Amanda Seney
Chickens don’t know there’s a pandemic, and they don’t care.
This may not seem particularly relevant to tutoring, but I assure you it is. Here’s why: by the time you read this, we at the University of Michigan-Flint’s Marian E. Wright Writing Center will have been tutoring entirely online for over a year. We were trained to observe a writer’s body language, to construct a friendly and open atmosphere, to ask questions—and then found ourselves tutoring asynchronously, trying to do all of these things through written comments on an electronic document, or tutoring by video-chat over an unstable internet connection shared with four other people, all of us trying to work from home at once. We were disconnected from our tutoring “normal” and distanced from our writing center support structure. To say this was stressful is an understatement. But when seventeen peeping chicks took up residence in my laundry room, sometimes that stress seemed to be a little bit less. And when chickens became part of my online life, they seemed to have a positive impact on my university community, too.
Chickens may seem like an unusual form of self-care, but according to research, Human Animal Interaction (HAI) can help relieve stress by providing stability, routine, and companionship (Shoesmith, et al. 5-6). In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, full of social distancing, telecommuting, and toilet paper shortages, my days—newly unscheduled, thanks to COVID lockdowns—began revolving around chickens. Do the chickens have food? Yes, but they want more. Do the chickens have water? Yes, but they have filled it with woodchips—again. Are the chickens all in the tub where it is safe and secure? No, but the cats haven’t noticed yet. They made me laugh, whether I wanted to or not, and attending to their relatively simple needs—out in the morning, in at night, food and water, clean the coop—gave me a sense of routine and normalcy during the upheavals and unmooring of 2020 and 2021. Rather than focus on the chaos and uncertainty of the world in general, and adapting to online tutoring in particular, the stability my chickens provided in my own life allowed me to turn more of my attention to helping the writers who came to me with their own worries and fears, writing-related or not. As I said, the chickens don’t know there’s a pandemic, and they don’t care. They just go about the business of being chickens. I do know, and I do care; but I feed the chickens, take a breath, and go about the business of being a tutor.
HAI has also been shown to foster communication and build community, which is linked to both happiness (e.g., less stress) and quality of job performance (Wood, et al. 52-53; Chia Hao and Ting-Ya 128, 132; Do 399). As the chickens moved outside to the coop, roaming the yard and scratching up things I preferred they didn’t, they started spreading beyond my life and hopping into the world. Profile pictures: chickens. Zoom background for my remote classes, staff meetings, and tutoring sessions: chickens. The response from countless clients, co-workers, and professors seeing my chicken Zoom background: “I love your chickens!” The chickens open the door to not only a conversation, but a moment of interpersonal connection. When I tutor, this helps ease the way into a more productive session. With my writing center co-workers, professors, and classmates, it helps build a little bit of joy and camaraderie that research suggests helps us all be a little better at our jobs (Chia-Hao and Ting-Ya 132; Do 399). That’s not a bad day’s work for a flock of birds.
HAI may not be an effective form of self-care for everyone, but for me during these pandemic times, my interactions with my chickens have consistently made me smile (Crossman 778). They’re one way I care for myself as a tutor while also caring for the writers I work with, and the people in my university community. If chickens aren’t for you, don’t despair: many people get the same benefits of companionship, connection, stability, and community through more conventional animals like dogs and cats (Shoesmith, et al. 4). If dogs, cats, parrots, rabbits, ferrets, wild birds on the feeder outside the window, or even, so help me, snakes or spiders, fit into your life, and chickens don’t, then embrace what works for you. But here in my little corner of a very big world, chickens came in, scratched around, and started nesting in the gaps created by a world coming apart at the seams. They have clucked their way into tutoring conversations, and flapped, with little grace but great determination, across staff meetings and Zoom discussions. Thanks to my pandemic poultry, my life has less stress and more laughter, less distance and more connection, and I am a better tutor because of it.
And cluck COVID, anyway.
Works Cited
Chia-Hao, Chang, and Hsieh Ting-Ya. “The Study of Employee’s Job Stress, Happiness, and Job Performance.” International Journal of Organizational Innovation, vol. 10, no. 3, January 2018, pp. 126-143, ProQuest, www-proquest-com.libproxy.umflint.edu/docview/1982193159?pq-origsite=summon&https://www.proquest.com/abicomplete?accountid=14584.
Crossman, Molly K. “Effects of Interactions With Animals On Human Psychological Distress.” Journal of Clinical Psychology, vol. 73, no. 7, July 2017, pp. 761-784. Wiley Online Library, doi:10.1002/jclp.22410.
Do, Tung Thanh. “How spirituality, climate and compensation affect job performance.” Social Responsibility Journal, vol. 14, no. 2, 2018, pp. 396-409, ProQuest, doi:10.1108/SRJ-05-2016-0086.
Shoesmith, et al. “The Influence of Human-Animal Interactions on Mental and Physical Health During the First COVID-19 Lockdown Phase in the U.K.: A Qualitative Exploration.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 18, no. 3, 22 January 2021, pp. 1-15. MDPI, doi:10.3390/ijerph18030976.
Wood, et al. “More Than a Furry Companion: The Ripple Effect of Companion Animals on Neighborhood Interactions and Sense of Community.” Society and Animals, vol. 15, 2007, pp. 43-56. BRILL, doi:10.1163/156853007X169333
About the Author
Amanda Seney loves chickens. She is a graduate student in the Master of English Language and Literature program at the University of Michigan-Flint, where she also received her BA in English and Anthropology. UM-Flint is the home of the Marian E. Wright Writing Center, where Amanda tutors under the fearless leadership of Director Jacob Blumner and Coordinator Vicky Dawson.