[Mick]

The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, is offering individuals to stay and "work remotely from home" in Barbados for a year.  Interesting suggestion.  Not sure I'd want to be dependent on the Barbados medical system, and their "social distancing" is three feet, not six feet, but they've only had 98 infections and seven deaths so far.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/barbados...-year.html

My son is 28 years old, almost 29 and living in Santa Monica.  I've been trying to get him out of that county for a month now.  He actually worked in Hawaii for a few weeks.  If you have to work from home, why not an island paradise?

[Mick]

The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, is offering individuals to stay and "work remotely from home" in Barbados for a year.  Interesting suggestion.  Not sure I'd want to be dependent on the Barbados medical system, and their "social distancing" is three feet, not six feet, but they've only had 98 infections and seven deaths so far.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/barbados...-year.html

My son is 28 years old, almost 29 and living in Santa Monica.  I've been trying to get him out of that county for a month now.  He actually worked in Hawaii for a few weeks.  If you have to work from home, why not an island paradise?

[BostonCard]

The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, is offering individuals to stay and "work remotely from home" in Barbados for a year.  Interesting suggestion.  Not sure I'd want to be dependent on the Barbados medical system, and their "social distancing" is three feet, not six feet, but they've only had 98 infections and seven deaths so far.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/barbados...-year.html

My son is 28 years old, almost 29 and living in Santa Monica.  I've been trying to get him out of that county for a month now.  He actually worked in Hawaii for a few weeks.  If you have to work from home, why not an island paradise?

One of my residency co-workers is now the chief of staff at Wilcox Hospital in Kauai.  As a physician, she could work anywhere she wanted, and decided to take a hospitalist position at Wilcox out of residency.  Her husband had a permanently remote position (perhaps ironically, in the league office of a minor league hockey league), and they decided they wanted to work in paradise.

Under the current circumstances, if you have a chance to work from anywhere, why not work from someplace fun.  The downsides of working from Barbados that I can see are more along the lines of infrastructure and whether you can get adequate internet speed.  And the disruption from a hurricane, of course.  Hurricane Dorian walloped Barbados last year.

BC

[BostonCard]

The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, is offering individuals to stay and "work remotely from home" in Barbados for a year.  Interesting suggestion.  Not sure I'd want to be dependent on the Barbados medical system, and their "social distancing" is three feet, not six feet, but they've only had 98 infections and seven deaths so far.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/barbados...-year.html

My son is 28 years old, almost 29 and living in Santa Monica.  I've been trying to get him out of that county for a month now.  He actually worked in Hawaii for a few weeks.  If you have to work from home, why not an island paradise?

One of my residency co-workers is now the chief of staff at Wilcox Hospital in Kauai.  As a physician, she could work anywhere she wanted, and decided to take a hospitalist position at Wilcox out of residency.  Her husband had a permanently remote position (perhaps ironically, in the league office of a minor league hockey league), and they decided they wanted to work in paradise.

Under the current circumstances, if you have a chance to work from anywhere, why not work from someplace fun.  The downsides of working from Barbados that I can see are more along the lines of infrastructure and whether you can get adequate internet speed.  And the disruption from a hurricane, of course.  Hurricane Dorian walloped Barbados last year.

BC

[Mick]

Under the current circumstances, if you have a chance to work from anywhere, why not work from someplace fun.  The downsides of working from Barbados that I can see are more along the lines of infrastructure and whether you can get adequate internet speed.  And the disruption from a hurricane, of course.  Hurricane Dorian walloped Barbados last year.

I don't think I could talk Mrs. Mick into it.  Her parents are 83 and 84 and starting to fade.  She has sisters in Saratoga and Los Altos, our sons are in San Francisco and Santa Monica.  I doubt she would consider it.  Sigh.

[Mick]

Under the current circumstances, if you have a chance to work from anywhere, why not work from someplace fun.  The downsides of working from Barbados that I can see are more along the lines of infrastructure and whether you can get adequate internet speed.  And the disruption from a hurricane, of course.  Hurricane Dorian walloped Barbados last year.

I don't think I could talk Mrs. Mick into it.  Her parents are 83 and 84 and starting to fade.  She has sisters in Saratoga and Los Altos, our sons are in San Francisco and Santa Monica.  I doubt she would consider it.  Sigh.

[cctop]

Our friends' daughter is a junior at Stanford this year.

Because juniors and seniors are doing remote learning for fall quarter, she and a few friends have decided to rent a house together someplace nice for fall quarter.  They say that a good number of their friends are doing the same.

And evidently a shared vacation rental in paradise is less expensive than being in the dorms with a food plan.

[cctop]

Our friends' daughter is a junior at Stanford this year.

Because juniors and seniors are doing remote learning for fall quarter, she and a few friends have decided to rent a house together someplace nice for fall quarter.  They say that a good number of their friends are doing the same.

And evidently a shared vacation rental in paradise is less expensive than being in the dorms with a food plan.

[teejers1]

Our friends' daughter is a junior at Stanford this year.

Because juniors and seniors are doing remote learning for fall quarter, she and a few friends have decided to rent a house together someplace nice for fall quarter.  They say that a good number of their friends are doing the same.

And evidently a shared vacation rental in paradise is less expensive than being in the dorms with a food plan.

Lots of that going on for college-aged kids.  At some point, are group homes with 10 young women - who coincidentally know another rental house of 10 guys from the same school in the beach hood - all that much safer than a dorm on campus?  I'd say yes, but not by much, especially when the commingling of houses is a given.

[teejers1]

Our friends' daughter is a junior at Stanford this year.

Because juniors and seniors are doing remote learning for fall quarter, she and a few friends have decided to rent a house together someplace nice for fall quarter.  They say that a good number of their friends are doing the same.

And evidently a shared vacation rental in paradise is less expensive than being in the dorms with a food plan.

Lots of that going on for college-aged kids.  At some point, are group homes with 10 young women - who coincidentally know another rental house of 10 guys from the same school in the beach hood - all that much safer than a dorm on campus?  I'd say yes, but not by much, especially when the commingling of houses is a given.

[2006alum]

Our friends' daughter is a junior at Stanford this year.

Because juniors and seniors are doing remote learning for fall quarter, she and a few friends have decided to rent a house together someplace nice for fall quarter.  They say that a good number of their friends are doing the same.

And evidently a shared vacation rental in paradise is less expensive than being in the dorms with a food plan.

Lots of that going on for college-aged kids.  At some point, are group homes with 10 young women - who coincidentally know another rental house of 10 guys from the same school in the beach hood - all that much safer than a dorm on campus?  I'd say yes, but not by much, especially when the commingling of houses is a given.

I suspect caveat emptor is the motto of the day, something students are willing to accept and universities are content to avoid altogether.

That said, if I were a parent of such a college student, I would be seriously concerned about risks associated mental illness, substance abuse, and sexual assault, all of which often go hand in hand. Maybe it's my 15-year-old RA training kicking in, but this strikes me as setting up all the potential for the unhealthy dynamics that already exist in college housing but with none of the supervision, oversight, and guardrails colleges have spend decades (often imperfectly) building up.

I have also heard that law and business school students confronting a remote learning fall are doing the same, and I think I'd be somewhat less concerned there, especially since that dynamic was already present at many institutions in pre-COVID-19 times, the GSB probably chief among them. This is one instance in which the maturational difference between being 20 and being 25 can be pretty brobdingnagian.

[2006alum]

Our friends' daughter is a junior at Stanford this year.

Because juniors and seniors are doing remote learning for fall quarter, she and a few friends have decided to rent a house together someplace nice for fall quarter.  They say that a good number of their friends are doing the same.

And evidently a shared vacation rental in paradise is less expensive than being in the dorms with a food plan.

Lots of that going on for college-aged kids.  At some point, are group homes with 10 young women - who coincidentally know another rental house of 10 guys from the same school in the beach hood - all that much safer than a dorm on campus?  I'd say yes, but not by much, especially when the commingling of houses is a given.

I suspect caveat emptor is the motto of the day, something students are willing to accept and universities are content to avoid altogether.

That said, if I were a parent of such a college student, I would be seriously concerned about risks associated mental illness, substance abuse, and sexual assault, all of which often go hand in hand. Maybe it's my 15-year-old RA training kicking in, but this strikes me as setting up all the potential for the unhealthy dynamics that already exist in college housing but with none of the supervision, oversight, and guardrails colleges have spend decades (often imperfectly) building up.

I have also heard that law and business school students confronting a remote learning fall are doing the same, and I think I'd be somewhat less concerned there, especially since that dynamic was already present at many institutions in pre-COVID-19 times, the GSB probably chief among them. This is one instance in which the maturational difference between being 20 and being 25 can be pretty brobdingnagian.

[chrisk]

One difference is that Stanford grad students living off-campus will be coming onto campus for some classes, while Stanford undergrads will either be living on campus or living off-campus, but not coming on campus at all.

If Stanford undergrads are living away from home, they have to be prepared for a situation in which the area they are living goes into a hard lockdown. That might be even less fun than living at home.

[chrisk]

One difference is that Stanford grad students living off-campus will be coming onto campus for some classes, while Stanford undergrads will either be living on campus or living off-campus, but not coming on campus at all.

If Stanford undergrads are living away from home, they have to be prepared for a situation in which the area they are living goes into a hard lockdown. That might be even less fun than living at home.