Remember when we began the new academic year in September 2019? When all we had to worry about was being underpaid, overworked and stressed out? When a visit from Ofsted and the threat of redundancy were the only ghouls lurking in the shadows? Who knew that 2019 would be so quickly be described as “simpler times”.

As work returns to whatever the hell this version of it is, the change that I find tricky to contend with is the lack of predictability. Don’t get me wrong: as a sessional lecturer, I’m used to the job being short term and I’m good at slotting in wherever I’m needed within an organisation’s existing structures. But that was when those structures were immovable.

There is an academic year and exams towards the end. We work in a fixed place with a fixed number of students who come to us. I was totally fine experiencing a set of unknowns placed within a set of fixed boundaries. But with so many previously static frameworks shifting, everyone everywhere is, to some extent, playing it by ear. That’s not just in the approach to work, but with lots of areas of life - family, friends, relationships, finances and, most significantly, health. 

The cornerstone of behaviour management is consistency. If routines, expectations and consequences of actions are reliably solid, then boundaries are clear and an amount of security for everyone is built. This obviously isn’t just a student thing; consistency as well as predictability build confidence and comfort for everyone.

College reopening guidance: ‘Use your judgement,’ says the AoC

Covid-19: How are colleges reopening?

Opinion: How to keep staff and students safe? I have no idea

Risk of a second wave

Perhaps at this point in 2020, feeling secure about the new academic year might seem naive rather than optimistic. Whatever form the new way of working takes, there’s the collective understanding that life might be interrupted again, and again, if coronavirus cases start to rise. A half-expected second wave in the next couple of months and third wave early next year might have us all back in lockdown or existing in a way that hasn’t been imagined yet.

But, and please bear with me, there are reasons to feel cheerful about the uncertain future. Before I have a run at those reasons, I must confess that the last session I taught in college in March, just before shit got “unprecedented”, was a full 90 minutes of “no need to panic about this coronavirus thing, it’s all going to be fine”. It wasn’t fine. Sorry about that.

So when glancing through the following suggestions, please consider them positivity straws at which I’m grasping, rather than anything more prescriptive. Recent history demonstrates that I know flap-all.

Reasons to be optimistic about the unpredictable academic year ahead 

1. It turns out that there are almost no immovable structures. The way we work and live has to be more flexible to survive. Evolution, innit. What this means is opportunity for innovation that would have sounded too radical to work and too crackers to suggest this time last year.
2. The core purpose of education can refocus. If we can nudge the concept of qualifications as a central motivation to learning out of the spotlight, then there is an opening for other drivers: education to fill us up with wonder, education to enhance personal agency, education feed curiosity. That’s a more tempting motivation than a grade, surely?
3. Communities organised swiftly and efficiently. When it first went tits up earlier this year, the strength people found in communities was palpable. I relentlessly bang on about the benefits of unity and mutual aid, having gained so much support from the UKFEchat community over the years. It was so uplifting to see groups come together, roll their sleeves up and get cracking, both online and in person to help each other.
4. FOMO, or “fear of missing out”, is no longer a thing. Not many people are off on fancy holidays or having exciting adventures. Going out has to be planned like a military exercise, so people enjoying glamorous social lives are few and far between. There is little live sport, music gigs, theatre productions, cultural events. There’s not a lot to miss out on at the mo. Bad for all sorts of sectors and economies. Good for FOMO.
5. We’ve got through it once and we’re (mostly) still here. Whatever happens next will have to work really hard to surprise us. Shock-fatigue might be a positive thing?… Dunno. We’ll see.