Yesterday we got some news on the COVID front from Governor Cooper, as described by The Winston-Salem Journal:
N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper has issued a curfew for North Carolinians and businesses, effective Friday. The “modified stay-at-home order” will require people to stay home between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. and require businesses to close by 10 p.m. All on-site alcohol sales are required to end by 9 p.m., Cooper said. The governor said the move is to limit gatherings and to limit the spread of coronavirus.
This new curfew will last through January 8th. It is worth reminding parents and families of what we said in a message on November 2oth as your students were getting ready to depart for the semester: to minimize the spread of COVID-19 between communities, please discourage your students from returning to Winston-Salem before the start of official semester activities at the end of January.
Moving on now. We are midway into Finals Week. You can take your pick of which of the squares below most accurately represents your Deac’s mood :)
Instead of just one Picture of the Day, today we will feature a handful. These are from past finals weeks. There was even a shot that proved to be oddly prescient: a woman who has pulled up a turtleneck or a scarf over her face (presumably to keep warm) that looks a lot like she was wearing a mask.
I have to admit, I really miss seeing our students here. There is a special energy – even a different dress code – during finals. Everyone is hurrying and prepping and a little stressed (or maybe a lot) but they are also looking forward to being back home and having a long break ahead of them to recharge.
Finals week gives a sense of collective struggle – we are in this together! – because everyone is in the same boat. There is probably no Zoom alchemy that can completely replicate the camaraderie that comes from study sessions late at night, and no true at-home equivalent to staking out your favorite spot in the ZSR Library where you feel like you study best. But hopefully your students are finding virtual ways of connecting with each other to give each other moral support and the boosts they need to make it over the finals finish line.
We’ll close with a program note today. For students with rental textbooks, the Bookstore has a PDF with information about how to return them. I am told the USPS has a Media Mail rate that includes book shipping at reduced rates; you can look into that for more info. Rentaltextbooks are due back December 21st. They have to go back to the rental company at the end of the semester because those books serve more schools than just Wake, and if we did not return them in December as scheduled, that inventory would not be available to other schools using those books whose semesters will start before WFU does in January. See the PDF for details.
