"Decision exhaustion": how pandemic uncertainty has impacted the choices we make
Plus, how some institutions of higher education are returning to in-person learning
Good morning, and happy Wednesday. On this pandemic date last year, Colorado College released communications explaining the meaning of Colorado’s “Safer At Home” public health order, and extending its “work-from-home” policy through Block 8. (This year, some CC employees have continued to work remotely, despite the retirement of many of Colorado’s previous statewide public health orders regarding the pandemic.)
Today, we break down one CC professor’s observations on how the uncertainty of the pandemic has influenced decision making. Also, how other institutions of higher education are planning for the approaching fall semester.
➡️ICYMI: On Monday, our resident microbiologist Phoebe Lostroh gave her weekly forecast for El Paso County. She also explained what rising COVID-19 case counts in nursing homes means for the pandemic in Colorado.
✉️In Your Inbox:
On Wednesday, two on-campus students received positive test results for COVID-19. One student was most recently in the language houses, while the other was most recently in South Hall.
On Thursday, an off-campus student received a positive test result for COVID-19. That student was most recently in the El Pomar Sports Center.
On Friday, the college sent out an email explaining last week’s interruptions with the counseling center’s new phone service. Students can continue to call during office hours, but for those with urgent needs after normal hours of operation or on weekends should call Campus Safety to be connected with a counselor.
On Saturday, another off-campus student received a positive test result for COVID-19. That student was most recently in the El Pomar Sports Center.
Photo courtesy of Cameron Howell ‘23
🤔Decisions, decisions, decisions
Over the past year, many Colorado College students have been faced with difficult decisions.
These have ranged from deciding how to lay out their course schedules when they are uncertain about whether certain courses, like those that include laboratory components, will be available, to having to change housing plans after being told to leave campus.
“What used to seem like small decisions became very large decisions, and started to feel like it too,” Christina Rader, assistant professor of economics and business at CC, told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
When the pandemic began, Rader, whose research focuses on human judgment and decision making, said she began to notice new patterns in the way people behaved, especially in terms of the two main processes people use to make decisions.
The first of these processes, which according to Rader is also the most common way people make decisions, is called “automatic mode,” which is when an individual’s decision making is quick and based on intuition and feelings.
But one of the problems the pandemic presented to people, Rader said, is that decisions that used to be automatic instead became deliberative, and therefore involved more time to stop and consider the outcomes of those decisions.
That was because, according to Rader, many activities that felt like “no-brainers” before the pandemic suddenly required more thought, like whether or not going out to get a coffee would be safe.
“When people are aware that uncertainty is present, that often prompts them to interrupt their automatic decision making and think more slowly and carefully about the decision at hand,” Rader wrote in an email statement. “Hence, we can get that sense of decision exhaustion because we are thinking more about things that used to be automatic.”
Rader also said that differing messages regarding safety precautions in the early months of the pandemic, like hand washing, mask wearing, and social distancing, forced people to stop and think more carefully about their plans than they would have had to if those messages had been more clear.
“Suddenly we had to think hard about every decision, and that’s exhausting, because it takes a lot of energy to do that,” Rader said.
Uncertainty is here to stay, for now
Despite what seems to many like a light at the end of a long tunnel, Rader said there is still “no immediate certainty coming,” and that as a result the coming months may be some of the hardest.
“As we head into this next phase where people have been vaccinated and things might open up, I think that we’re going to go through a new period of having to think more about what we do,” Rader said.
She said that was because many might experience some discomfort as they shift from decision making patterns they learned at the beginning of the pandemic and have come to feel protected by, like those telling them to follow pandemic safety precautions, to new ones that may not “feel right” because they involve less restrictions.
“There’s going to be uncertainty still, people are going to have different degrees to which their automatic decision making has changed,” Rader said. “We just need to have grace and compassion with each other over that.”
So you want to manage your uncertainty?
Rader said that for the months to come, the most valuable life skill people can work on is their ability to deal with uncertainty.
To accomplish this, Rader offered a couple of strategies, which she said she has been coaching to students throughout the past year.
One strategy Rader recommends to people is to pinpoint exactly how uncertainty is affecting them.
“Pinpointing the effects of the uncertainty can help you determine the next actions to take. In the case of discomfort, knowing that it is normal and talking to a friend or counselor can help,” Rader wrote. “At the other extreme, in the case of a need potentially not being met, this tells you to urgently contact the people who need to know and might be able to help.”
The other strategy, she said, is to recognize that people’s lives don’t need to follow direct and planned paths in order to be fulfilling and meaningful.
“Knowing that there is life beyond ‘plan A’ can give you peace of mind in the face of uncertainty,” Rader.
🍂Many schools returning to in-person learning in the fall
Slowly but surely, more institutions of higher education have begun to release their plans for the fall semester.
According to an article from USNews, many schools are looking toward an in-person format for classes and residency with precautions, while some have talked about possibilities of having in-person or “blended” formats, which could mean in-person, online, or a mix of both.
Currently, Colorado College’s fall semester will take place in person “as long as local, state, and federal directives allow us to do so,” Acting Co-Presidents Mike Edmonds and Robert G. Moore wrote in an email. At this time, CC is not planning to require the vaccine for students, faculty, or staff planning to return to campus in the fall. (Read more here to learn about all of the details of CC’s plans to return to an in-person campus.)
Here’s a look at what other schools are planning for their fall semesters.
Stanford University is planning for “as normal a fall as possible, with modifications as needed based on the public health situation.” Therefore, the university said that most students should plan to be on campus for in-person learning and research, and university employees should plan for flexible work opportunities that range from in-person to remote work. At this time, Stanford is not requiring that their students be vaccinated for COVID-19, but have warned that that may be a possibility in the future.
The University of Iowa will be hosting in-person instruction except for classes exceeding 150 students. Students will be able to move into residence halls, take part in in-person clubs and student organizations, dine indoors, and attend on-campus events like sports games. Currently, the University of Iowa also does not require vaccination to be on campus, but has urged “everyone eligible to receive a vaccine when it is available to them.”
The University of Michigan is planning to have most classes taught in person and residence halls open at 80% capacity. Most moderate to small classes will be taught in person, while larger classes and lectures will be offered remotely. Students, faculty, and staff should plan for athletics and other recreational activities to be in person, although remote alternatives will be offered. Dining facilities on campus include in-person and to-go options, and the university “strongly encouraged” that students be vaccinated.
University of Colorado, Boulder “will be back to normal, including fall break” the university said. Therefore, the university will be hosting the majority of its classes in person, while some larger lecture classes will be taught remotely. Student activities, like clubs and intramural sports, will return to being in person, while larger events, like sports games, will be decided on based on evolving local public health guidance. The university will not be offering surveillance testing to detect viral transmission in its population, but contact tracing will still continue.
Some schools, however, are planning to require that students be vaccinated to return to campus.
Brown University, for example, will be requiring vaccinations for undergraduate, graduate, and medical students who will partake in in-person learning, so that the university can return to “normal residential, co-curricular, and athletic experiences,” President Christina H. Paxson said in an email. The plan includes returning to standard class sizes and course enrollment, on-campus residency, and a two-semester academic calendar, rather than the three-semester academic calendar the university used this last year.
For New York University, students, faculty, and staff should plan on in-person learning for the fall semester. Saliva-based COVID-19 testing, which the college said has been “essential to controlling the virus’s spread on campus,” will still be available for students. The university will also be requiring COVID-19 vaccination for students both in New York City and participating in study-abroad programs, but will not be requiring vaccination for staff and faculty, although it is “strongly encouraged” by the school that they be vaccinated.
Bowdoin College has planned to welcome all students back to campus, and has no plans to provide options for remote learning. Therefore, the college said that all of the temporary academic policies, including the deadline to submit AP/IB scores for credit, from the 2020-2021 academic year will be discontinued. The college will continue to “observe some measure of the public health protocols” put in place, and will have some surveillance testing, but does not anticipate continuing testing students on the twice-weekly basis it had been using. Complete COVID-19 vaccination is required for all members of the community, with exemptions being provided “for medical reasons for students (and legitimate medical or religious reasons in the case of employees).”
Grinnell College is looking to return to in-person learning for the fall semester. Currently, the college does not anticipate changing this decision given the increase in knowledge about the vaccines and virus spread. The college is requiring the vaccine for students along with proof. For those that are unable to get the vaccine before returning to campus, the college’s Student Health and Wellness will collaborate with the local public health department to provide vaccinations.
Pomona College is planning for fully in-person classes and residency for the fall semester. For students living on campus, the college is using a phased reopening system that will start in early June. Pitzer College, which is another school within the Claremont Colleges along with Pomona College, said that their move-in process will include a 10-day quarantine for all students. The college will also be requiring that students be vaccinated in order to study on campus, and students will not be able to participate in all of the traditional in-person activities, like eating at dining halls on campus, that they were able to before the pandemic.
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Esteban Candelaria, Lorea Zabaleta, and Cameron Howell in partnership with The Catalyst, Colorado College’s student newspaper. Work by Phoebe Lostroh, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at CC and National Science Foundation Program Director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, will appear every Monday.
The project seeks to provide frequent updates about CC and other higher education institutions during the pandemic by providing original reporting, analysis, interviews with campus leaders, and context about what state and national headlines mean for the CC community.
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