It’ll be fine, but this is one of those weeks that feels like it is self-contained for good reason. It feels like one of those weeks where the design of the rollercoaster tricks your conscious mind that there is peril ahead. It feels like the sort of week that will feature that scene in every dramatic naval movie: we had to close this section off, and sacrifice some true blue sailors and friends, to save the rest of the vessel and, now, until the end of this scene at least, we will anguish over it for award season.
Yeah, I have no idea what that means. What it means is that if I can keep this week on the rails, keep it moving forward, and keep the events of the week within this week, then it won’t spill over into other weeks and we will, thus, see this week as a success.
There’s absolutely nothing going on as dramatic as all of that, but it just feels like one of those weeks. Next week won’t. The week after that definitely will.
I had a meeting with a student today to discuss social media. The student wound up doing two brief interviews with two of my colleagues. One faculty member discussed the nonverbal communication class she is teaching. She deftly shooed me out of the room with the coolest nonverbal signal ever. I stepped out an interview was had. I retreated to my office and tried to remember everything I learned in my own nonverbal class way back when. Another professor stopped by to talk about his research, and that was the subject of our second brief interview. It was great. This professor is a get-him-started-watch-him-go sort. He does it with such enthusiasm that it is hard not to want to lean into the conversation. Then the three of us sat around for a moment and talked about our favorite ways to end interviews.
I have three key questions I asked at the end of most interviews. You’ll have to pay me tuition to learn what they are.
I walked over to the other building, where my class is held in the fourth floor sauna. I prepared accordingly today, even though the heat outside has loosened its grip, the room is still a little overly warm. So I went with a seersucker jacket.
I bought that as a gag last year. I’ve worn it twice. Last night I thought, Why not? All day, no one said anything about it. I could take this to mean I did that right, or I could infer that no one was willing to confront me about the choices I’d made. What do you think?
The pocket square makes it all work. That was a last second add this morning. Brought the whole thing to life, I’d say.
Maybe the students are all too dazzled by today’s conversation and repartee to discuss my sartorial choices. We talked about Tarleton Gillespie’s 2010 paper on platforms. The first question someone asked was “Why 15 pages on what the word means?” That’s a fair question, and precisely why we read this paper. I have read Gillespie, I guess, half dozen times in the last two years. It holds up, it sets the tone, and the only problem is that it doesn’t think about how AI or LLMs figure into this at all. I’m sure he’s working on that at Cornell right now. (If you somehow find this and aren’t working on that, I tap danced around an answer for a few minutes and we should collaborate.)
When I teach this class online all of the students have to pose a question about the readings. And since I require to ask a question it seems only fitting to try to answer them. This is great fun, and some of the questions are thoughtful and challenging. Another way I challenge myself is trying to find new ways to answer the same questions. Also, I try to edit myself into something that looks like concision. (You might notice I wrote exactly 1,200 words here for goodness sake.)
Do they pay me by the word? No. Can I renegotiate that part of my contract? Also, no.
Since I’m teaching the class in person this time I am having them ask those questions and I am trying to answer as many of them in a class as possible, or at least what I think are the best ones. Today I got about a third of those in on the Gillespie paper. Also, I tried to play it cool about the reading they’ll do for next Tuesday. It is my favorite one of the semester. And I just have to dazzle them with something else on Thursday.
On the way back to the office I snapped the last photo of the public art installation. We’ve now capture it from all four sides. Here, from this angle, it looks like something bad has happened. Its her eyes. I’m not sure if that’s the intention, my interpretation, or perhaps something about the medium. She looks like she’s in a far away place, though. And only the way her feet work suggest a different story.
On Thursday I’ll make a separate post showing all four of them.
Next week I’ll start taking closer photos. I think there’s a lot to be learned from a closer look.
I wrote that cartoonishly overly dramatic bit at the top of the post, and this is what I’m doing about it. I returned to my office after class and did up some lecture prep for tomorrow and Thursday. I’ll finish each just before the classes. Then I went to the library. So pressing are events I spent time at the library.
Which is to say, not pressing at all.
I got a call on Saturday from the local public library that a book I’d requested via ILL (which is one of the best innovations that we have in a polite and civil society) had arrived, and would I please come and check it out, because the clock is already ticking on its due date.
So I picked that up. Our local library is opened like six hours a day, and it is entirely volunteer-driven; you have to time things right. Tonight I received a casual little invitation to take part and volunteer. A little over-the-shoulder “come work with us” sort of thing.
Maybe it was the jacket.
Anyway, the drive home.
The last few times I’ve been out at sunset I’ve seen that sun scrape happening where the orange light and dark of night meet. I think, I think, it is coming from the same area, but I don’t know what over there could be causing this. It’s a flat region, not a lot of big buildings, and surely that’s not a tree-line thing. One day I’ll get over there to figure it out. Just as soon as I find that pot of gold at the end of the next rainbow, which I’ll pursue just as soon as I finish this book I checked out (because the return clock is already ticking) which I’ll start just as soon as this week is fully under control.
