March 20, 2020
Weekly Wave,
vol.
8,
no.
11,
Water Resources Research Center,
Tucson, AZ,
March 20, 2020
This is the second Reflections on my Spring Semester sabbatical activities. While a sabbatical is intended as a time away from some routine faculty activities, it is not meant to be time off from professional endeavors. Faculty members must receive approval of their planned sabbatical program. My approved sabbatical program was to lecture on topics relevant to my research and Extension work on our region's water issues, for which there is a lot of interest globally. After visiting Singapore in late January (see my previous Reflections) and Mexico City, my schedule from early March through early July was filled with an interesting mix of presentations in Arizona, elsewhere in the United States, Mexico, Israel, Australia, and France. Obviously, the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to the almost complete curtailment of these planned activities. However, even as recently as early March, I had no idea of how this virus would change all of our lives. I write this Reflections piece as a mix between a travelogue and a record of just how quickly things changed in a way none of us could have anticipated.