In my house, the best spot to access the wifi is right at the kitchen table. However, working in this location has resulted in some rather hilarious occurrences. Picture this: My cat Henry spots a squirrel outside and meows an opera to inform me while I’m in the middle of teaching a Zoom class. My brother wanders through blasting music on his way to make a midday snack every other hour to satiate his teenage-boy hunger. My mum and dad arrive home from the store, unloading and sorting the groceries while I’m in the midst of a one-on-one meeting. 

I mention all these moments to draw light to the ups and downs of working and living in a rather boundary-less space. After an exciting semester full of learning, growth and new experiences, as I transitioned from Principia student to PGTI (post-graduate teaching intern) this year, I thought that coming home for the holidays to finish up working remotely would be a super smooth transition, given that I was feeling quite settled in my work by then. 

The remote/socially-distanced, interaction-filled semester I had just experienced on campus meant that doing everything on Zoom for the last few weeks didn’t feel nearly as disconnecting as it had when I finished my senior spring remotely. However, despite this feeling of campus-connectedness, I found that while working remotely at home, rolling smoothly through my end-of-semester tasks wasn’t exactly what happened. 

Although the time zone is not drastically different—Toronto is on EST—I found that I was late for more meetings during the last two weeks than I had been for the rest of the semester! Balancing work with at-home tasks expected of me, spending time with family, and attending appointments scheduled far in advance proved to be a more challenging juggling act than I anticipated. 

Another significant challenge was my house wifi, which is decent, at best, for one user. If you add in the online class streaming for both my brother’s learning and my dad’s teaching, it tends to give out completely…which meant a lot of phone calls to catch up on meeting content I missed! 

My kitchen table, the prime wifi-accessibility spot, and thus, my work desk, was home to many entertaining interactions. There was a lot of muting myself during meetings to ask my family if they could “please be quiet”; every few hours, I had to stop my cat from batting at and nibbling on my computer charging cords; and more than once I had to jump up during a Zoom meeting to take a baking project out of the oven when the timer went off.

Whether mine is an experience you can relate to or you’ve managed to do a more successful job of creating routines and boundaries than I did during my weeks at home, the experiences I have had really made me appreciate the flexibility and understanding I’ve received from my colleagues. It has all helped me to recognize, more than ever, the importance of being gracious to one another’s needs and finding the humour in the crazy circumstances we may find ourselves in. 

As we dive into another semester of in-person and remote teaching, may we continue to find ways to support each other from a distance, enjoy the funny moments that arise in our days and creatively rise to the occasion to meet challenges as they come up. As they say, “We’re all in this together!” ❤️