Nice to meet you. Are you going to kill me?

As an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, I haven't set foot in a classroom since March 2020. Like most others in my profession, I've been a teacher without a classroom. I've spent my working days trying to teach creative writing in front of a screen.

I've been lucky in many ways. Lucky to have stayed out of harm's way. Lucky that the imagination of my students' wonderful stories so often sweeps me away from my doomscrolling.

But I've still stricken with fear. A day doesn't pass where I don't imagine catching COVID, and the myriad ways it would ravage my already compromised body. Years ago, a brutal case of pneumonia forced me to have surgery to remove half of my left lung.

In two weeks, if all goes well, I'll begin teaching in-person at the university again. I just sent out my welcome email, which, in previous years, gushed with enthusiasm and energy. This year's note had good cheer, but also barely concealed terror. It was also the most honest, the most revealing email I've ever sent to students, most of whom I've never met. I disclosed that I got my two jabs and spoke about my compromised health status and the status of my unvaccinated 10-year-old son who suffers from asthma.

We are both vulnerable, I told them. With the delta variant sprinting across the country, devastating the unvaccinated and causing some havoc among the vaccinated, too, my email was a blatant appeal to humanity's higher nature. It was a prod, a hope, a plea for my classroom to be a place that moves beyond self-interest — a place where we think of the greater good.

Will it work? I wish I could say with certainty.

The other day, I spoke to a former student who said he was done with Zoom learning; he couldn't handle another class online. No more screen learning. He was so glad classes would be in person.

But, I said, what if you don't feel well?

His pause elongated past uncomfortability. I filled in the silence and said he'd have to stay home and log in. He agreed, albeit reluctantly.

I was unconvinced. And the conversation made me even more jittery than I already was. Will he actually stay home? Will a sore throat or headache keep him from going to class? Or will the burning desire to learn in person prevail? Are we asking too much from 20-, 21-, 22-year-olds to think of others in this way?

So far, appealing to people's better angels hasn't worked, considering the significant percentage of the country that refuses to get vaccinated.

Fortunately, many universities are requiring students and faculty to get vaccinated, absent a medical reason. Individual freedom must sometimes be curtailed.

The public good prevails.

Until it doesn't.

The latest headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere note that some anti-vaxxer college students across the country are hunting for fake COVID vaccination cards. A workaround to meet a bureaucratic requirement — one that avoids the requirement of taking care of others entirely.

Most universities are relying on the honor system. Last week I received an email from a fearful student: “How can I be sure the person I'm sitting next to in class is really vaccinated? I don't want to go back to online learning, but I don't want long COVID, either.”

I reminded her the FBI and California's attorney general have issued warning about the criminal nature of using fake vaccination cards. But my final advice was to do what I did: a baring of the soul, a pleading, in the hopes that her classmates listen.

Back in June, before the delta variant became dominant, we tasted normalcy and it was like honey. Mask-less gatherings, parties, movies, indoor restaurant eating, raves, weddings, airplane trips to vacation spots.

Schools began planning, too. In the frenzy of optimism, I agreed to teach in person. Meanwhile, my son's elementary school did not make a contingency plan for a scenario of rising cases, let alone for a more contagious variant of COVID. He has an independent study option, as required by the state of California. But that comes down to my 10-year-old working alone in a room.

He wants to go back to school, he says. He wants to see his friends. But he doesn't want to get sick. His good friend is worried that he's going to die.

This morning, I found a flurry of new emails from students revealing their excitement, fears and health problems.

Many are also concerned for their safety.

“We will take great care,” I assured them. “We will do this for ourselves, and we'll do this for each other.”

I really want to believe that's true.