Here are 10 things I learned in 2018. They are helpful in that they helped me; results not guaranteed for anyone else. 1. How to balance bullet journals and flexibility. I like keeping records. I like maintaining habits, planning out routines that help me achieve goals I want. However, because…
Hooray! It’s the end of the year! I’ve survived on caffeine and physical activity (and, okay, some help from my family, my spouse, my friends, and other people I love). I’m grateful and humbled to have so many Big Life Things squared away… … but I’m still gonna have a…
When I was in Hebrew school, our teachers warned us about the dangers of assimilation. I’ve almost forgotten how often they did this, mainly because even at the time, I didn’t take it seriously. Some of them talked about it like the mainstream white Anglo-Saxon Protestant society Borg were going…
One of the most difficult parts of creating assignments is writing the guidelines. No matter how clear I think they are, students will always bring to my attention some aspect that they find confusing. Sometimes, the confusion has to do with minor inconsistencies–fair enough, I should have proofread more thoroughly…
As university lecturers, my colleagues and I are sometimes called upon to make judgments on what’s fair. Should we let student A re-write the midterm? Is it right to excuse student B from class for a sporting event? If we had perfect information about the world, every call would be…
C’mon, now, don’t pretend you don’t know what it means to be a Perfect Writer. We’ve all read the six gazillion books… and articles… and listicles of 15 Tweets Only Real Writers Will Get… We know what Perfect Writers do and don’t do. So why is it so hard to…
Four episodes I watched all at once after returning from our honeymoon, four thoughts.
I’ve been thinking lately about how many of the books I enjoyed as a kid are… pretty explicitly awful in the way they treat anyone who isn’t white, straight, able, upper/middle-class, Christian, cisgender, and male. Part of that is because a lot of my favourite children’s literature came from pre-1960s…
I mean, everyone who likes epic, dark, steampunk-y fantasy should watch the anime Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. But for a deeper understanding of writing better, white, Western writers in particular should watch it. Why? Because we often try to write characters from other cultures from a place of privilege, and many…
The first three months of the year are always a rough time for me, what with work density, grey weather, and mood stuff. So I’m always glad to find activities and stuff like these that make my life better! Here are some new things that worked for me this quarter: