The effect of social distancing on work

After observing my reaction to my changed work situation--doing everything through email and Skype, I have come to a conclusion: our social interactions are very important in the smooth running of our institution. I’ve had a couple of difficult situations in the past week. They were rendered more difficult to negotiate because I have not been interacting with the people involved socially. All we had to go on, so to speak, was the interaction about the difficulty.

I think we need to make a greater effort to make our interactions mimic our social relations. Also, we need to be more gentle in our virtual communications that we might be if we had other, more social contacts with the people involved. We need a lot more patience, because we can’t necessarily just go down to someone’s office to get an answer to any question we might have. And we don't have lunch with them or coffee breaks.

I believe that the body is so important in our social and professional relations. The shift to virtual everything will diminish our bonds. This is especially true in education. I have a friend who is a Montessori teacher. Can you imagine trying to do Montessori, a theology of the body pedagogy if there ever was one, virtually?

I'm not a Carthusian.