Well, that’s 2022 mostly wrapped, huh?
It’s been a heck of a year.
A post about my own burnout, with some resources for people who are, themselves, burned out or who are in a position to help prevent/mitigate others’ burnout. TLDR: It’s a lot more organizational than individual, and so are the solutions.
I miss blogging. Weird way to start a blog post, I know, but I’ve written an average of three posts per year for the past few years. I haven’t even really wanted to do my big end/beginning of the year goal-setting post, which used to be really important to me.…
I started a new job last week. I’m excited about it! I also want to issue this reminder: as has always been the case, my posts here represent my own feelings and opinions and not those of any employer, past, present, or future.
A Slack-type tool fills in a really important gap in student-student and student-professor communication. Without something Slack-like, your choices for communication are the learning management system (LMS) discussion boards or email. I think it’s uncontroversial to say we all hate LMS discussion boards. … As for email, I’ll go out on a limb and say that I suspect most professors do not enjoy answering multiple versions of the same question over and over, one by one, especially when they have to choose between knowing in their hearts that some students aren’t asking and won’t know, versus making yet another LMS announcement to address any given issue.
If you’re looking for a fun and educational thing to do this weekend, you might consider attending the second quarterly(??) Online Unconference of Niche Interests (“OUNI” for short), scheduled to run from 2pm until a bit after 5pm Eastern Standard Time, this Sunday, November 29. We have a set of volunteer presenters who will each talk for up to 15 minutes about a niche topic they’re into.
This is only interesting in an historical sense; we’ve learned a lot since I wrote it.
How my household is doing Perhaps the best place to start writing about what I’ve been up to is to be really clear: I’m OK, and, at least for now, so are my loved ones. My spouse and I are both incredibly lucky to have jobs that can be done…
I want to tell you about my take on the New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day recipe. The things I have to add to the discussion: 1) a couple of hacks for people who, like me, do not have a kitchen fan that vents outdoors (I promise I’ll explain why this matters) and who like at least a little bit of whole grain in their bread, plus 2) photos of some of the steps they don’t show as clearly in the book. I’m still experimenting (always!), but I have a base recipe/approach that I like and that I think is good enough to share.
We’re rapidly approaching the time for the traditional year-end post, which I’ve been known to skip in recent years—I had a run of several really rough years, there. While 2019 wasn’t without personal challenges and setbacks (and a whole lot of frightening developments in the US and abroad), it brought…