sitting in my corner messing about on my computer' and guess what, that's what I am doing! The one thing I don't miss is getting up at 5am and spending time hanging about on cold station platforms. The one thing I do miss is the demarcation that having to go catch a train provides - I'm finding difficulty in STOPPING working to do something, anything else! My husband reminds me each evening with a shout of "Do a medal" in reference to one of my hobby websites, a survey of orders, decorations and medals around the world, getting me to do something for me... (an argument ensued one Saturday over whether PhD research was 'for me' or 'work'....)

Honestly? There's nothing that I miss about "the physical campus." I've been living on-line for decades now. Here I can find instantaneously every journal, every article of interest to me. I can get every classic text for free on my Kindle. I am no longer restricted to physical proximity in choosing my friends and colleagues. Someone mentioned "smell of library books." That's just dust and fungus! It makes me sneeze and gives me a headache. Laboratory work, if you're involved in such, very important, of course, is the only good reason to work on campus.

I take issue with Kate Eichhorn's characterization of her families' access to an "an old farmhouse in Northern Vermont" as being "a matter of necessity, not luxury." I must first admit that our home for a family of two now working-from-home professionals and one college student is likely just as large as Prof. Eichhorn's farmhouse. I can imagine the stress if our second college student child was also home and our house was similar in size to Prof. Eichhorn's Manhattan apartment. But a necessity? Only if the same accommodations could be granted for everyone in similar circumstances. Can you imagine how many big city families long for more personal distance in their dwellings? We should consider ourselves privileged to have the option of working from home (let alone the choice between two!) compared to the millions who have lost their jobs or whose jobs are essential yet have school-aged children who are no longer getting education and supervision at school.