I wrote this on my family blog way back when there were still young people on Facebook, and I still imagined myself one of them. Now that only old people are on Facebook (or visit family blogs), it’s even more relevant: your boss/tenure committee/mother-in-law probably HAS found it by now. So, with apologies to Moses, King James, and the Almighty, I offer: The Ten Commandments of Facebooking 1. Thou shalt not post anything thou wouldn’t want thy mother-in-law, thy tenure... Read more
So . . . this was a random list . . . of . . . something that probably . . . doesn't matter. Read more
This is an article written by someone who loves his work. Seriously. Academic Urban Legends tells the story of the creation of an academic myth through a series of poor citation choices. Many of the sources, funnily enough, are articles decrying inadequate citation. Whatever types or combination of shortcuts Larsson has taken, he has provided us with an excellent example of the topic contained in the title of his own article: ‘The dissemination of false data through inadequate citation’. It... Read more
Go forth and practice courtesy one to another. Please. Read more
People are, by and large, able to think well enough about their employment situation that they don't harbor fantasies of, as John Oliver put it, "marching in and telling everyone to go [redacted] themselves, before flipping their desks over and storming out." Read more
Looking at people's name tags is not self-evident proof of status consciousness. It may just be evidence that we need help with people's names. Read more
My friend Anna Gissing wrote a lovely meditation over at Emerging Scholars Blog on the most dreaded part of my job: grading. Grading would be fun if we could please everyone. If all of our students cared about the course and did their best work, we’d enjoy giving them feedback, even if they needed to improve. If students considered grades an assessment to let them know where they needed to improve and where they were excelling, it might be easier... Read more
Taylor Mali’s now-famous slam poetry homage to teaching is a delight. It’s a delight because it is so patently filled with delight in teaching, and not just with delight in mocking people who don’t value teaching. It is a delight because it is filled with love–love for students, love for excellence, and love for the absurdity of life, including the absurdity of having the worth of worthy work challenged so rudely. It is a celebration of worthy work, hard work,... Read more
I had plans to publish a few joint projects with my husband, who is in the same academic field I am. But until I live in a universe where the sentence, "Dr. Sours's co-author, Stephen Sours, who is also her husband, has done some work in theology, too," is even thinkable, I'm not sure I want to. Read more
My freezer is almost empty. I filled it up this summer, with several heroic days of freezer-cooking in late July. The only thing crazier than having the oven on for four days straight in the middle of June in the Deep South is what my life would be like right about now if I didn’t have some dinners in the freezer. I started the semester with fifteen full dinners, about twelve half-meals (main dishes needing a salad, sides needing a... Read more
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