Even before I became union president, it was fair to say that my worst trait as a teacher was that I was slow with grading. This is an odd mix of the usual procrastination and overcommitment, on the one hand, and my own personal preference for slow-ish feedback on the other. (As a student, I took criticism of my writing less personally after a solid cooling-off period.) It turns out that the union responsibilities have only exacerbated this--especially this semester, with all the budgetary craziness in Connecticut. Making matters worse is the fact that I have a section of composition, which is surely the most grading-intensive course in English departments. Once I start to get behind in grading, things snowball rapidly, as I invariably decide that it's important to offer a level of feedback that somehow justifies the tardiness, which is kind of impossible, and so the papers get later ...

Sometimes, it's the thing you don't do that helps you get things done. In the comments on my "Sabbatical and Productivity-Talk" post, someone wrote about how having a successful surgery during sabbatical was the most important thing they achieved. That made sense, because my worst decision of 2010 was to have elective outpatient surgery in early February. Not only did things go awry with the surgery itself, which is never welcome news, but it has had cascading effects on my entire year, since I was more or less out of it all spring. What kills me is that that setback was totally self-inflicted: I could've had the surgery in the summer, or at any other time, and the consequences would've been far different. All because I assumed that naturally everything would go well, instead of considering that, just maybe, something might not. The lesson: I'm an idiot.

A quick programming note:...

Many of us may not (currently) need to think about the longterm scholarly implications of social media. Instead, we might find ourselves plagued by a simpler problem: Where's that tweet I posted six months ago? Or that picture of my kid that I accidentally deleted from my phone before syncing? Or the livetweeting/rubberneck tweeting from that conference I attended a couple of months back. Anyone who uses social me...

The concept of "productivity porn" is by now a familiar one. (In fact, last week's "Weekend Reading" linked to both a video and a post about it.) The basic idea is that you can get so caught up in fiddling with your productivity system or gear that you forget to actually, um, do things.

But there's another kind of productivity porn, as well: the type that insists on measuring everything in easily quantifiable, and thereby easily jukable [YouTube], stats. In higher ed, a standard form this takes is the LPU, or least publishable unit, or the practice of parceling out new knowledge into as many different articles as one can, or, alternatively, of publishing as soon as you have a certain amount of data, rather than working toward a bigger project. (You can see a qualified defense of the LPU here.)

In the current issue of Academe, Max Page argues that this latter notion of productivity porn ...

Next Thursday, October 7, is a National Day of Action to Defend Public Education. Find out more at the website, follow the organizers on Twitter, and connect with others on your campus to ensure access to quality higher education. As always, one of the best things you can do is to join the AAUP, which has information about a related week devoted to the idea that Higher Education Is a Public Good.

This week's links:

• The new issue of Academic Commons focuses on educational uses for geospatial visualization tools. The case studies--all winners of NITLE's Community Contribution award--range from biology to study abroad programs to community outreach: As spatial data become more ubiquitous, we are challenged to chart new terrain for academic inquiry and pedagogy. Liberal education is increasingly called on to help students develop the visual and quantitative literacies they need to work...

Recently I was asked at the last minute to umpire a Little League game when the regularly-scheduled umpire backed out. On the one hand, this was a not-unreasonable request. I manage a team, and help organize one of the divisions in the league. On the other hand, I'd never umped before, and indeed, never played the game. Plus, I don't have gear. Everyone involved assured me it wouldn't matter, as baseball's most arcane rules don't apply at our level, and I could call the game from behind the mound.

Everyone survived, reputations largely intact, but I spent the entire two hours having flashbacks of the first few years times I taught. While this struck me as odd at the time, I soon realized that the problem was one of my least-favorite nemeses: imposter syndrome. That helped me think concretely about the things that I was anxious about, and the actual facts on the ground:

• Concern...

One of the most interesting things you'll read about Star Wars is Michael Heileman's reconstruction of Chewbacca's transformations from script, through concept art, into the iconic character.  What's fascinating about it is less its meticulously documented nerdery (awesome as that is) and more its reflections on creativity and originality:

Chewbacca didn’t spring to life out of nowhere, fully formed when Lucas saw his dog in the passenger seat of his car. That’s the soundbite. A single step. The reality is complex and human. From vague names floating around, the kernel of an idea, changing purposes and roles of characters, major restructuring, the design hopping from person to person, scrapping the existing concept and going down a different path, seeing existing things in a different light and having to conform a range of ideas to complement and enrich one another.

George Lucas...

What if there was a book that explained how to write end comments on student papers or exams; why peer review processes often avoid, rather than facilitate, sound judgment; how to encourage meaningful group work; and why academic events feature so much ritual flattery? Clifford Nass's The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships doesn't restrict itself to academe—indeed, it claims to offer social rules for almost any situation—but it has a wealth of provocative experiments that any professor might want to reflect upon.

Clifford Nass is the Thomas M. Storke Professor at Stanford University; his home department is communications, but he has numerous courtesy appointments, and, crucially, is the founder of the Communication between Humans and Interactive Media Lab. He has helped many companies design interactive elements—including, as he recounts here, ...