Updated with four new narratives on December 8, 2020.
We miss South Hall: getting a latte in the morning and an iced coffee in the afternoon from Nora at Petite Babette; seeing the excitement of first-year students fill the campus in late August sporting their new Berkeley tees and sweatshirts; being able to bounce an idea off a colleague walking to pick up lunch instead of on a scheduled Zoom. You may miss walking into your office building in a way you didn’t expect, or feel nostalgia for the mad dash to drop off your child at daycare. There are no more meet-ups with other students or alumni, and we don’t know when we’ll be able to gather in person again. Life is both on pause and somehow rolling along.
We’ve now been home for seven months, and if you’re like us, you might be feeling a smidge guilty because you haven’t used the time at home to master Mandarin or build a kayak by hand. But that’s us: what has the rest of the I School been up to?
Inspired by this New York Times series, we asked some members of the I School community to open the doors to their lives at home and give us a closer look at what they’ve been up to.
Round one:
- Tina Shares 48 Hours with Anya. Tina Kushner is a student services advisor at the School of Information. Anya is her daughter.
- Nitin Kohli: My Shelter-in-Place. Nitin is a Ph.D. student in the School of Information.
- Coye Cheshire: What We're Cooking in Quarantine. Coye Cheshire is a professor at the School of Information.
- Peter Marchetti is a Music Nerd. Peter is the Academic Personnel Analyst and Assistant to the Associate Dean at the School of Information.
- Amy Hintz Loves Crafts (and Chickens). Amy is the Office Coordinator for the School of Information.
Round 2:
- Leaning in to the End Times with Inessa Gelfenboym Lee. Inessa Gelfenboym Lee is a Student Services Advisor at the School of Information. She also happens to have written a dissertation on Soviet Science Fiction and Utopia.
- Qutub Makes the Most of Quarantine. Qutub Khan Vajihi is a 2nd year student in the MIMS program.
- Quarantine With Kristi: Wine, Music, and College Football. Kristi Mitchell, who is retiring at the end of January, is the Assistant Dean for External Relations.
- Richmond is Hooked on (British Panel Comedy Show) Taskmaster. Richmond Wong is an I School alumnus (Ph.D. 2020) and postdoctoral researcher at the UC Berkeley Center for Long Term Cybersecurity.