The Goddess Professor Speaks

A year ago today, everything stopped. Freedom of movement as we knew it ended. A year ago today, I was googling Covid-19 furiously, trying to understand what was happening, so I could then discuss it in my classes in an accurate way. Students were slowly becoming aware of what Covid-19 was, and I was trying to help them sift through the noise. Because one of our topics that semester was misinformation/disinformation/malinformation, I made sure we had frank and honest discussions about how to obtain accurate info. Discussing Covid-19 would be the second in-real-time event I used as a lesson that semester. Earlier in the Spring semester, after Kobe Bryant's death (rest his soul), I used the information cycle and misinformation as a lesson on how to know which news to trust, how to assess credibility, and confirm stories and information. A year ago today, our personal life changed with a car accident (thankfully, no one was seriously harmed) as the larger world as we knew it changed a

In recent days, many of my white colleagues/friends have been afforded the amazing opportunity of either getting on the wasted doses vaccination lists or being considered as educators by local places offering vaccines. (Wasted dose lists are pharmacy waiting lists that you can add your name to and they will call people at the end of the day if they have doses that will go to waste if they aren't used.) I'm ELATED that so many people I know who have largely adhered to all the covid protocols and thereby been mostly locked away in their houses, have been able to secure vaccine doses OR an appointment to get one soon. I immediately considered jumping on this bandwagon, and then I reconsidered. I feared that once I, a Black woman, showed up with my work ID that suddenly higher ed faculty would not be considered educators--despite EIGHT of my white colleagues already getting the vax, as of this writing. Or that I would be questioned as being a higher ed faculty (people are often sur