Friday, March 13th. I woke up nervous. I had scheduled the day off to take two exams, both necessary to be certified in Louisiana as a PreK — third grade teacher. Although my degrees are in social work and public health, I have been teaching early education for five years, both overseas and in the U.S. I am currently a fellow in an alternative teacher certification program called teachNOLA, and these exams were the final leap toward a long held goal. I had studied — I had even made flashcards — but the morning air felt super-charged with an anxiety that wasn’t test related. Two nights before, the NBA had cancelled the rest of their season. The night before, I had gone to Wal-Mart with hundreds of others and stocked up on non-perishable food, enough for my partner and I to make it through two weeks if we needed to. The aisles of Wal-Mart were thinning — no cold medicine, no thermometers, and no cleaning supplies. There were long lines, but there was no mass hysteria or consensus on what we should all be doing or feeling. Some people had two carts full of food and supplies. Some people had a single case of beer.
I drove to the sparsely populated University of New Orleans campus that morning (classes had already been moved online), turned off both my personal and work phones, put all my things in a small locker, and spent the next five and a half hours in front of a…
