by Shellie Audsley

Just as my little platter of succulents sat snuggly back into the box in which I carried it to the postgraduate office, I turned and saw—through the closing door—a white suitcase rolling quickly down the long aisle. Perhaps as heavy with books as my own tote, it belonged to a PhD student from another School, whom I surmised had packed up to head home for the Lunar New Year. It was only the first week of the second semester for the Faculty’s undergraduates, and the beginning of the actual writing of my first thesis chapter. Neither of us, it seemed, wanted to lose the momentum of the new, productive start that finally could be felt gathering. Yet a shut-down as rapid and foretold as the one in mid-November spun everything into a scramble towards unprecedented uncertainties.

The first day of the Lunar New Year break brought about a different kind of suspension, a pressing need for caution. Following around a week of library/campus closure, classes were to resume after two weeks—on February 17—fully online. Special paperwork was to be filled by those wishing to leave town or return (while in self-quarantine), and teachers were to quickly prepare for the technical and non-technical aspects of the virtual teaching environment. The Zoom classroom used by many at the School was a foreign space for all who were involved. The faces of students in the classes I attended and TA’ed—concealed merely by face masks at the beginning of the semester—were now fully hidden behind the small black squares on my screen. Arising from issues technical and otherwise, the inevitable lagginess of online interaction soon emerged to be one of the worst aspects of the new mode. “Our work to duplicate the in-person classroom online will definitely require some more fine-tuning,” my supervisor told me, though my attention was divided. While the number of COVID cases ticked steadily up, filling up spaces across the map, I had hoped against hope that the spread would soon be contained and the switch online be temporary.

In March, with the mortality rate spike in Italy and elsewhere, it became apparent that this would be no SARS epidemic like that of 2003. Events on all levels, from the School’s seminar series to conferences abroad, were either suspended or postponed until they could be accommodated in an online setting. Conference or research travel, which did not seem advisable from the start, was at this time confirmed to be impossible. The same forms of suspension that we experienced just a month before could be seen rippling out into the world as some anticipated the summer to bring back normalcy; others, aware of the limitations of online communication, were quick to begin redesigning conference formats for international participants. When the waves of local cases surged, Coffee Breaks over Zoom were organized by some of the postgraduate students here so that the elusive sense of a community could be maintained, and those of us who had plotted to avoid commuting to campus would have an option not to work in isolation. Beyond HKU, little more than the time difference at each side of the Pacific hampered the connection among the expanding online groups that brought together researchers in ways that few would have expected.

As COVID restrictions tightened and relaxed in a seemingly endless cycle, it was decided that classes would shift in the fourth week of the fall semester into a hybrid mode—first to meet the needs of both local students and those who were home abroad, second to allow for flexibility in case of a spike. Once more as a TA, I was tasked with creating randomized online quizzes that could gauge students’ reading progress—the results logged into the system unveiled fascinating aspects of the students’ effort which could not be recorded in paper-based quizzes (or revealed in their self-evaluation). It was a systematic way of locating key sections of the texts that proved challenging to them, and which could then be addressed in class. On the other hand, to combat screen fatigue, my supervisor began recording her lectures for students to finish before the two weekly sessions that she offered for online and in-person interaction. Still, our large, sparsely-seated classroom, equipped with one of the many hand-sanitizer stands that dotted the campus, exhibited students’ preference for the online environment.

Entering the second year of the pandemic now, I’m sad to report that the platter of succulents that I brought home a year prior to ensure prosperity has been less prepared to adapt to change. Somewhere between springtime humidity and my careless overwatering, they succumbed to a surplus of moisture, having rotted irrepressibly from their infected roots before I even noticed.

Published on: April 14, 2021 < Back >