I Will, One Day Soon, Leave My Bedroom

In which I am browsing the rosters for my fall courses and discover I have a room assignment

I have a room assignment.

For my fall classes, I was asked to order my textbooks, which is always kinda fun. After I satisfy the bookstore, I log into MyUCLA and take some time to browse the roster. What the heck is MCDB, anyway? I feel like I could teach a whole course in which we just try to define satisfactorily just what the heck all the names of the various majors at UCLA actually mean. (I’d enjoy a conversation, for instance, about all the implications in the difference between anthropology and sociology. Or how about philosophy and math?)

But the real shock and joy that came this weekend, in considering the upcoming fall quarter, was the fact that I have an actual room assignment. In one of the four original buildings on that beautiful campus. Haines A82, my favorite classroom. It’s subterranean, but cozy, with just the right amount of natural light, and windows running along the rear wall, plus enough floor space for a dozen or so students. It’s quiet. And best of all: It’s not my bedroom.

After 15 months and counting of a global crisis, a lot of us are considering what happens next. We’re planning to or actually have left our bedrooms. We’re putting on “hard” pants. We are, in a million ways, small and large, resuming what we have always referred to as life. Or at least we are trying to.

At least a few people in my current course will, in their finals, have to reckon in some way with the pandemic. What the hell happened to all of us?

This piece in The New York Times Magazine, about a handful of high school kids and their beleaguered history teacher, is part of an answer. It gave me chills. It’s intense, vivid, upsetting, beautiful, inspiring. I think you all should read it. From the middle:

When Catherine was on FaceTime with Charles, she angled her camera to be sure he couldn’t see the contents of her room: a pile of laundry as high as her bed, a collection of empty cans of Monster Energy still sticky with residue, the floor so thick with who-knew-what that if she heard a sudden crunch beneath her feet, she just kept going. She was embarrassed about all of it but could not even imagine doing something about it. Days were going by when she never even managed to get out of bed. Many nights, her father brought her dinner, opening the door and quietly leaving her food on the desk. “He knows I’m not very good at accepting help,” she said. She did wonder whether he thought she was depressed or just lazy. She wasn’t sure which would make her feel worse. She usually tried not to worry her father about anything, because he had enough to worry about — her older brother, helping out her older sister with tuition and rent and car payments. Catherine felt bad about adding to his burden with the things she needed — $20 a week for music lessons, money for gear like cleats and shin guards for soccer.

See you in the sculpture garden soon!?