This article details the challenges and possibilities of assigning first year students writing assignments that require engagement with emotions and memories during the COVID-19 pandemic (Fall 2021). Using one first year writing class as a case study, the author describes the challenges that arose in writing conferences. Noting the rise in mental health concerns resulting from the pandemic, the author identifies trauma as the locus for many of these challenges. This article provides pedagogical interventions--including an annotated syllabus--for instructors to address emotion and affect (as well as their own burnout), particularly during large-scale and communal crisis, in the composition classroom. The author ends with a call for institution-wide plans to combat toxic stress and burnout brought on by crisis.