One Market: Season 1, Episode 1

Because this is our first episode, we’re going to start by taking a moment to explain what we’re doing and why. And by we, I mean me and my behind the scenes colleague, Tarah Brookfield. Later on, we’ll learn about positive psychology. And then we’ll tell you about the new online book club that some of our library staff has started. You won’t believe which book they’ve chosen to read during a pandemic. That’s coming up a little later.

We’ve called it One Market for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a reminder of the bustling social spaces that markets have been for centuries all around the world,

Here’s our plan. We’ll release one episode each week that features conversations with interested faculty, staff and students at Laurier Brantford, on a variety of subjects such as how your experience of working from home is going like what’s your home office look like? How is work changed for you?

How about I start us off, as I said off the top. My name is Bruce Gillespie. I’m an associate professor and coordinator of the digital media and journalism program here at Laurier Brantford. I’m fortunate to have a pretty nice work at home space. Like a lot of faculty members. I work from home a lot during the summer semester when I’m not teaching and working on writing and research instead. My office is a converted porch off the front of our house with windows on three sides to take up about two-thirds of the walls. It’s it’s just high enough above the sidewalk that I don’t see people walking by.

So in the winter, my view is mostly at the sky and the tops of old red and yellow brick homes. In a few weeks as the maple trees start to bloom, I’ll be surrounded by leaves. And that’s when my office starts to feel more like a tree house, which I really like. I really enjoy working from home because I find that can get a lot done. And it also means more time with my dog, Martha, who is a 12 year old miniature dachshund, who’s mostly sleeping or patrolling the perimeter of the backyard for wayward squirrels. So I feel like I’m doing all right so far. But the end of the semester came so abruptly that I do feel a little off my schedule. I really miss my students and I wish we could have finished the term as we’d planned to. Transitioning my plans for everyone to work remotely hasn’t been too bad. Both my classes had already completed most of the coursework for the year. So it was just a matter of making a few minor adjustments.

Like everyone else, I’m trying to keep busy outside of work hours when I would otherwise be outside of the house at concerts, plays, visiting friends, traveling. So I’ve dug up my bread machine so that we have lots of carbs in the house, which seems important. I also picked up an old book that I started reading years ago and then put down because it was so physically unwieldy. It’s a book called Hunger’s Brides by Paul Anderson. And it’s an oversized paperback that is beautiful, but 1300 pages of relatively small-ish type. It’s beautifully written, really evocative, but it’s a literal handful. So it’s something I need to read during the day when I can sort of sit on the couch with it. I’m also spending time with a new-ish kind of hobby. About a year ago, I started teaching myself to knit. I learned mostly through YouTube videos and books meant for children, which were exactly the level that I needed, plus a few FaceTime calls with my mother. I’m currently midway through a light gray cable knit cardigan. It’s slow going, but it’s something to do with my hands besides typing, so that’s a nice change of pace. In a few weeks, I’ll be out in the backyard cleaning up the gardens. So I feel like I have lots to keep me busy, or at least distracted for the time being. And for that, I am grateful. And of course, I’m making this podcast. Normally I would take a lot more time to prep this sort of project. But Tarah and I felt it was important to just get started. I’m always telling my students how important it is in this field to be nimble and adaptable. So I’m taking my own advice. That means the podcast will probably at least for the first few weeks have a bit of a homespun no frills kind of feel. I’m working with equipment that I just happen to have at home and some digital tools that I haven’t used before. So it is a bit of an experiment. Had I planned on doing this I would have brought home better equipment and more of it. But just like you, we’re making this up as we go along, and with luck, we’ll get better with time. But enough about me. Let’s meet our guests.

On this episode, we speak with two guests. First up is Judy Eaton, an associate professor in the psychology program and coordinator of the Branford Foundations courses. I started by asking Judy how she was adjusting to the end of in person classes and working from home.

Judy Eaton 7:14
It’s a strange new reality, isn’t it? I mean, I can’t complain, I have everything I need and I’m very grateful for that. I feel very fortunate that I have, you know, the technology to connect with people that I care about. I’ve got family at home and I’ve got safety and security so I feel very grateful for that. So it’s, you know, on the one hand, we have lots to complain about but on the other hand, I feel like I have nothing to complain about.

Bruce Gillespie 7:38
Yeah, that’s so true. What does your home office setup look like? Is it at home office that’s always been set up or is this a last minute attempt.

Judy Eaton 7:47
Yeah, I have a pretty good home office setup because I tend to work from home when I’m not at school. So I have a room of my own which is, is pretty nice. And it’s it’s sort of barred off from people. We are, our house is is open concept. And we don’t have that many doors. But we recently got this cat who I didn’t want getting into my office. So we actually keep my office door closed now. And it’s kind of nice because I can hide in there. And I can pretend it’s because I don’t want the cat in there, but, but it’s my place to get away.

Bruce Gillespie 8:17
That makes sense. What’s nice to be able to actually close off that workspace too. So you’re not, it’s not in your face when you’re trying not to work at the same time.

Judy Eaton 8:24
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. If it was a setup on my dining room table, it would be very hard to get away from it.

Bruce Gillespie 8:28
Yeah. So obviously you teach but you also coordinate all of the Brantford Foundations courses. So how have you had to change your classes and what you’re doing with students in the last couple of weeks?

Judy Eaton 8:40
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s it’s challenging enough to deal with my own classes, but I also feel kind of responsible to make sure that the Foundations students are taken care of. I’m actually really lucky though we have an amazing group of people teaching those courses. So as soon as the word came out that we were going online, everybody coordinated really quickly and really efficiently. So I’m I feel so grateful to work with these people. They’ve been amazing and going above and beyond to make sure that our students are finishing out the term and getting their good education out of it. So yeah, I’m, it could have been a lot worse, I think. So far, it’s been pretty smooth, actually. And we’re ramping up to offer the courses online in the spring as well.

Bruce Gillespie 9:22
Oh, that’s right, because these courses are actually some of the few Brantford courses that actually run year round.

Judy Eaton 9:26
Yeah, exactly. And we’ve never, I mean, we’ve talked sometimes about putting them online, but there’s the tutorials for the BF 290 and 299. And we’re concerned about how we can replicate that unique tutorial experience online. So in the summer courses, we won’t be able to do that as well, but we’re going to try out some things and see what works.

Bruce Gillespie 9:47
I think that makes sense. I think if nothing else, this is an opportunity for– if we choose to embrace optimism, it’s an opportunity for us to experiment a little and see what kinds of digital tools are out there to help let us do the things as we would normally do in person in a different kind of way.

Judy Eaton 10:03
Yeah, I mean, nothing can replace the in person experience, and of all the things the students sometimes say about the Foundations courses, especially the one with the ones with the tutorials, is that that’s, that’s the thing they like most about them, that seems to be the thing that they appreciate the most with the Foundations. So I would hate to lose that. And so we’re we’ll try some different ways to do it. But I’m, I’m pretty confident that we’re not going to be able to replicate what we have in the in person experience.

Bruce Gillespie 10:30
Sure, that makes sense. How many Foundations courses do we sort of run at any one time? Like, how many instructors are you trying to coordinate?

Judy Eaton 10:38
Um, we usually offer two sections of each per term, and there’s four, four courses, so eight sections, but then the tutorials are taught by multiple people. So I don’t know, maybe 10 instructors at a time, maybe 16. Between 10 and 16, maybe?

Bruce Gillespie 10:56
Wow.That’s a lot of coordination.

Judy Eaton 10:58
You know, it’s it’s really pretty, pretty simple coordination. Because everybody has done this for a long time, we’ve got long standing people teaching the courses. And so they’re really great at just doing their thing. And we connect with them when we need to. But they’re pros at this. So they really don’t need me very much other than the check in make sure they don’t. They don’t have any issues. But they’re great. Like, it’s such a great team. I’m so lucky to have to have this team with us right now to handle these challenges, because they’re all really capable and really, really going above and beyond what they need to do to to help keep this going.

Bruce Gillespie 11:37
That’s great. I mean, good for you, but good for all of our students who take these bf courses as well.

Judy Eaton 11:41
Yeah, for sure.

Bruce Gillespie 11:43
So one of the other things we wanted to talk to you about was your research area, which is one of your research areas, I guess, which is positive psychology, which sounds like it might be something useful to most of us these days. Maybe you could start off by telling us what positive psychology for those of us who aren’t familiar with it.

Judy Eaton 12:02
Sure, so people talk about positive psychology and they think, oh, that’s that’s happiness, right. And it kind of includes happiness. But it’s much more than that. So it sort of became an issue, not really became an issue, but it was sort of started about 20 years ago. Psychologists, a group of key psychologists started thinking about, maybe psychology doesn’t have to follow the medical model so much. So basically, the psychology was, its goals were to treat people who were struggling and to get them well enough to cope. And so people started thinking about how psychology has all these great tools and why wait until people get sick? Why not focus on prevention, just like the medical model has done over time, right? Medicine has started looking at how we can prevent disease rather than just wait until people get sick. So psychology sort of thought, well, we could do that too, because we have all these great tools that don’t need to you don’t need to wait to use them until people actually become mentally unwell or start struggling.

So the goal is not to get people who are struggling up to a level where they can cope, it’s to get people who are coping and get them to a level where they can thrive. And so some of the themes we talked about in positive psychology are well being positive relationships, looking at peak experiences, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the concept of flow, but it’s the idea that we can be thoroughly engaged in something so that we were not focusing on anything else. And that can lead to increased well being. So basically, it’s trying to improve well being but not take people from a point where they’re in despair, but to get them to a point where they can thrive and flourish.

Bruce Gillespie 13:44
So it’s sort of proactive.

Judy Eaton 13:46
Absolutely, yeah.

Bruce Gillespie 13:47
Yeah. That’s really interesting. So do you have any suggestions for those of us who live in uncertain times from positive psychology, but what we can do to to thrive and sort of focus On well, feeling well, at times like this.

Judy Eaton 14:04
Yeah, I mean, I think all of us are in need of something, whether we realize it or not. And I don’t necessarily think everybody’s struggling, but we can certainly all do a little better than we’re doing. I know I certainly can. And the things I mean, there’s a lot of different things about positive psychology that make a lot of sense and probably are pretty intuitive. And probably a lot of them people are doing already so you know, things like keeping your body moving and getting exercise that’s known to improve well being, and obviously eating healthy and all those physical things you can be doing. But there’s a lot of things and just looking at social media now you can see that people are trying to do this. I think one important thing that people can do is gratitude. So I know sometimes it can seem pretty despairing when you look at what we’re we’re all missing right now, which is you know, connection with each other and just being able to live our lives the way we do, but sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the things that we have We we should be grateful for. And so I think it’s helpful to try to keep lists and there’s a there’s an intervention, it’s like a psychology intervention, it’s called three good things. And the idea is that every day, either in the morning or at night, or whatever works for you, you write down three things that you’re grateful for. And at first, it’s hard to do it. I think, at first people think, well, I’m grateful for my family, and I’m grateful for my job or, or whatever. But then you start drilling down to looking at just things, small things that you’re grateful for. It’s like, Oh, it was a sunny day today. So I could get out for a walk. Or, Oh, I got a nice message from my friend who I hadn’t heard from for a while. And so it sort of gets you it sort of retrains your mind, you’re actually changing your brain and your natural tendency to basically focus on negative things that happen, you’re actually retraining yourself to focus on positive things. And so by knowing that, at the end of the day, you need to write a list of three things that you’re grateful for. It sort of forces you to pay more attention. So it’s in part, increased mindfulness and in part, looking for positive things, and there’s that creates a cycle. So the more you’re looking for positive things, the more you find positive things. So there’s evidence there’s, I mean, a lot of the positive psychology interventions that I’ve seen, the best ones are the ones that have evidence to support them. So gratitude finding as a, as an evidence based practice, that seems to work well for a lot of people.

Bruce Gillespie 16:26
I love that idea. And I love its specificity, I guess, especially in these times when most of us are working on stranger schedules than we’re used to. I mean, the days can sort of run together like is today monday or tuesday? It’s true. So that is you thinking specifically about what I’m grateful for today. I really like it because it makes you focus on now as opposed to like, and like sort of long term negative thinking and,

Judy Eaton 16:50
yeah, you’re absolutely right. It does put you in the moment for sure. Which I think it’s it’s useful to do that, especially now because there’s so much uncertainty, we don’t know what’s going to happen. In the future, so, in some ways, all we can do is focus on what’s happening right now. Yeah,

Bruce Gillespie 17:05
that makes a lot of sense. So that’s great. Thank you for telling us about that,

Judy Eaton 17:08
Hey, I’m happy to share. I’m actually teaching a positive psychology course right now. And I’ve got my students doing these self these interventions, and then they they write a self reflection on it. So I’ve made them do a bunch of crazy stuff this term. And I asked them to do the gratitude one and they they tended to find it really, generally they found it hard at first and I asked them to do it for a week but by the end of the week, they were finding that it was really helpful on you know, on average they did so I do think that even with students now, if you’re looking for ways to try to think about the world a little bit differently, my students have certainly found that the the gratitude finding was helpful.

Bruce Gillespie 17:49
And I guess like all like many things, part of this comes down to practice, right? So the first time you make a list, you may feel self conscious or silly doing it but presumably after three or four days, it just feels like Part of the normal process.

Judy Eaton 18:01
Yeah, and it doesn’t have to be a journal, you don’t even have to write about why you’re grateful. It’s just a matter of listing these three things because it’s the focus is getting your brain to think about them. And so my, my students often said, Well, now, it used to be that I would get to the end of the day, and I’d have to go back and sort of go over my day again and think, Okay, what was it, though, that I was grateful for, but then they some of them started keeping lists as it was happening. And so that really kept them in the moment. So at the end of the day, they would have a long list of nice things that happened, which is good for all of us.

Bruce Gillespie 18:34
Yeah, I think that’s something I get it sounds like something easy enough to do for that we call try doing and hopefully, make ourselves feel a bit more subtle during these strange times. That’s great. The other thing we’re asking people about is what kinds of things you’re doing to keep yourself busy or distracted outside of work hours when you might normally be outside your house, visiting people going to places what kind of recommended activities find out what do you up to outside of work?

Judy Eaton 19:00
Yeah, so I have a daughter who’s 11. And a spouse and all of us are introverts. So we’re not actually suffering too much in terms of missing people. I mean, obviously, we’re unable to see our family and we’re sad about that. But we’re not we’re pretty happy with ourselves and with each other. So in terms of trying to manage the lack of social interactions, it’s actually hasn’t been too hard for us. And I’m, I can certainly understand how somebody who’s an extrovert who is used to seeing people a lot if this would be harder for them. So I’m feeling like that part of it we kind of have a handle on but in terms of doing things where I mean, my days pretty full. The work part is is keeping me busy, for sure. Because I want to make sure that I’m giving my students the best experience I can. And then you know, we’re just spending more time eating and making meals and trying to get out for a walk every day. We’re lucky that we live near trails and so we can get out to nature which is another thing that I think positive psychology has a lot to offer. And of course, positive psychology didn’t create these ideas, but get spending time in nature I think is really good for well being. So I know it’s not for everybody. But for me just being around trees is really good for my mental health. So we try to get outside and get around trees pretty regularly as well.

Bruce Gillespie 20:22
I, I’ve said this to a couple people already, but I feel so thankful. I guess that as bad as this is happening, I’m just glad it’s happening at the start of spring as opposed to the middle of winter because at least we can look outside, go outside and see some signs of life as opposed to snow banks and slush fund.

Judy Eaton 20:39
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. It’s definitely something to be grateful for. Absolutely.

Bruce Gillespie 20:45
What’s great, Judy, I think that’s all the questions I have, unless there’s anything you’d like to add.

Judy Eaton 20:51
No, I don’t think so. I mean, I think we’re all just trying to make the best of it that we can and everybody’s gonna have different techniques. So I think, you know, we should try to, to not be so hard on ourselves and not to expect ourselves to be able to do all these things that we used to do. And so I think we’re all just trying to get through this in our own unique way. And you know, when you try to think of, well, what what advice could we give to make everybody feel better? There isn’t one thing there isn’t a one size fits all for this. But I think if you’re still getting up in the morning and, and surviving the day, then you’re doing great.

Bruce Gillespie 21:28
Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for joining us today.

Judy Eaton 21:31
Well, thanks for inviting me burse.

Bruce Gillespie 21:33
Our next guest is Michelle Goodridge, librarian for social sciences and humanities. She began her work here as the gaming librarian building a giant collection of games that are available to all students, staff and faculty at Laurie Bradford. She also played a role in organizing a lot of the gaming related events on campus and in the community. You may have seen some of them like the Create your own Dungeons and Dragons character sessions. Here’s our conversation. Hi, Michelle, thanks for joining us on one market.

Michelle Goodridge 22:04
Thanks for having me, Bruce, this is a fun endeavor.

Bruce Gillespie 22:07
We hope so. It’s an experiment in progress. The first question I have for you is the first question. We’re asking everybody, which is, how are you adjusting to this new reality of working from home on short notice? How’s it going?

Michelle Goodridge 22:23
Um, I would say it’s going probably the best that it can. I know that everybody’s working really hard to try to make this as easy as possible. On a side note, my own personal experience. I love working from home. I think it’s great.

Bruce Gillespie 22:41
So what’s your home office out of like, do you have a dedicated space you’re already to use? Are you trying to set up something?

Michelle Goodridge 22:47
Well, unfortunately, we’ve been doing renovations in our house. So my former home office is full of my husband’s tools. So right now what I’m trying to do is kind of set it up either on the dining room or occasionally I’ll come upstairs and for a change of scenery and hang out in bed and play on the computer. Like it’s kind of hard in a sense that you don’t have the dedicated space and you need to also make sure you’re getting up and you’re being ergonomic. And there’s all these sort of factors playing into how we do work from home. But so far, so good.

Bruce Gillespie 23:26
That’s good to hear. I actually, I have a dedicated space here at home too. But I actually kind of like the opportunity to move into a different room just otherwise to find I’m sitting in my office for eight hours a day. It’s like, Oh, is it dinnertime already? So it’s like, I’m going to work for half an hour in the dining room or sit in the kitchen just for a change of scenery if nothing else.

Michelle Goodridge 23:43
Oh, for sure. And I’ve also found that when I was working on campus, I would stay in my office an awful lot more like I was waiting for, you know, people to drop by or, you know, to, to see if I could help somebody or a student. Whereas now it’s like okay, I have an hour between meetings, maybe I’ll go for a walk.

Bruce Gillespie 24:03
Yeah, I mean, I think that, that kind of flexibility of working from home because I think you can be more productive in many ways. I think it’s easier to schedule and those sort of break times as it were. Yeah, I’m the same way. So another question we have for you is, for me, it’s easy to imagine how faculty’s lives and working lives are changing, working from home. But I think a lot of us have been curious to know, what does the librarians job look like when you’re not in the digital learning comments when you’re away from a library? Like what do you what are you doing and what are the challenges you’re running into?

Michelle Goodridge 24:34
That is a very good question. So the situation in the Digital Learning Commons in Brantford is a tad different than in Waterloo. So in Waterloo, there’s a lot of support staff people working at a front desk. They do a lot of triaging and working with students as do my library and peers, but in Brantford, we are kind of the only point of contact physically there. So I find that a lot of my interactions with students and faculty are unplanned, a lot of drop ins just seeing, you know, if I’m available to offer help. And that becomes, I think, an interesting challenge when you’re at home, I think that we’re trying our best to communicate with our faculty and our students that we are still here, we are able to still help them. And we’ve kind of moved to this online environment. So that presents you know, different ways that we do interact with our with our patrons. So I’ve been having a lot of zoom meetings, for example with students to guide them through how to do research and finding appropriate materials for their for their assignments, when normally I would most likely do that in person.

Bruce Gillespie 25:50
Sure, that’s great that you’re still able to work with them though, especially because a lot of I’m assuming at least a lot of the resources students are looking for are probably online anyway, which makes things a bit easier. Don’t don’t need to go into actual stacks someplace and then find a book.

Michelle Goodridge 26:04
Yeah, it’s, it’s an interesting thing happening in libraries. So there’s this idea that, you know, all books are old, nobody uses books anymore, we’ll just put everything online and then, you know, we’ll we’ll provide access, but I’ve found in speaking to, to my colleagues that, you know, certain disciplines really do need access to these physical books. So then that presents a challenge. We’ve got, you know, thousands of books in our collection. And because the buildings aren’t open, how is it that we are able to still provide access to these, you know, important resources because not everything is online. Right? Right. So I know that there’s been some work keeping in mind, you know, copyright laws to provide as much access to print resources as possible, or we can see if another library in Ontario has same volume as a resource. And maybe there’s some sort of way that we can still provide the access. So it’s, it’s interesting, and you almost take for granted that the physical books are there sometimes when you’re not able to actually get them, it becomes a very real situation.

Bruce Gillespie 27:21
Yeah, I bet. I mean, I think, I think that’s probably adjustment we’re all making, right? We’re so used to oh, I can just run to my office and grab these files or this equipment or run to the library, grab this book. And now it’s like, okay, don’t have these things. So what can I what kind of workaround can I come up with? What can I use instead? How can I make do without for the time being? It’s a lot of adjustment.

Michelle Goodridge 27:39
It is. And like I said, I think people are making the best of it. There’s a lot of really interesting work being done. And I’m very active, as you probably noticed, on my Twitter account, seeing what other folks at other institutions are doing to, you know, provide the best service that we can to our patrons, given the climate that we’re in.

Bruce Gillespie 28:00
Yeah, for sure. And I think I think you’re right, I’ve noticed that there seems to be a really like a lot of goodwill around us that everyone is in the same situation. So everyone sort of pitching in to say, Okay, if I can’t do this, can you do something differently or orders or share best practices or share ideas, which I, which I think is actually really encouraging and heartening?

Michelle Goodridge 28:18
It is, it’s really nice to know that you’re not alone. And there’s probably someone out there who’s experienced the exact same thing. And you can kind of pull on your peers and colleagues to kind of guide you through whatever issue may have come up.

Bruce Gillespie 28:33
Now, speaking of your colleagues, because I do follow you online. I saw that shortly after faculty and staff for us to start working from home. You reported that Laurier librarians have started an online book club.

Michelle Goodridge 28:45
Yeah, there’s a there’s a few of us in the book club. It’s not just librarians. It’s also some technical staff as well. But we thought, you know, given that we can’t, you know, serendipitously meet during the day or at Eve during the evening, we needed some sort of way to connect that maybe wasn’t solely for work purposes.

Bruce Gillespie 29:08
So which book are you reading?

Michelle Goodridge 29:10
Right now? We are reading Brave New World. I realized–

Bruce Gillespie 29:13
[Laughter]

Michelle Goodridge 29:15
No. Yeah. So the reason it was picked is is some of us have read it and and other folks hadn’t. We are finding it’s a bit bleak to be talking about it.

Unknown Speaker 29:27
Yes. What a strange choice of these times but I’m here for you. I think it’s, it’s counterintuitive. Why not?

Michelle Goodridge 29:34
Yeah, and it’s a classic. It’s something that you know, I encourage people to read perhaps not right, the second but you know, it’s it’s a sci fi, you know, dystopian primer really like it’s one of the exemplar books on the subject. But yeah, so we picked that one as our first one. And now we’re kind of going through and saying, Okay, so we’ve read something pretty pretty depressing. I guess for our current climate, let’s make a list of maybe some more uplifting nonfiction books and fiction.

Bruce Gillespie 30:11
And so are you, are you discussing the book by like group chats or emails? Are you zooming to meetings about this? Like, how are you? How are you getting together to talk about it?

Michelle Goodridge 30:19
Yeah, so we’ve had one meeting so far, our goal was to read half the book, and then meet on zoom to discuss it. And we discussed all sorts of aspects of it, the one that I thought was really fun. A lot of us already owned it. So we were sharing, you know, what the cover do you have, like, what edition? You know, very library nerd aspects of the book. Or if they had a versions, like what was that, like? Did you get the same sort of feel? I always am curious when people are avid ebook readers because I’m not. So it’s interesting to hear if they still engage with the text the same way. Sure.

Bruce Gillespie 31:00
Oh, I love that. So I know because you were telling me about this before, you’re also playing, and you will explain this much better than I can, but you’re playing games online with some your colleagues via zoom as well.

Michelle Goodridge 31:10
Yes, we are experimenting with different things that we can do as a group. So the first thing that we did was using this game called jack box. So the folks that Jackbox actually posted a wonderful tutorial on their Twitter on how to run a session on zoom. But basically what it is, is someone will host the game. The game is available on consoles, and also steam so you can run out on a PC. So one person will run the game, and everybody joins in to be able to play using their cell phone. So they type in a code, they put in their name, and then they can play the game. So within Jackbox there, it’s almost kind of like if you had a shell full of board games is kind of the aesthetic I think they’re going for. Because when you open the Jackbox game up, there’s all these games that are, you know, in boxes. And you kind of pick which mini game you want to play. And there’s so many different ones that are available. There’s ones that are trivia based, there’s ones that you know, have us drawing things or guessing things, or put us against each other, or we work as a team. So it’s really fun because you can kind of pick something that will suit most people’s interests, and then you can kind of all play together.

Bruce Gillespie 32:40
That’s great. What a fantastic idea in the fact that you can do this online without everyone having to have the same you know, set of Scrabble or monopoly at home to move the pieces around. That’s, that’s even better.

Michelle Goodridge 32:49
Yeah. And and we tried it with different folks. So like I said, or sorry, like you said, it was a lot of library staff, but also one of our staff member’s mom played with us or my husband played. So we kind of pulled in a whole bunch of different people to be able to play, which was nice.

Bruce Gillespie 33:07
Nice. So maybe later I’ll get the the link from your work instructions, or we can share that on the website so that people can take a look themselves.

Michelle Goodridge 33:16
Yeah, for sure.

Bruce Gillespie 33:17
Great. The last question for you then is, obviously you’re keeping busy during the day with work like most of us, what are you doing in your free time when you could be, you know, otherwise traveling, going places, meeting friends in person? What kinds of things? Are you reading things? Are you playing games or you’re watching great TV shows that you can tell the rest of us about to inspire or distract us with?

Michelle Goodridge 33:39
Yeah, we’ve tried to do a bunch of different things, actually. So my husband and I used to be in a cover band. And obviously we can’t have band practice because social distancing. So what we’ve been doing is doing little mini recordings in our living room have different songs that we used to do. So he’ll play guitar. And I sing, and we end up recording those and sharing them with people to kind of, you know, lighten the mood a little bit and show people that we’re still doing stuff.

Other things, we’ve been, again, still working on the house organizing, I’ve done some amazing decluttering that does it spark joy really resonated with me. So I’ve been going through the house, trying to pare things down, hoping one day we’ll be able to have a yard sale. And also our cats are so thrilled that we are home. So they are following me around and demanding attention. And it’s kind of nice feel to spend time time with them. For shows we’ve been, I feel like we’ve been making our way through the entire Netflix catalog at this point. We’re starting to kind of run out of different things to watch. One thing that we started doing Last night, actually, that I really love is it’s a show called Shrill. And the lead character, Annie, in that show, she’s a plus size girl and she works at a newspaper. And it kind of goes through her, her struggles with being sort of plus itis and how the world sort of treats you when you’re like that. And she kind of, you know, becomes empowered and makes changes in her life and, you know, to try to become happier with her situation, as opposed to kind of letting everyone around her, you know, bring her down by what their, you know, preconceived notions are about someone who who is a bit bigger. So I’ve really enjoyed that. And I find that show really empowering and resonates with me a lot.

Bruce Gillespie 35:55
That’s great. That sounds like an excellent recommendation.

Michelle Goodridge 35:58
Yeah, I encouraged Everyone to check it out. It’s there’s two seasons. And so far we’re for the first season and it’s been really good. Good.

Bruce Gillespie 36:08
Well, I think that’s all the questions I have for you. Unless there’s anything else you’d like to add that we didn’t talk about?

Unknown Speaker 36:14
Well, maybe I’ll make a little plug for the library, because I don’t I don’t know who’s all listening to this, but know that your librarians are still here to help. We are trying to find ways to become more integrated with your your students and with your own research. I know that we’re meeting a lot to talk about ways to create more learning objects and materials that can be put into my learning space. So it’s more more collaborative in nature that way and that we’re still able to reach the students. So if you have any questions about how you can still include the library and include your librarian and get your students to to Get into contact with us. Just reach out to your library and they’ll be able to help you with that. But I just want everyone to know we are still here.

Bruce Gillespie 37:08
That’s good to know. That’s very reassuring in these unsettling times. Our librarians are still here.

Michelle Goodridge 37:13
Yes.

Thanks for joining us today, Michelle.

Bruce Gillespie 37:16
Yeah, no problem anytime.

And that’s a wrap on the first episode of One Market. Thanks for joining us. We hope it’s helped you feel a little more connected to the Laurier Brantford community. If you’d like to appear in a future episode to talk about how you’re adjusting or with tips for activities or hobbies. please get in touch. We’d love to hear from staff, students and faculty. If you liked what you heard, tell your friends and colleagues. You can find the download link on our website, one hyphen market dot simple cast.com Find us on Instagram at one-dot-market-dot-podcast or email us at one-dot-market-dot-podcast@gmail.com. We’ll back with a new episode in about a week. One Market was created and produced by Bruce Gillespie and Tarah Brookfield. Music by Scott Holmes. Special thanks to Avery Moore Kloss, Laurier Brantford’s podcaster in residence, as well as Melissa Weaver and Chandler Berardi. Thanks for listening. Keep in touch

Transcribed by https://otter.ai