Health.com has a slideshow up for college students the anxious parents of college students about the myriad health hazards associated with dorm life. And while the slideshow may be a bit alarmist–leading with meningitis? really?–there’s no question that dorms, and any other communal living areas of college students, can be pretty nasty places.
At the risk of sounding totally phobic, I will say that disease abatement can be a secondary gain when you switch to electronic assignments. My first several years in the classroom, I would get sick once or twice a semester, shortly after a big batch of grading. I stopped accepting paper from my students a few years ago, and can report significantly fewer in-semester colds, flus, and other illnesses–despite having a 6-yr-old in the public schools, and coaching 4 youth sports teams per year. (The giant bottle of Purell in my office probably doesn’t hurt, either.) This isn’t just my particular paranoia, either: the U of Michigan has a page up about teaching online in the event of a swine flu outbreak (via Leigh Graves Wolf on Twitter).
I won’t tell you about the colleague at a previous university who proudly reported that he hadn’t gotten sick during a semester for more than a decade–a track record he attributed largely to his habit of baking student papers in the oven as a disinfectant. There lots of avenues to health: proper sleep, a reasonable exercise regimen, a balanced diet, handwashing–but I really think you can sever a major disease vector by going digital.
How do you stay healthy during the semester?
[Photo by flickr user quinn.anya (CC-licensed)]
Comments
1. Kristin - August 19, 2009 at 08:18 am
Is there a recipe for baking papers? I would be afraid of burning them to a crisp before I got around to grading them. :-) But seriously, this makes me think more seriously about taking electronic paper submissions this semester especially since I have three groups of germs, excuse me, students.
2. kelsey205 - September 24, 2009 at 08:21 pm
This is an interesting subject that has to do with a paperless classroom. Most of the objectives that you hear about paperless classrooms are just about saving trees or making it easier for teachers to grade, post, and give back grades. I am a strong believer in these ideas and I think that they should be taken more seriously. This blog is a perfect example of that. I think that it makes for another advantage for students to be able to learn efficiently, which is why I'm becoming a teacher. I want to relate (all students these days are using e-mail, facebook, etc.) and assist (which is easier done with technology) my students in having the best experience that they can have in their education.
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