Day 52: The Psychology of Global Crises

Day 52: May 17, 2020
Global cases: 4,799,266; Deaths: 316,520
Egypt cases: 12,229; Deaths: 630

Irene Strasser
Assistant Professor of Developmental Psychology
School of HUSS

5:45am: The alarm is ringing. It is sunny and bright, and it is so quiet, I can hear the birds singing.  Love these mornings! Quickly get up, put my running gear on and off I am for my morning run. At this time of the day there are no people in the streets, so it is easy to socially distance, and almost no cars at all.

I used to listen to the radio while running, but I stopped that a few weeks ago. I felt there is almost nothing but Covid-19 reports anymore, and I don’t want to start my mornings being overwhelmed by hearing about cases and reproduction numbers and scenarios only. So, I started listening to podcasts, mostly about Higher Education.

We’ve had a both challenging and insightful semester. Suddenly thrown into a new world of #stayingathome, #remotelearning, #facemasks, #zoom, we all were asked to be extremely flexible.

I sit down at my kitchen table and have my first cup of coffee, opening up my laptop. I want to have a quick look at my lifespan class’ flipgrid page. Instead of an exam at the end of the semester I assigned them to do an “Unessay”. Simply spoken, it can be everything _but_ an essay. The idea is to take a different perspective on what we have discussed over the course of the semester, learning to apply newly acquired knowledge to everyday life phenomena. I watch a few videos. They are amazing! One student is reciting a poem they have written, another one is presenting how she created a painting, another student made a video of herself dressed up like Freud explaining the psychosexual stages, one student wrote letters to her grandma, who had passed away, writing about how she struggles and deals with the loss and grief. And more is coming in every day.

For The Caravan‘s previous diary entries in Arabic and English go to our COVID-19 Special Coverage page.

I hear the kids are awake, coming to the kitchen, a bit sleepy still. We are preparing breakfast together, discussing what they will be working on for another online school today. They tell me they will try to be done with everything early, so they can spend time in the garden.

Yes, we have a garden, a space outside the apartment that makes it a lot easier to deal with the lockdown. I am thinking again, of course I like it much more to interact with the students face to face, in the classroom, on campus. But we have been doing ok, and got somehow used to remote learning, and I am grateful for my job, which I feel once more, I can do from wherever I am, if needed. I could complain about the airport lockdowns, that I can’t travel, but I know I am very privileged and there is actually nothing I should be complaining about. There is always a class to prepare, an article to write, a study to develop, a conference to organize …

And this is exactly what I am doing, now the semester is almost over. “The Psychology of Global Crises” (www.aup.edu/pgc). Coordinating schedules, webpages, recordings, technology, preparing for moderating talks, creating lists, invitations, emails, calendars, etc. for an event with more than 60 keynote speakers and 90 panelists from all over the world, who will be discussing ‘crisis’.

The kids in the meantime are working on their video for the talent show the school has organized. Lunch, followed by some very rare and short free time together. Garden. I continue working there a bit on calendars, recordings, schedules, lists. My laptop is almost dead, so I have to go back upstairs. Dinner. Today, no board game night. I am too tired. We listen to audiobooks.

10:05pm: When I close my eyes, I feel like inside of a gigantic calendar, somewhere in between Monday and Tuesday. I see calendar entries everywhere, and links, and names, and lists … oh, there’s a typo, I quickly try to get over to Wednesday … done …

A bit later, I fall asleep. I will remember the next day, I had an interesting dream, about doing an Unessay on how people deal with online calendars …