“My barn having burned down, I can now see the moon.” – Mizuta Masahide, 17th Century Japanese poet and samurai
As we conclude a third week of divisional telecommuting, and as the news begins to confirm that remote access to Emory is going to be the norm for a while, LITS employees continue to find ways to adjust and still be productive. These are a few more of our stories.
Virtual Happy Birthday
Lolita Rowe (community outreach archivist, Rose Library) enjoyed a remote birthday party from her colleagues in Rose. She lit a candle and they sang to her over Zoom. Says Lolita, “My plans of a normal Birthday morphed into the new normal, social distancing. But through the distances, we still remain social via Zoom. My co-workers helped me usher in a new birthday and I felt the connections that I have made here at Rose Library connect us during this new normal.”
Kat Makes a New Friend(?)
While out for this week’s National Walking Day, Kat Boushell (finance/accounting specialist, business & administration) came across a huge snapping turtle as she walked on the East Decatur Greenway. When she got home, she did a little research. “I did not know that snapping turtles can live to be 100!” This means that this guy might have been around for the Influenza Pandemic of 1920. Maybe he has some advice for us?
Daily Dance Parties
When you are working from home, it is all too easy to sit at your desk, plugging away, and never finding time to move around. Not so for Courtney Chartier (librarian and head of research services, Rose Library). She says, “I am having daily dance parties to keep myself motivated and make sure I move around.”
B&A Zooming and Walking
This from Susan Henschen (sr. business manager, B&A):
LITS Business & Administration has kept in touch daily through our departmental Zoom Channel. We have some really funny people on our team! Along with sharing pictures of our pets and good humor to cheer each other up, we’ve celebrated several birthdays since going virtual. We’ve also enjoyed a Zoom LITS B&A Happy Hour together. It was nice to see each other there. We have our normal monthly deadlines to work toward, so to me, it’s nice to have the comfort of consistency right now when not much else is normal.
My first grader and I take daily walks for his science assignments. Not only does that help accomplish completing his schoolwork, it is good for our mental health. Bonus: my steps count in the Move More Challenge competition. Shout out to my team, LITS Comfortable Loafers!
Statement of Purpose in Poetry Form
Dawn Francis-Chewning (educational analyst III, student digital life) penned this cute poem to sum up her new work existence with her trusty dog Buddy:
I Zoom in daily as my dog sleeps contentedly
We walk the neighborhood leisurely
He listens in as I connect with friends and family gratefully
We share mealtime together happily
He barks when the other dogs go by zealously
I work remotely and email is handled expeditiously
He watches when I get some Netflix nightly
We retire, only to wash/rinse/repeat daily
Waiting together for a brand-new day hopefully
Adds Dawn, “Families ought to consider Field Trip Fridays by taking virtual museum tours. Just go to https://www.atlmuseumsathome.org/. Carlos is on the list!
A Little Automation Goes a Long Way
In the first days of telecommuting, LITS started receiving hundreds of requests to provide IX-Workplace for users. IX-Workplace is the Avaya mobile app that lets you have your desk phone on your mobile device.
Normally, the LITS coordinators would do this work but we are not staffed to handle this kind of volume. Joe Massey (enterprise communication IT architect) spent a week developing tools to automate this process. He was helped by Chad Street (sr. network engineer, network/app monitoring) on a database tool he needed as part of the process.
The end result? An automated process that Joe and the coordinators could use to handle the massive volume of users.
The Modern Home Office
Anthony Hess (application developer/analyst on the Canvas Team) has been buried in work as he helps Emory’s professors transition to remote learning. What better way to deal with the stress than with his home office:
Belle is so cute! My interns are jealous that she has her own workstation. 🙂