I break down all of the excessive cardboard that piles up in our tiny break room, after everyone has gone home, and stack it neatly so that the cleaning staff can take it away without a big to-do.

I am nice to all of the maintenance and cleaning staff and in return I am able to get abandoned lumber for my students’ weird art projects from the prohibited giant secret junkyard.

The office I share with another female colleague takes in all manner of crying students, all of the time. We have at least six tissue boxes. In our office we keep and often call the numbers for the local rape crisis center, the number for the woman who is in charge of the free food bags on campus, the woman whom you call when you’re suddenly homeless, and the female athletic director who will give you the code to use the showers in the locked athletic building, and on and on.

All this was pre-covid, though. We’re not yet back to large numbers in-person. I shudder to think how our students are coping without easy access to all of these things, and folks who notice and walk them through these resources. Yes, we still have them, but how many don’t access these services because they’re maxed out/ juggling things already/ embarrassed/ shamed.