Years ago I was accepted into an NEH Summer Institute, and one of the biggest takeaways from that experience was the revelation of dedicating time to think. At the time I was an overworked and underpaid adjunct Lecturer and unfunded graduate student, so a week of paid thinking time rocked my world. This is also … Continue reading Schedule Time to Think
Month: May 2021
Teaching Tip Tuesday: Boundaries
The past few weeks I've seen so many posts about burnout that it made me wonder about how academics in particular (and everyone in general) conceptualize their boundaries around work. Academics receive little to no instruction (depending on your advisor) about establishing healthy work boundaries in graduate school, and then, I suspect, this tendency to … Continue reading Teaching Tip Tuesday: Boundaries
Summertiming: Planning Your Academic Summer
For those of us in the Northern hemisphere, Summer 2021 is now upon us---although someone forgot to tell the weather in the mid-Atlantic (not that I'm complaining about 70 degrees, zero humidity, sunshine, AND the delayed onslaught of cicadas). For academics, this is a season of emotions - relief and excitement, frustration and anxiety. While … Continue reading Summertiming: Planning Your Academic Summer
Teaching Tip Tuesday: Getting >75% Response Rate for Virtual Student Evals
Let me preface this post by acknowledging that student evaluations are problematic (especially as a measure of teaching excellence) because they can be abelist, racist, sexist, and xenophobic--not to mention irrelevant to the actual teaching. I myself have received creepy comments about my lips and complaints about the quality of desks in the classroom. They … Continue reading Teaching Tip Tuesday: Getting >75% Response Rate for Virtual Student Evals
Listen up! Academic Podcast Roundup
A few years ago, back when I still had a long commute, I started listening to podcasts to reduce my driving-related stress. I live in a congested area, and driving, while necessary for my job(s) at the time, felt like such a waste of time. But podcasts transformed these periods into little relaxing learning bubbles … Continue reading Listen up! Academic Podcast Roundup
Teaching Tip Tuesday: Save the Praise
I keep a folder titled "Student Praise" in which I save emails from students praising their experience in my class. This might seem like an obvious thing to do for "demonstrating teaching excellence," but I only just started doing it a couple years ago. I figured if no one has ever told me I should … Continue reading Teaching Tip Tuesday: Save the Praise
What You REALLY Need to Be Productive
(Nerd Alert!) I happen to love academic productivity advice, but a lot of it is CRAP-tastic for early career academics. At best it glosses over the real systemic issues facing EC academics; at worst it is insulting. I personally find it oddly comforting to listen to podcasts about paper planners and read posts about finding … Continue reading What You REALLY Need to Be Productive
Teaching Tip Tuesday: What Students Say is the Most Useful Thing They Learned for Research Writing
This post is a little bit for my fellow composition instructors, but also relevant for anyone who assigns research projects. A few years ago, I was looking for advice on how to better organize research for a specific writing project. I had already developed a handy way to capture research for future, unspecified uses (more … Continue reading Teaching Tip Tuesday: What Students Say is the Most Useful Thing They Learned for Research Writing
Tawnya Azar 