Published:
Reposted from the Hartford Courant; April 14
By Mary Collins
“Wearing a face mask on campus becomes optional …”
— Central Connecticut State University mandate, April 4
They have a lot of teeth.
Their lips and chin lines look nothing like I imagined.
If, as the Bible tells us, the “eyes are the lamp of the body,” then the full face is a living room full of furniture dumped all at once in a tiny classroom.
I mean, for God’s sake they have tattoos, granted, on their hands, necks, arms and other places masks never go, but for some reason now that I see their full bodies my mind picks up on 10 times more social cues: clothes, decals on their computers, jewelry, makeup, type of phone, hairstyle.
And they are styling! In the first week the masks came off, I swear my students came in with flashier shirts, snazzier shoes, more jewelry.
Maskless, they approach me one-on-one and walk to my office to talk about class, life, Central, springtime in ways that have not happened in years.
We’ve been in the classroom together all of this time — so there was no reason for them not to take the walk with the professor out of the classroom — but clearly something more than the mask mandate has lifted.
I wonder how surprised they were to see my mouth, my chin line, my smile. Do they notice the age lines around my lips and try to guess my age? Do they care about my small chin, quite the surprise I’d think if you’ve only seen my broad forehead and large blue eyes?
They didn’t look too startled when I arrived April 4 mask free; certainly not as shocked as the student I bumped into outside on campus last term who had only seen me in an online virtual classroom environment and exclaimed, “Professor Collins, you’re so tall!”
Let us hope that we can see each other fully now, uninterrupted by the pandemic, though I welcomed the mask mandates and appreciated every ounce of caution my campus leaders offered.
Nothing could make me happier than watching two students this week chatting away, sharing a laugh, their full smiles open to each other, like lamps brightening a room.
Mary Collins is program coordinator of the Writing Minors at Central Connecticut State University.