Of course there’s always work to do, and the more of it you do the more of it you generate somewhere else along the line. So if I grade these 30 papers that means the class progresses to generate 30 more papers sooner. If it’s five classes with 30 papers each, that’s 150 papers generating [...]
Or at least I do. I have papers I haven’t graded. I have lessons I haven’t planned. I have a set of difficult reference questions to answer, a paper to write, and a long list of chores to do that I haven’t done. So what do I do as I settle into the closet office [...]
Being awake at 7:55 AM means that I’ll be tired by 10. Caffeine is so bad for me.
My co-worker D– was organizing a departmental social at a Turkish food and music extravaganza, and she sent out an email to all members of our department and members of our ancillary department (ie, people we like). When I saw her, she stopped me and said “Felix, YOU haven’t responded.”
“Don’t you ever wear something other than a black tie?” my students asked. “Why sure,” I told them, “I do, in fact, have one other tie that I’ll wear to work.”
As if I don’t have enough to do on my to-do list (which includes creating a to-do list), I’ve decided that the stoppage must end. It’s time to fiber things up and loosen the words like…well, you get the idea. I have a “free” period later today when I might be able to slip in [...]
You understand that, right? When a song is in your ear, and it burrows deep inside then you can’t use a scalpel to extract it. You need fire. The best kind of fire is repetition: burn, listen, sing.
For the unfamiliar (or those who slept their way through high school English), the freewrite is an activity that involves writing (obviously) about a topic that doesn’t require constraints of grammar, sentence structure, or even the English language. The goal is to get words onto a paper, so often the only requirement for the activity [...]
For the past few years, our school has traveled to my former high school for professional development activities. It’s fun, and there’s free food, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s an odd thing to be wandering the halls of your high school as an adult. It’s almost as if I never left the [...]
Seriously. Five. I woke up early (translation: wife woke me up early), spent time in ye ole coal mine, shouted like a madman at the children, openly made fun of coworkers who secretly patronized me behind my back (and plotted death plots and other forms of madness), travel to the comic book store and the [...]