A mundane post of the update variety

It’s been nearly a month since my last post here, and even that one wasn’t about me, really. I’m not going to lie—the last month has been really tough. I haven’t felt right physically for three months or so, and the last month I’ve felt extra poorly. My dissertation advisor made me promise I’d finally go to the doctor—thinking I had some sort of thyroid problem since I had all the symptoms of something weird going on with it, and several people in my family have thyroid issues. Well, I went to the doctor and my thyroid is just fine. I am, however, diabetic. Who knew? So I’ve changed my diet and even in the five days since seeing the doctor I already feel better. I plan to make up for my new-found inability to carb-load by cultivating an ability to sashimi-load.

I also had a very, very troubling several weeks with a student—events I’ve never encountered in “all my years of teaching”. Ok, so that’s only 11 courses over 8 semesters not counting this one, but still. It was very disturbing. The student is no longer in my class, and the administration was really helpful and supportive. Obviously that’s all I can say about that, but (also obviously) the entire experience was incredibly draining. But over now!

Now I shall move on to bullet-point updates of things I’ve done/am doing/will be doing, for those of you who keep track of such things. Also, it will provide some insight as to why this blog won’t be updated all that much until May or so.

Oh, I do officially have a job lined up, so that’s super awesome.

• ProfHacker posts: I’ve only written two in the last month—“Tools for Synchronous and Asynchronous Classroom Discussion” and “How 15 Minutes Can Save 24 Hours of Stress”. Yes, I’m shocked that I wrote the latter, too, as I’m all about the stress these days. But I still have my sticky-note notes and it does help.
• Teaching: It’s strange, teaching 45 students in Digital Diversity and then shifting to 17 students in 19th Century Literature of the British Empire and the Americas. I’m able to do a lot of different things in the big class (thanks, previous pedagogy classes!); I want to do some different things in the little class, too, and see how they work. Today I was able to sit down and plan out all the remaining assignments for both classes, which is a big load off my mind. The students (in general) continue to perform admirably when asked to do difficult tasks. I subscribe to the “hold the bar high and they’ll make it” school of thought, after all (and it works).
• Book-writing: Sams Teach Yourself HTML & CSS in 24 Hours (8e) has been out for a month and a half now, and is selling well by all accounts. It was Slashdotted; my editor says it was a positive review, which is nice. I learned a long time ago not to read reviews or comments associated with reviews, because it raises the ol’ blood pressure too much (I also spent several years receiving all manner and sorts of nasty e-mails and phone calls to my workplace and my house—you’d be surprised what people think they’re entitled to when they buy a book. The nice e-mails or the ones from people who truly had problems because of something I wrote, those were ok and I tried to answer as many as possible. But, yeah, touchy subject as you can tell.). I’ll be working on a new book, Sams Teach Yourself HTML, CSS & JavaScript All-in-One, this spring and summer for a September release date.
• Conferences: In a week and a half I’ll be off to the east coast to present at “The Past’s Digital Presence – Database, Archive, and Knowledge Work in the Humanities”. I’m quite excited to meet up with several colleagues I know from Twitter, and give my little paper, but I’ll also get to do three other really cool things: I’ll get to see my dissertation advisor and her family, now living in Cambridge (I’m flying in to Boston); I’ll get to see my fellow ProfHacker writer and long-time blog compatriot, Nels; and I’m going to see another long-time blog friend in Massachusetts before I fly back home. Such is the power of the rental car. The next conference after that will be Computers & Writing in May. I’m part of two workshops with Bill Wolff, Rachael Sullivan, and Karl Stolley—”Twitter from the Ground Up” and “Twitter to Infinity and Beyond”. I’ll be staying around for the whole conference but not presenting, so it should be fun and relatively stress-free.
• Speaking Engagements: Seriously, people want me to come talk to them about stuff. How cool is that? It’s very cool, especially considering who’s doing the inviting.
  • Scholars’ Lab at UVa: On March 16th there’s this—”N-dimensional Archives: A Conversation with Jerome McGann, Julie Meloni, and Bethany Nowviskie”—in which we will discuss ways of reconsidering the multivalent cultural record in a digital age. You know that part in Armageddon when they’re trying to defuse the nuke and Steve Buscemi’s saying “do a good job, do a good job, do a good job” over and over? That’s constantly running in the back of my mind at the same time I’m completely stoked to go talk.
  • Faculty Academy at University of Mary Washington: On May 12th & 13th I’ll be hanging out with all the good folks at UMW, giving a talk and leading a workshop. In general, my talk is going to involve the rhetorics of code as employed by students and instructors (there’s way more to it than that, and I’ll post my abstract when I write it), and the workshop I’ll put together will involve Twitter and its use for personal research/scholarly work as well as in the classroom as a pedagogical tool.

If you’ve reached this point, kudos to you for hanging in there. Remember, my parents read this and they need some way to know what’s going on with me.

Oh yes, the job. I got the job I wanted. Starting in September I’ll be the INKE Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities with a focus on Information Management, in the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab at the University of Victoria. Here’s the ad that lists the position as “closed” because it’s filled by yours truly. I’ll also get to teach in the English Department. I am ridiculously happy about this, as you can imagine.

Also, the cats are very excited about their upcoming ferry trip and move to Canada (we’ll be going in June).

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February 7, 2010   Posted in: Academics, Misc Life

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