“Ooo, it didn’t explode,” shouted Megan as her undergraduate student mentor supervised her pouring liquid into a beaker at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology.
“It didn’t explode.” It’s less a statement of fact and more an exclamation of relief. But during 2020, it seemed as if everything was exploding with no relief in sight. Not just COVID-19, but also hateful political rhetoric. Police brutality, racial injustice, widening inequality. Record levels of anxiety, depression, stress. And just as our eight-person research team was about to launch our years-in-the-making classroom intervention to boost science outcomes, the pandemic changed everything.
