It has been well over a month since I blogged . . . but I have a feeling that the change in life these days makes it a little more acceptable/understandable. Warning: This may turn out to be a long one! I have spoken to a few colleagues over the past month plus and get some pity of having earned my sabbatical during this time in history. I need to preface the following with none of this should be taken as a woe is me or what not, it is just my perception of things if you removed the utter tragedy that this COVID-19 has caused on so many levels. I will do my best to leave politics out of it, but if somehow they creep in, my sincere apologies and I hope that doesn’t detract from the good things that I have accomplished. So here goes.

The plan was to take two separate two-month cross country trips so I could meet with mostly educational institutions, but some businesses as well, to shape the changes to the DAT program. When I first made the proposal, I had things sectioned out a bit differently as it was the way I thought it would be. Once I sat down post the Fall 2019 semester, I noticed the many changes that needed to be made. I had successfully managed to get the trips organized, stayed with my goals to an extent, and visited 11 out of the 14 schools on my list for the leg. I had another 6 or so set (in my mind) for the second leg.

For some reason I thought I had met with close to ¾ of my goal minimum number of 20 school visits, but alas it was just a bit over half. Actually, the reason for the delusion was because I got a lot more quality, in-depth information from those meetings than I could have imagined. Thankfully now I have plenty of information to move forward with the programmatic changes; an unexpected win for me. The fact I was concentrating on schools mainly on the east coast helped. Had weather not played the ultimate deciding factor on choosing the southern half of the US first, I can’t say I would be as well off as I am. That is some divine intervention!

I won’t say that I am not disappointed that I couldn’t take the second trip, but I think maybe this was for the best. Now I would be forced to get the paperwork done, right? Well, not so much. This is one of my personality flaws and my ability to really understand student’s ability to procrastinate. I don’t particularly care for paperwork so I will find ways to put it off. On the flipside, if there is something more pressing in front of me that I know about, especially when it involves family, I will drop anything to do what I can. This is to the point that I must set boundaries on communicating with me. I have a real problem not being there for the people I care about, which include my DAT family and students.

So, without details I would like to share that I had a laundry list of important family issues to deal with in the last few months. Thankfully everyone is fine but being the savviest tech person in the family, I get called on to do anything related to this. Also, the enjoyable visit with my parents turned a bit into taking care of things with enjoyment sprinkled in. I went silent on the blog and social media as the COVID situation got worse as there was no real information to share.

My mom was slated to fly home to Connecticut at the end of March. She is in her 70s and there was no way my siblings and I wanted her to take the risk. Since the national parks and many public places were closing or closed at that time, I forwent the last five days of my visits (schools, capitols, and parks) to go to Florida to drive her home. I stayed there a few days, set my dad up with what he needed for two weeks without us, and drove home to CT with my mom (she had appointments that ultimately were cancelled). It was some great quality time. About a week later, after taking care of some things for my siblings and aunt and uncle, we headed back to Florida where I spent another five days.

I took four days to come home, avoiding the highway so I could take the scenic route home. That was an adventure that I will remember. A good portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway was closed (I took a bunch of pictures where I could – to be posted at some point) and I didn’t get to do Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park since it to was closed, but the other scenic roads didn’t disappoint.

I might have mentioned this before, but during the tail end of my first leg going to get my parents, I developed some great techniques to avoid touching surfaces and also made sure to use hand sanitizer whenever I couldn’t wash my hands. This ramped up when I got to my parent’s house. I wouldn’t call myself a hoarder, but I do keep disposable items if they were gently used and still had life. I had taken a mask one day at a doctor’s visit and happened to have it in the side pocket of my car. I had also prepared by having some disposable gloves in my first aid kit. On this final leg of my journey home, mom and I prepared four to five days’ worth of food for me to keep in my coolers. I managed to head home basically quarantining in the car. I have been home for about five days and have not left the house for three. My fourteen-day quarantine started Monday at 5 PM.

So, while I should put this in the next blog, I think I will put it here. Told you, long one! From the image on this blog I think you might guess being home isn’t quite going smoothly. This was the time I was to buckle down as I lost so much time to the abrupt change in my itinerary. I took Sunday to acclimate a bit and get some family things done. I took Monday to do the big shopping for myself (I have a unique diet) and pick up/deliver things for my aunt and uncle, my siblings, and my neighbor. Monday night was time to get organized. Well on my way!

Tuesday my computer had no sound . . . a windows update failed and corrupted the driver. I did my research and tried some things to no avail. So I contacted my computer guy Matt (https://cmcomps.com/) who took some time to remote in and tell me the best bet is to do a reset (I didn’t have a restore point . . . now I do; lesson learned.) Excellent! A fairly short time later I had sound but still needed to reinstall some apps. NO INTERNET! I did all the “normal” things one should do to troubleshoot it to no avail, so I get on a chat through my cell phone for my internet provider to help me fix it. A good half hour later he tells me I have to call the maker of my computer and asked if I need the number. I laughed and asked number for what, I have a custom built PC. So another call to Matt. Somehow waiting for him to get back to me I “fixed” it. Well I was connected to the internet although the icon at the bottom of the screen still says I am not connected. I am not going to worry about it since I really am connected.

So this brings me to today and this long blog. It has taken me this long to get my home office up and running, help my parents remotely with another issue (that was Wednesday’s diversion), and get Adobe CC as well as Microsoft Office installed. Adobe is working well as far as I can tell, Office is giving me problems. I have until Sunday to fix it otherwise I guess I may be relegated to the cloud version which I cannot stand due to its formatting issues. Seriously though, while these problems are frustrating and annoying, it is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

These following lines are particularly intended for any student that has taken the time to read through this long-winded novel, although anyone might relate. I just can’t seem find a groove. I feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start. I am having trouble organizing my thoughts. I feel guilty I am not getting work things done. I don’t know if this is me or the circumstances. I don’t want to make excuses.  So I have decided I need to be accountable. I will blog each day a bulleted list of what I accomplished - nothing too detailed and nothing very exciting for the average reader. (The point to this was that even if it seems like things come easy to a professor, the challenges are there and we can relate.)

Just so anyone who thinks a sabbatical is a vacation and a person on sabbatical has all the time in the world to do whatever, that is far from true. My sabbatical was meant to do research the most interesting way I knew how (experiential) and then put that information into the required forms to get the results of the research into effect. The fun part for me is over, even though it was a lot of work, now the less enjoyable but very necessary work begins. So, the next month or two will be hard as 21 courses and a revision of an entire program will need to be presented in the fall as part of what I promised my sabbatical would deliver. Not only that, the DAT students and faculty need this change. I won’t disappoint. Thank you everyone who has and will continue to support me with this.