I'll Decide on a Title Later

 Today is technically the last day of "Week 9" for this quarter. I have not yet written my weekly reflection for my leadership class, and I'm not quite sure if I will have anything brilliant to write. Next week is "off" due to the holiday week, but I still have a lot of work to do, with assignments due Week 10 and Exam Week. I am "caught up" with work assignments except for a couple submissions not due until December; I have not made those my priority.  A peer taught me a new trick that I enacted this morning. I put all my old course content for Drexel into my Drexel One Drive. That way I can access it as needed, but it does not stay on my desktop. My computer was yelling at me for having low memory, so maybe this mass deletion will improve my computer's performance.  This week I learned that my health insurance payments for 2025 will increase dramatically because I had a good 2024 in terms of classes taught. As of right now I have two online class...

I've started to think of these weekly blog posts as an encore in a concert. They are not always that mega hit you've been waiting for all night, but sometimes that one additional song you remember came from them. I use that as my excuse for these being a bit flimsy to comparison to the writing I do all week. My usual week involves writing to students, both in response to their emails and when I reach out to those falling behind, which is not a practice everyone does, I've come to learn. I usually write a reminder announcement to at least a few of my five classes about the workload and to remind them that I support their work even while my workload is heavy. Believe me, I feel the struggle. I had two major assignments due this week. One was the Results, Conclusions, and Recommendations sections, among other sections, for my pilot study. This took me significant chunks of time to write. I also conducted a conversation with a thought leader. From that I created a 9-minute vide...

I had figured I would reflect on the election results for this week's reflection. But, now that my time to reach this personal goal has come, I do not want to focus on that. What I have to say is futile. Although I do not like the results, I can see why it happened. It connects to ideas I have been studying for the past year. But, it feels too raw to explore that now. I have gone on social media since the results, but I have tried limiting my time. I'm seeing a lot of pain, but I'm also seeing a lot of futile acts that have no impact on what happened or will happen. I wrote a response on my Facebook page, but I understand and appreciate that I have a limited audience there. I couldn't handle a larger audience, nor could I speak to one intelligently. That is not my interest.  I do personal journaling on a mostly daily routine. That is for me and for my eyes only at the moment. It helps me get through my week by exploring what happened and what is coming up on the horizon...

 This academic week started off quite roughly, so I was happy yesterday when I was finally "caught up" for the week. I keep "caught up" in quotation marks because I never truly feel like I'm caught up until the quarter (doctorate) or semester (job) is over. Earlier in the week I was procrastinating more than I have since starting my program. I was just finding everything too overwhelming, and I was escaping into junk food and movies. To be fair, I did all the work that was set out for me and attended three Zoom meetings - two for school and one for work - during the week. I even registered for the winter quarter and bought the books listed for one of my upcoming creativity classes. I stayed busy while finding ways to stay sane. I had posted on Facebook how overwhelmed I felt. I knew it would solicit the sympathy I didn't want to hear. I like to vent and share, but I don't like pity or even support, when that's not why I'm posting. I post to remin...

My EdD classes run in quarters that officially run for ten weeks with an exams' week before a short break. The weeks run Monday to Sunday, so today is the last day of Week 5, so just about halfway through, with much to do in the remaining time. I made it a goal this quarter to attempt a Blogger post when I am "caught up" with that week's activities. Journaling is embedded into both classes this quarter; this is a frequent practice. I don't feel like I always have brilliant contributions to the journals, but I do my best to put in writing what I took from the learning process.  For my qualitative research course, we did Cycle I coding, and I have this next week to Cycle II coding and write out and organize the data into another template. I had a meeting with one of the two professors who lead the class. They have connections to my research, so it was validating to discuss the content. They and I started a conversation about my emerging ideas for a dissertation. It ...

 This past academic week (Monday to Sunday) of my doctoral program included Cycle I coding for my pilot study. One of my participants spoke about her various social identities - her sexuality, her religion, and her disability status. Reviewing that data led me to reflect on parts of my identity that I have cast aside or at least put on hold because of my own perception of their incompatibility with this self-constructed concept of what I should be as an educator. I adopted beliefs and even methods of interacting that still feel fake to me. It's not that I like sincerity in how I care for students in my class. If anything, wanting to avoid conflict because of deeply ingrained thought patterns, I have been too polite in the classroom. It's a trait that was both frustrating and one I grew to care about less as the years went on. If I had been honest and equitable in grading all these years, far fewer would have received the grades they did. But, I'm moving beyond the point of ...

Last week I wrote a blog post about my decision to retire from in-person teaching to step into the fear. As of this writing, 29 people have at least clicked on that post. I do not know who my audience was. For all I know, one of my readers could change my destiny for the better or for the worse. I embrace both ends of the spectrum. I wrote the post while getting routine maintenance and an oil change on my car. I had not checked into my workday yet, just like I have not checked in as of this writing. My best clarity seems to come before I enter into the teaching world. I'm sure there's much to unpack there. Anyway, last Friday I had posted this across groups on LinkedIn and Facebook. Then I went into my work email, and the winds changed. An email became the catalyst for angered frustration and defeat. The actual situation is irrelevant now because I have since been able to talk it through. However, it certainly became another catalyst for change. It wasn't just my interpreta...