Random bullets of another semester ends, and spring is here

 

How's everyone doing? The Economist cover says it all, really.

• Teaching.This semester is all done & in the books, except for grading. Based on all of your comments a long time ago (2011! We were all so young!) I'm providing a summary comment along with the rubric and telling them to contact me if they would like more inline detailed comments. 
• I kept a chart this semester of who actually looked at the extensive feedback I gave, since Canvas allows you to see whether the student clicks back in to see the comments. You'll be completely shocked to learn that the rate of looking at the feedback was about 30%, about the same number that ever looked at the Panopto videos, etc. 
• It didn't change whether I gave comments or not, but it did make me a little more understanding about why they still can't tell whether to put quotations or italics in a title, etc., and that I could save my breath--well, my iPad handwritten comments--because they weren't paying attention to it anyway. 
• I have been lurking over at the r/professors subreddit, which is teaching me (once I ignore the bitterness) all about tools: tools to gamify, like Kahoot (not doing that), tools to grade (not doing that, either), tools to catch AI (many of which seem sneaky to me). But there seems to be (again, ignoring bitterness) a sense that students are struggling with basic thinking & reasoning concepts, with reading even short materials, and with speaking up for fear of failure. With an online class, it's hard to detect those things.
• Speaking of which: I have 100% in-person classes in the fall and am the only tenured person in the department to be teaching 100% in person. I didn't ask for this, since I do like to teach online as well, but I'm kind of excited about it, since the experience a couple of years ago with the old-school methods (writing papers in class, working on revising them in class, exams in class, class discussion, etc.) was great. 

• Writing and Research. I've been writing faithfully every day, though it's all notes circling the new project rather than actual paragraphs I could put into the new book project. That time is coming, though.
  
• Conferences. Going to conferences is surreal. Budgets are being slashed, academe is under attack (you're saying "tell me about it!") but in the conversations I overheard, everyone keeps talking as though nothing is happening--"And after this fellowship, I've applied for X," "Are you going to Germany for Y conference?" etc. Loads of themes about environmental justice and the anthropocene and pious hand-wringing over climate change, all while we are burning up the atmosphere flying to these things when we could be doing them over Zoom. I confess to laughing out loud when a colleague brought up flying to a European conference about something something climate change and said "Are you kidding? No academic who goes to an in-person conference gets to preach about climate change without a raised eyebrow from the rest of us" or something to that effect. 
• Service. Still showing up in person for stuff, and often the only civilian (i.e., non admin) there. 
• The rest of it. Trying to walk in the woods, and read real books, and spend time by the water as much as I can.

Edited to add: I'm trying to comment on your blogs, but Wordpress, etc. is hurling so many obstacles that I'm not sure the comments are showing--sorry.