On Uncomfortable Chairs and a Global Pandemic

Grad Student Guest Post
By Anne Jones

I remember being in Dr. Lutes’ class at Driscoll Hall the day we got the email. Suddenly, the gray tablet arm chair I usually sat on for class didn’t seem too bad. The fact that my laptop, books, and notes were in constant danger of falling off for want of space became, at that moment, an inconsequential matter. In fact, on the first day of class, my laptop had actually spectacularly tumbled off. Astonishingly enough, it had survived this near-death experience. Distance approximation was never my forte but that traumatic moment had made me an expert, at least when it came to the boundaries of a tablet arm. That evening, as I settled in, I realized I had formed a bit of history with that chair. It was tied to my engagement with the world of immigrant narratives and histories. With characters, ideas, and nations across time. With my professor and my classmates.

Earlier that day, my inbox revealed what everyone knew was coming: classes were going to move online because of the coronavirus. In other words, a rectangular piece of glass (or plastic?) was poised to replace the unobstructed view that I had had of my classmates and teachers. That strange intimacy afforded by simply sharing the same bounded space week after week was to morph into something more…formal. From now on, it wouldn’t do to merely look at the person you were addressing—because what meaning does eye contact hold when you have a whole bunch of faces on a screen? Also, no more tablet arm chairs, which should have been a comforting turn of events.

And anyway, what was the big deal about a change in the form of academic communication when compared to the much larger upheavals this virus was unleashing?

But maybe missing the classroom during a global pandemic is indicative of larger things lost: of routine rhythms changed in frequency and relational networks altered in strength. There is a panicked urgency surrounding grocery runs but life also feels like it’s running at a frustratingly lethargic speed. For those of us with family elsewhere, the distance seems even greater than before, the worries amplified. Finances and health are on shaky ground. Maybe we miss the trivial things because those aren’t the only things we miss. These little things are a proxy for the thousand other intangible, hard-to-pinpoint experiences that now seem fixed in an irretrievable past—experiences as mundane as physical proximity and conversation unmediated by technology. It’s a kind of longing that the body itself feels. A kind of ache, even—which is ironic, given that the past is rarely as divine as the present would have us believe.

How else to explain my silly nostalgia for an uncomfortable gray chair?