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Higher ed (all of us, really) is nearing the end of its Year of Magical Thinking, as Joan Didion conceptualized it in her harrowing book of the same name. It's an important landmark in the grieving process, & one I think we should take stock of. (thread) https://www.amazon.com/Year-Magical-Thinking-Joan-Didion/dp/1400078431
1st things 1st, Didion meant two things by this term, each joined to the other. On the 1 hand is the kind of thinking @TheTattooedProf outlines in his blog post from last summer. https://thetattooedprof.com/2020/06/30/the-summer-of-magical-thinking/
This is the kind of magical thinking where we make decisions based on our hopes that something might happen, contrary to any evidence that the thing for which we are hoping is probable or even possible.
When Didion talks about believing she might see her departed husband around the corner, this is the kind of magical thinking she means. As @TheTattooedProf noted in his post, higher ed did the same thing over the summer--making decisions as if there were not a pandemic happening.
On the other hand, there is the more powerful type of magical thinking that Didion refers to. Anyone who has ever grieved knows that for a year after loss there is a corresponding day in the previous year when the person/thing we lost was still with us.
At the end of this Year of Magical Thinking, though, there are no more of these shadow days when the calendar conspires to force us to recollect where we were and what we were doing with the object of our grief. After the year ends, there is only the reality we've been living.
Those of us in higher ed have been cycling through our own version of this type of Year of Magical Thinking ourselves. For the last year, there has always been a corresponding day in 2019/20 when we were teaching as we used to, interacting as we used to.
Now (or soon) this year is passed & I wonder what we'll have learned from our YoMT. Moving past the "what was" to the "now is" is so difficult & for the future of our work in the field, we need to think about what our current circumstances mean for institutions going forward.
I don't have answers, but I think this is an important reflection and planning point. As Didion says in her book, the end of this year is a reckoning with the past as it yields its way to the future. (end)
