I managed to avoid any spoilers and it was fucking phenomenal. Every person involved deserves all the awards. #severance

I swear if someone ruins the severance finale for me just because I have an early bedtime and have to wait until after work today I will lose my shit. Everything is awful please let me have this one small joy! Give me ONE DAY without spoilers!

The curse of the overthinking teacher: leaving a class discussion with engaged and excited students where class time flew by and still thinking of 10 more Qs you wanted to get to and 100 things you wish you’d said and also wishing you’d talked less and knowing you can’t rewind time to do it better 😩

First Post - Let's Try This Again
Just trying to get things set up over on Friendica to figure out if I like it. Join me over there, BlueSky friends!

Teaching about gender in this current political climate, especially as an androgynous-presenting queer person in the South, gets scarier every semester. I used to hope my school would have my back on this stuff but I know I’d be thrown under the bus so fast it’d be like I never existed at all

Few people will get what this means and even fewer will care but I’m telling the void because I’m desperately looking for the tiniest shreds of positivity right now: today I managed to do every vinyasa in my hot yoga class for the first time - I didn’t have to skip a single one to survive the class!

I’m giving a talk to undergrads at a residence hall today with the worst possible outcome being that the talk sucks and the undergrads are bored and the host regrets inviting me, so of course my brain will treat this like I’m going in front of a firing squad and facing certain death. #brokenbrain

It was a frigid zero dog hike at Chicopee Woods for us this weekend - the lake was almost completely frozen over! 🥶 Feeling ready for tank tops and sweaty summer hiking now please!

(Trying some cross-posting so sorry for those who get some repeats from me for awhile)

I drank caffeine to motivate myself to do some grading but it didn’t work so now I’m just sitting on my couch softly vibrating with artificial energy while the work that needs grading stares at me from my computer across the room.

Leaving my class on a “cliffhanger” by hooking them in with an interesting question, describing the methods of a study meant to answer that question right at the end of class, and then promising to share the results at the beginning of the next class warms my nerdy little heart. 🤓

Two weeks into this new semester in a new room - brighter, U-shaped desk layout with me pacing the middle and students up close to me - and not only are they eagerly answering my questions, they’re asking questions of their own. It’s an amazing difference and makes class so much more interesting!

20ish years in and I’m still amazed at how much difference classroom layout can make to student engagement. 2 semesters in a row in the same awful classroom - too big, too dark, the students too far away from the place I paced while lecturing and getting a single response was painfully difficult.