Luca was beautiful, athletic and affectionate, but had bad genes. He was a young Ocicat, owned by a friend of mine living in San Diego. He had an ultrasound that showed mild inflammation of the liver, kidneys, spleen and enlarged abdominal lymph nodes. These are all typical of the cat version of the Coronavirus, so I’m told, that killed his brother Bruno and sister Dylan, several months ago. When Luca became blind it was time to make the decision for euthanasia. So, like his siblings, last Thursday he was put down. I’m not a cat lover. I have cat allergies. When my daughter, then age 6, heard about this, the unbelievable concept of someone sneezing because of a cat, amused her to no end. I compounded it further when told her I also was allergic to perfumes and spring.
Last week when a man sneezed on the F train the woman sitting next to him immediately jumped up and hurried down to the other side of the car. We all felt a bit sorry for the man, until he thoroughly and loudly cursed the woman out as she scurried away. He said he had a cold, “a damn cold” and called her every name in the book. To his credit, he did sneeze into his coat and was in the process of opening up a bottle of Robitussin, but the idea that someone would consider him contaminated or having the plague, incensed him. Ever since we were told how the virus can spread, I’ve had to contain the urge to sneeze in public, for fear of this sort of reaction. Often, it’s because someone on the train is wearing a perfume or scent I can feel go right up my nose, and I have a sneezing fit. If I’m invited to someone’s home for the first time and I forget to ask if they have cats, after just 20 minutes there, I develop major flu-like symptoms (sneezing, congestion, runny nose and watery eyes) that don’t go away for an entire weekend.
I am a professor at FIT. Last Friday the state of emergency in New York City was declared. While reviewing team projects in my studio class, several students were wearing masks. I assumed they would remove them once we entered into dialogue about their hotel design project. But they didn’t. Normally, they do. Since I hadn’t met “Mr. Ocicat” or “Madame Eau de Parfum” on my way into class that day, I got a bit self-conscious.
Since this was the last meeting of my students as a class in person for the rest of the semester, we discussed how we would manage through the coming weeks. All were present except two: one who was not feeling well and one whose parents forbid her from traveling to school. I started the discussion with their opinion of what platform we should use to communicate on. Putting my design thinking cap on, I wanted to make sure that everyone had buy-in to the decisions I ultimately had to make. The general consensus was to go with BlackBoard Collaborate Ultra, to which I said without realizing it, “Great, we go with Blackberry.” They all laughed. Ironically, during the week of Super Storm Sandy in 2012, my Blackberry couldn’t take it, and I was forced to switch to an iPhone on my way home from work. So, BlackBoard Collaborate Ultra it is.
Earlier in the day an FIT committee meeting was held on this platform and was not very intuitive for a first-time user like myself. We chuckled at the “I have a question” icon of a person raising their hand in the lower right of the screen. Some colleagues couldn’t logon or there was an audio problem. When we tried to show plans on our screen, we ended up having to email them to each other instead. Until we get used to this software, it will not be as seamless as we would like our technology to be.
Back in class, I’m figuring out with the class how we will hold team critiques if the school is closed. FIT at the time announced that small groups could meet in class, but if one person doesn’t want to show up, they will have to participate on Google Hangout or something. One suggestion was to have the team critiques off campus in a pub. OK that was my idea, and a popular one at that, but in the end, we opted for the more conventional approach. I will send out a schedule to meet teams in class for an hour at a time, twice a week, to avoid large gatherings on campus.
Next, we had to figure out how we would do our final presentations in front of a jury, when the school is off limits to large groups. One option was to hold it at the Microsoft Flagship Store on 5th Avenue and 53rd Street. The previous Tuesday I took them on an AR tour there that they all thoroughly enjoyed. One year I held my Design Thinking final presentations with my business students there, which was amazing. Another option was to have it in a design showroom, and a third option was to try to have it at FIT. After discussing the pros and cons of each venue, we opted to have it at the Microsoft Store. So, I will inquire about availability. Since the campus is closed all this week, I have to move the final back a week to give students a chance to adjust to our new system. At the time of writing this, these were the decisions we had to make. One week later it’s all changed and we have to readjust our thinking.
I’ll keep you posted and you stay healthy and safe as we readjust on a daily basis.
