15: Crushing the Boxes You Thought Would Cage Us: Five Outliers on COVID, Zoom, and Speaking Out Against Social and Racial Injustices

I sat in front of my computer in my home office with my fingers twitching over the keyboard, trying to scrape the outline of a dried water droplet off the space bar. I had already arranged and then re-arranged the contents of my desk in neat stacks and rows, anxiously trying to wind down the clock before my first Zoom class as a professor. I wasn’t sure if I should play music as students “entered into” the “classroom” or if I should keep the volume down as folx adjusted to these new surroundings. I knew there would likely be some troubleshooting and technical assistance needed tonight and I chastised myself for not watching the Zoom informational slides that were sent out to faculty beforehand. Looking at the clock, I still had nineteen minutes before class started. So, I moved my post-its to the other side of my computer to see if I liked that arrangement better and to kill more time.