In our final meeting for "Religion and the Anthropocene," we realized we'd beaten zoom exhaustion. This sketch, drawn by a student in one of the small-group meetings, wasn't meant to be creepy - "eyes are the hardest thing to draw," she explained, and she didn't have time to draw them. Perhaps it's also that we know by now that in zoom rooms people aren't looking at you when you think they are! What she captured instead - the larger group understood this immediately when I asked her to share the image with them - was our presence, our genuine availability to each other.
My classes' final session is always dedicated to sharing final syntheses, and this was no exception. But what was exceptional was how many students' reflections discussed the community we'd created together. While the self-selecting group of students adventurous enough to sign up for a 9am Friday seminar on religion (eek!) and the Anthropocene (wha?) were clearly part of it, I take a little credit too, as this was the class I'd divided in three groups whom I meet each week for 40 minutes each (then leave the zoom room to them), around our shared 90 minute class. What made the difference wasn't just the intimacy of the small groups but the fact that I wasn't always there. We'd almost replicated a classroom, where students could form bonds outside the class and its projects - something that, it emerged from discussion, otherwise just wasn't happening. But here, we knew and cherished each other!
The fondness which filled our final hour was perhaps strange in a class on such profound and paralyzing problems as we had studied together, but, some students suggested, that made it the more meaningful. Of all my classes this semester, one quipped, this is the one that helped me imagine more futures! In 2020 that's no mean accomplishment.
By the way, that's the student sketcher at top right. Ours was also her very last class in college: she's one of our December graduates. It can't be easy to finish college in these disembodied times. Congratulations!
