I stole the week note idea from Doug Belshaw. Thanks, Doug!
Back to the old trot
The jet leg is wearing off! Upon returning from Germany, it was nice that I could go to bed between 9 and 10, and immediately fall asleep, waking up again around 5. This meant that I could get an hour of writing in before breakfast. Unfortunately, this is getting more difficult now, though I try to keep it up. Have to go abroad for another week, I guess!Snow days!
On Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday, JMU was closed due to snow and ice. This was a welcome opportunity to catch up with some work, particularly on Wednesday, since I didn’t have time for my commute. Of course, this was off-set by some time playing in, er, shoveling, snow.Sadly, we also had to cancel a committee meeting early on Thursday, since several members were not able to make child care arrangements in time: public schools were closed as well.
Writing
I finally finished my piece on professional identities of educational developers. Even though it seemed to be almost done by late Tuesday, it took me another full snow-day of work on Wednesday to finish it. It’s not a great piece — mainly literature review with theory and discussion — it was an invited contribution, and I was so late that it might get rejected by the editors. If this happens, I won’t be mad, since it’s just fair, and the piece really isn’t great (but I am not one to aspire to greatness).I always find literature reviews to be hard going: How do you combine summaries of different sources into a coherent argument? That’s tough! I hope I’ve been fair to the sources, have not omitted anything important (but I ran out of the allotted space anyway), and did not misrepresent any author.
Whether the piece gets published or not, I now have much more clarity in my readings. I cannot wait to carefully re-read the sources that I used, and to discover new sources that I coulda/shoulda used.
Reading
On my Germany trip three weeks ago, I finish Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries. Plane trips are great to get through thick books. I liked it: beautiful, well-written, entertaining, with interesting narrative tricks. It didn’t bowl me over as, say, Larry Durrell’s first two Alexandria Quartet volumes (but I’m not the same person).In Germany I started Herman Hesse’s Der Steppenwolf, picking it up from my mother’s book shelf. I am prejudiced against Hesse, partly because of his corny and involuntarily comic poetry. Der Steppenwolf is more readable, but in many respects it confirms my suspicion that Hesse is overrated. More on this at another time, maybe.
I’ve also started Sophia, der Tod und Ich, which I bought on a whim at a bookshop. Worth it! Good example of German humor at its best. I am also giving Captain Blaubaer another try. I needed this combination, I felt: Something serious, interesting, but pretentious; something seriously humorous; and something that’s a bit of a silly romp.
Enough fun, now for some work reading:
Tragically and unexpectedly, Lee Ann Fujii died about two weeks ago. Here is her article on the lack of diversity in political science that all political scientists should read.
The Journal on Excellence in College Teaching has a special issue out on “Coaching and Leadership in Academia.”, co-edited by Jim Sibley and Susan Robison, whose work has provided me with a number of good ideas in the past. Interesting stuff! Coincidentally, a bunch of colleagues at JMU have started a conversation about how coaching and a coaching approach to mentoring can be useful in a number of ways in teaching and faculty support work. Nice!
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