My encounter with a different and deeply mysterious kind of corona

By Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

THROUGHOUT 2021, one of my mentors has had to remind me that this year wasn’t a good time to judge whether I like my job. After all, in the middle of a pandemic, no professor likes their job. An overstatement, perhaps, but probably not by much.

Despite all of this, my experience with teaching this fall reminded me of one thing that first drew me to becoming an academic: a life of learning. This semester, I taught an introduction to stellar astrophysics. In the process, I learned not just about teaching, but also some physics. So, as we finish another …