What I listened to in January.
I thought I’d start adding my music listening data to the posts to give a bit of context to what’s surrounding me when I’m working. And I have been writing a ton, reading a ton, and making curriculum a ton. It might have been a good and terrible idea to reboot all my courses this term with fresh readings and new assignments not to mention new technology.
I was super stressed about all this at first, but now that I’m in the thick of it I just realize that I have to read and write constantly – new teaching notes and old pieces I haven’t thought about directly in a while. While doing this and preparing my notes for class, I vividly remember some night after a seminar at the Holiday Inn bar directly across the street from the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning. There in the dead of night, one of my professors, Henry was talking to us about what’s on everyone’s mind – dissertation work.
“The worst thing isn’t the dissertation at all,” Henry said, “It’s coming back to a piece that was central to your work to teach it a few years later, having a read of a bit of it, pausing, looking up, and saying to yourself, ‘I got this so wrong.’”
I think this is a sign of health. People who continuously assign, defend, and talk about their dissertation work haven’t moved on. People who realize the dissertation is just another school project take it in stride. It worked for the situation it was meant to serve, and now we’ve moved on to other things.
Of course this still stings when I read favorite bits of essays and chapters from well-loved books and then say “Wow this is so much deeper/better/critical than I first gave it credit for.” This is truly one of the joys of teaching; returning to the same text for another long drink and realizing you can never read the same text twice.