As I write this post, I’m 100% convinced my entire brain is mush and my last few remaining brain cells are working really hard to keep me going through the day. I mean, I almost put my yogurt granola in my tea this morning, so…

I’m on day eight of working nine days in a row because, well: welcome to mid-May in higher education. This past weekend was Commencement weekend, our first in-person one since 2019. So it’s safe to say I was a bit rusty and because of COVID and no sense of time anymore, I forgot how to work a Commencement weekend.

My responsibilities for the week leading up to and during the weekend were all social media-related, as that’s half of my job. Thankfully I had old posts from 2019 and even last year to look back on to see what I had done previously; I took those and re-worked a lot of them for this year, so I wasn’t completely starting from scratch. I spent a solid day finishing up the copy, making graphics, and scheduling out all of the posts that I could, knowing that there were others I’d be posting in real-time. And because I am who I am, I mapped out a game plan for capturing content and posting for both Saturday and Sunday; the undergraduate ceremony was Saturday and the graduate ceremony was Sunday.

As much as I wanted to look back on 2019 as an example of a real Commencement weekend, I couldn’t because we had two additional factors for the weekend: COVID and 90+ degree weather. Our ceremonies are inside, thankfully, but with thousands of people inside, we weren’t sure what the temperature would be. I wore my mask the whole time I was inside and only took it off outside when I wasn’t around a ton of people. They had a ton of extra water on hand for everyone, and I packed two water bottles from home each day to bring with me.

I also very much dressed for the weather:

I didn’t intentionally buy the hat for this past weekend, but it ended up working out really well to keep my face from getting sunburned when I was outside. Plus everyone I saw seemed to love it. For the most part, I wasn’t too hot but still felt gross/sweaty and immediately showered once I got home both days.

A lot of people in my department took today off but since I’m only working today and tomorrow, I worked from home today and will go into the office tomorrow before I’m off for six days and going on my trip! It feels like such a relief to be done with the weekend and that I was able to stay safe both on the COVID and heat fronts.

I’m hanging out today and doing a few chores around the condo and preparing for my freedom tomorrow starting at 4:30 p.m.!