The prospect of transforming the situation into an advantage emerges in one of the essays on working remotely published in the current edition of the Magazine of Scholarly Publishing.
"How many of you," questions Erika Dyck, Professor of History at the University of Saskatchewan, “have dreamed of pressing pause on the work treadmill?
I am talking about a genuine freeze-frame, reset, and rethink, or a chance to read something that isn’t directly related to a task with a deadline.”EssaymojoUntil the disease outbreak: But think again, "Let's not kid ourselves; it's not like working from home during a pandemic."
Dyck had it seemed like a Scandinavian country that combined childcare and scholarly work, namely her position as professional and non of the Canadian Health Status Bulletin.
"Now," she writes, " “despite being relatively isolated or even hiding in a home office, I consistently feel tired and am unable to focus on anything, especially when it comes to writing … My mind has constantly wandered, whether drifting toward the contents of the fridge and the looming prospect of dinner, or more often enveloping me in a fog of wondering whether any of the work we do as academics really matters, or whether we will still have academic institutions in a post-COVID world.”Dyck's is the most confessional of the essays and for that purpose, the one which created far more impact on me.
At a certain stage, her literary difficulty has become an important part of what she wanted to say—in fact, the awareness of the difficulty of "feeling like we need to be productive while people are dying, losing jobs, hungry and scared.