Around mid-March 2020, it was revealed to the United States populous that COVID-19 was here (AJMC 2021). Since that time, we have seen an exponential increase in positive cases (CDC 2021), hospitals swollen with infected patients, overworked and often understaffed healthcare providers (Lumpkin 2020), restaurant closures/openings/closures, and millions of people out of work. And although certain restrictions have been placed on outdoor gatherings like capacity limits, social distancing, and mask wearing, we have seen a real boom in outdoor recreation with increased fishing and hunting license sales (Hollan 2020), increased visitations to parks (Chrobak 2020), and an unprecedented volume of boats sold (Woodyard 2020). While social distancing was encouraged with these events, it appears to have given people some freedom that was otherwise taken away during the pandemic. With all this I began to ask myself, what impact the pandemic has had on our profession? Particularly in training students to enter the workforce.

To place this article in context, I am a college professor, so the pandemic has affected me to some extent, yet I am extremely grateful that I am still gainfully employed, have remained healthy, and have been able to accommodate my students as best as possible. Some universities and colleges opted to remain open and employ an aggressive testing strategy that allowed for limited in-person instruction on campus (Moody 2020); yet this strategy led to increasing positivity rates across many campuses (New York Times 2021). However, for others, it forced an immediate change from face-to-face learning to remote and online formats. In fact, many of us had less than a week to change our teaching strategies back in March 2020 from one delivery mode to another. And because many universities opted for remote learning, which is largely synchronous (a format that meets remotely at the regularly scheduled class time), demands were placed on us all, students and faculty alike, to quickly learn new technologies. Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and other platforms have been used to deliver content—all seemingly unheard-of within academic circles a year or so ago. After several remotely taught workshops and the addition of instructional software (e.g., D2L [Desire to Learn], a web-based data management system that allows faculty to store/share lecture/lab/video content, manage courses and course assignments, and evaluate student progress) faculty had the tools necessary to proceed in virtual space and students had the tools required to garner lecture information. Yet, one can’t help but wonder, “What kind of college experience is this?” And more importantly for the student, “Is this what I signed up for?”

Classrooms quickly became someone’s bedroom or the kitchen table, our offices became our basements or the living room couch. Of course, these environments brought many challenges, including dogs barking, passing garbage trucks, tree trimmers, Internet failures, and kids/spouses walking behind us—seemingly to bomb our classrooms. This forced innovation in teaching from the integration of videos to lectures to kitchen-style experiments, where faculty either describe what is needed to perform an experiment or they mail materials to the students in a kit. Regrettably, the hands-on element that fisheries science is known for has been shelved to some degree with remote learning. Students may have to watch a video of electrofishing rather than performing the activity or read about doing a survey rather than actually participating in the task. For me, I was conducting an ichthyology lab in a pavilion to four masked students at a time, each at a separate pavilion—not ideal for sure, but the alternative was a PowerPoint slide show with narration and no real interaction. I would transport jars, sorting pans, ID-books, and a laptop to set up a remote lab. Each student had the chance to gain perspective of the shape and size of each fish and perhaps more importantly, the chance to interact with each other and myself. Thankfully, I never broke a glass jar transporting specimens from our museum in the back of my truck to the venue.

Research has also been challenging because of various hiring freezes of students and the lack of access to university vehicles, boats, and field sites, not to mention locally imposed restrictions on capacity limits and mask wearing. In addition, lab work has come to a screeching halt or been significantly modified given restrictive social distancing guidelines set forth not only by the state, but also by many universities. In short, I am spinning my wheels for now—struggling to make future plans. The incentive to write grants is also waning because I simply can’t get the manpower needed to conduct fieldwork, so it has become increasingly difficult to create opportunities for students when the system cannot support the necessary parts to make it all work, like an automaton, but with missing pieces.

Since the pandemic ramped up, other areas of our academic profession has been affected. We have experienced earlier retirements (Chronicle of Higher Education 2020) and hiring freezes (Olena 2020; Schleunes 2020). Retirement for many may have been on the horizon 2 or 3 years from now, but the pandemic has changed how we think and, more importantly, what we deem important. Is it important to add that little bit more money for retirement or is it more important to spend that extra bit of time with family? This has forced many to re-prioritize their immediate futures in academia and forced others to change careers entirely (Nietzel 2021).

With respect to recent graduates seeking entry-level positions, they are confronted with a very different set of circumstances. Positions within the field (especially among state governments) are difficult to find right now (Rosewicz and Maciag 2020) with many state agencies on a lockdown of sorts and fallback positions in the service industry even more difficult to find, given state’s closures and social distancing requirements. Perhaps most disconcerting is the fact that many state/federal/private agencies/organizations are not accepting interns at all. The steady stream of labor that our profession has come to enjoy and to thrive on has become greatly strained in the wake of the pandemic. But with the arrival of vaccines, this is slowly changing and will likely improve as 2021 wears on.

Even this organization, the American Fisheries Society, has been hit with the restructuring of the 150th Anniversary Meeting and, as of this writing, many other meetings across Divisions at least through late 2021 have been modified to remote formats. In addition, the AFS has required committee members to use web-based conferencing technologies rather than traditional meetings to conduct its business. However, through adversity comes innovation, which has certainly reigned supreme during this trying time. Innovation in how we work, how we communicate, how we teach/learn, and how we socialize. In short, this pandemic has pressed us all to think outside of the box, which may not be a bad thing. Moving forward, I believe that we will likely see more blended or hybrid models for teaching that combine both a face-to-face experience with an online experience, either within a course or across a curriculum.

There are a few positive notes that have surfaced during this period and several others that appear promising on the horizon. First, an uptick in license sales. This is great for state agencies that have been experiencing declines in fishing participation over the years, which translates into a reduction of funding (e.g., Pennsylvania; Huba 2019). This boom surely will help to bridge gaps that have surfaced and provide needed revenue. Secondly, boat sales are up (Woodyard 2020). I can recall walking into my local sporting goods store in 2020 seeing the remnants of the kayak section with nary a paddle to spare. Thirdly, visitation to parks and other outdoor venues has increased. People are opting to not stay at home and watch a movie or play video games, but rather to get outside. These behaviors I hope will not be forgotten once we are through these dark days.

For the future, the vaccine rollout has happened rapidly, and, in many ways, life is beginning to return to a sense of pre-pandemic normalcy. I hope that once this is over, people reflect on the past year and think about the sacrifices as well as the compromises they made. Moving forward, our profession will survive this and will once again return to “normal,” or at least a new normal. Most importantly, I firmly believe that many who found a new hobby (e.g., fishing or boating) during the pandemic will continue with it, thereby increasing the need for well-trained fisheries biologists. Therefore, we must stay the course and be patient as a nation waits for that shot in the arm.

大约在 2020 年 3 月中旬，人们向美国民众透露 COVID-19 就在这里（AJMC 2021）。从那时起，我们看到阳性病例呈指数级增长（CDC 2021），医院因感染患者而膨胀，医疗保健提供者工作过度且经常人手不足（Lumpkin 2020），餐馆关闭/开业/关闭，以及数百万人失业。尽管对户外聚会施加了某些限制，例如容量限制、社交距离和戴口罩，但我们已经看到户外休闲的真正繁荣，钓鱼和狩猎许可证销售量增加（Hollan 2020），公园访问量增加（Chrobak 2020）)，以及前所未有的船只销售量 (Woodyard 2020 )。虽然这些事件鼓励了社会疏远，但它似乎给了人们一些自由，而这些自由在大流行期间被剥夺了。有了这一切，我开始问自己，大流行对我们的职业有什么影响？特别是培养学生进入劳动力市场。

把这篇文章放在上下文中，我是一名大学教授，所以疫情对我有一定的影响，但我非常感谢我仍然有工作，身体健康，能够尽可能地照顾我的学生可能的。一些大学和学院选择保持开放并采用积极的测试策略，允许在校园内进行有限的面对面教学（Moody 2020）；然而，这一策略导致许多校园的阳性率提高（纽约时报2021）。然而，对于其他人来说，它迫使立即从面对面学习转变为远程和在线形式。事实上，早在 2020 年 3 月，我们中的许多人只有不到一周的时间来将我们的教学策略从一种交付模式更改为另一种交付模式。而且由于许多大学选择了大部分同步的远程学习（一种在定期安排的课堂时间远程会面的形式），因此要求我们所有人，学生和教职员工，快速学习新技术。Zoom、Microsoft Teams、Google Meet 和其他平台已被用于交付内容——所有这些在一年前左右在学术界似乎闻所未闻。经过几次远程授课的研讨会和添加教学软件（例如，D2L [Desire to Learn]，一种基于网络的数据管理系统，允许教师存储/共享讲座/实验室/视频内容，管理课程和课程作业，并评估学生的进步）教师拥有在虚拟空间中进行所需的工具，而学生拥有获取讲座信息所需的工具。然而，人们不禁想，“这是一种什么样的大学经历？” 对学生来说更重要的是，“这是我报名的吗？”

教室很快变成了某人的卧室或厨房的桌子，我们的办公室变成了我们的地下室或客厅的沙发。当然，这些环境带来了许多挑战，包括狗吠、垃圾车经过、修剪树木、互联网故障以及孩子/配偶走在我们身后——似乎要轰炸我们的教室。这迫使教学创新，从整合视频到讲座再到厨房式实验，教师要么描述进行实验所需的条件，要么将材料以工具包的形式邮寄给学生。遗憾的是，渔业科学闻名的实践元素在某种程度上已被远程学习搁置。学生可能不得不观看电钓鱼的视频，而不是执行活动或阅读有关进行调查的信息，而不是实际参与任务。为了我，我在一个亭子里对四个蒙面学生进行鱼类学实验室，每个人都在一个单独的亭子里——这肯定不是理想的，但另一种选择是带有叙述和没有真正互动的 PowerPoint 幻灯片。我会运送罐子、分拣盘、身份证和笔记本电脑来建立一个远程实验室。每个学生都有机会了解每条鱼的形状和大小，也许更重要的是，还有机会与彼此和我自己互动。谢天谢地，我从来没有打破玻璃罐，从我们的卡车后面的博物馆运送标本到会场。和一台笔记本电脑来建立一个远程实验室。每个学生都有机会了解每条鱼的形状和大小，也许更重要的是，还有机会与彼此和我自己互动。谢天谢地，我从来没有打破玻璃罐，从我们的卡车后面的博物馆运送标本到会场。和一台笔记本电脑来建立一个远程实验室。每个学生都有机会了解每条鱼的形状和大小，也许更重要的是，还有机会与彼此和我自己互动。谢天谢地，我从来没有打破玻璃罐，从我们的卡车后面的博物馆运送标本到会场。

由于学生的各种招聘冻结以及无法进入大学车辆、船只和野外场地，更不用说当地对容量限制和戴口罩的限制，研究也一直具有挑战性。此外，鉴于国家和许多大学都制定了限制性的社会疏远准则，实验室工作已停止或进行了重大修改。简而言之，我现在正在转动我的车轮——努力制定未来的计划。写助学金的动机也在减弱，因为我根本无法获得进行实地考察所需的人力，因此当系统无法支持使其全部工作的必要部分（如自动机）时，为学生创造机会变得越来越困难，但缺少部分。

自从大流行加剧以来，我们学术界的其他领域也受到了影响。我们经历过提前退休（2020 年高等教育编年史）和招聘冻结（Olena 2020 年；Schleunes 2020 年）。许多人可能在 2 或 3 年后退休，但大流行改变了我们的想法，更重要的是，改变了我们认为重要的事情。为退休增加一点钱重要还是多花一点时间陪伴家人更重要？这迫使许多人重新优先考虑他们在学术界的近期未来，并迫使其他人完全改变职业（Nietzel 2021）。

对于寻求入门级职位的应届毕业生，他们面临着截然不同的环境。鉴于该州的关闭和社会疏远，目前很难找到该领域内的职位（尤其是在州政府中）（Rosewicz 和 Maciag 2020），许多州机构处于封锁状态，服务行业的后备职位更难找到要求。也许最令人不安的是许多州/联邦/私人机构/组织根本不接受实习生。在大流行之后，我们这个行业开始享受和繁荣的源源不断的劳动力已经变得非常紧张。但随着疫苗的到来，这种情况正在慢慢改变，并且可能会随着 2021 年的过去而改善。

即使是美国渔业协会这个组织也受到了 150 周年大会重组的影响，在撰写本文时，至少到 2021 年底，跨部门的许多其他会议已被修改为远程格式。此外，AFS 要求委员会成员使用基于网络的会议技术而非传统会议来开展其业务。然而，逆境带来创新，在这个艰难时期，创新无疑占据了主导地位。在我们的工作方式、沟通方式、教学/学习方式以及社交方式方面进行创新。简而言之，这种流行病迫使我们所有人跳出固有思维模式，这可能不是一件坏事。向前进，

在此期间出现了一些积极的迹象，而其他一些似乎很有希望。首先，许可证销售增加。这对于多年来渔业参与率下降的州机构来说非常有用，这意味着资金减少（例如，宾夕法尼亚州；Huba 2019）。这种繁荣肯定将有助于弥合已经浮出水面的差距并提供所需的收入。其次，船舶销量上升（Woodyard 2020）。我记得在 2020 年走进我当地的体育用品商店时，看到皮划艇区的残余物几乎连桨都没有。三是公园等户外场所人流增多。人们选择不呆在家里看电影或玩电子游戏，而是到外面去。我希望这些行为在我们度过这些黑暗的日子后不会被遗忘。

对于未来，疫苗的推出速度很快，在许多方面，生活开始恢复到大流行前的正常状态。我希望一旦这一切结束，人们都会反思过去的一年，想想他们做出的牺牲和妥协。展望未来，我们的职业将幸存下来，并将再次恢复“正常”，或者至少是新的常态。最重要的是，我坚信许多在大流行期间发现新爱好（例如钓鱼或划船）的人将继续从事这项工作，从而增加对训练有素的渔业生物学家的需求。因此，我们必须坚持到底，并在一个国家等待那一剂强心针时保持耐心。