How astonishing that it has been precisely five years to the day since I left New York City because of the pandemic. I did not come back again for a very long time.
NYU went completely virtual on that day. For a while classrooms were a shared idea rather than a physical thing.
Those times are long gone, yet they made their permanent mark on us. For one thing, our concepts around meeting have changed — and we often forget how profoundly.
It used to be that meeting over video chat was something you did only when you had to. Now most of my meetings seem to be done that way — even when I am meeting with someone who is in the same building.
Before March 12, 2020, that would have been unimaginable.