In March 2020 university campuses the world over closed when the World Health Organization officially declared that the SARS-cov-2 virus, and the disease that it causes, Covid-19 were a pandemic. Scientists and members of the public health sector came together in an amazing spirit of collaboration that brought us vaccines in a very short amount of time. Many lives were saved, although many were lost during 202,0 when the airborne nature of infection by this novel virus was poorly understood.

I'm a biology professor, and in January 2020, I was teaching Applied Plant Ecology, which includes the topic of invasive species. Since it's a science policy and management course, I always include current news items, so in January 2024, I started including news of the mysterious disease emerging from China, and how it was rapidly moving around the world.

By mid-February 2020, I warned students that we were likely to switch to 100% online learning, and I started to rethink my course delivery. My predictions all transpired in mid March; YorkU professors were given a few days to learn how to use Zoom to teach online. In the last four and a half years, I've been working on creating ways of teaching hands-on laboratory and field learning experiences in a virtual environment. And I have been recognized and received awards for that innovation, which is lovely.

I also chose to actively prioritize service to the university sector and my own institution, as well as to find ways, both financial and social, of supporting less privileged students, colleagues, friends and family. By August 2020, I found myself feeling burned out from the large amount of virtual social connections that I was maintaining in order to provide all of this emotional and practical support to anxious, isolated students and family. It was 15 years since I saw a psychologist, but I realized that I needed a counsellor, and I found a superb therapist who is highly experienced with working with university and college students. She "got" what I was dealing with as a front-line teacher and she keeps me anchored to this day.

All of my service to teaching and the institution was complicated in spring 2023, when I had to step up to look after the health of an elderly parent in a very active, hands-on way. I found and hit my energy limits last year. I have never really ever lacked energy and motivation, but I was mentally and physically drained. By the time we were executing my 92-year old (at the time of his death) father's will in September 2023, then settling his estate, and working to restore the health of my amazing mum who is in her late 80s who had been my father's primary caregiver for ever, I was hitting a new level of burned-out-ness. My therapist was there for me!

As well, once I was no longer available to attend to the emotional needs of some colleagues and students during 2023, they dropped me like a hot potato, either berating or ghosting me. I have since learned that they were habitual "trauma dumpers" and had likely become accustomed to me being there, unequivocally, for them since 2020. On reflection, I was often doing their work. So when I was no longer in a position to continue with that, and in fact, had started to hand out some truth bombs and create limits, they didn't take it well.

Fortunately, I knew that some of my intellectual and emotional stress would lessen in July 2024 with the start of my sabbatical. In reality, it has been a lot of work to disentangle myself from all of my teaching and committee duties and to re-engage with the research projects that I consciously back-burnered in April 2020. Back in December 2019, I thought I would take them up again in April 2020 with the end of exams. Little did I know that I would not be revisiting them for a very, very, long time. The title of my sabbatical application plan was "Taking my research off the back burner where I put it in 2020".

So, please join me, as I return to analysis and writing, with the time to reflect enough to return to blogging. I have been teaching students to do science communication using social media in the last four years, but it looks very different from my pre-pandemic assignments.

In these blogs I will also share some of the amazing research collaborations that I have been supporting as a bit player, rather than being a PI, over the last 5 years.

Dawn