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20
Jan 26

Syllabus and Expectations Day

Poseidon is sitting beside my chair giving me the absolute business. I told him I was working on a photo of him. He is not interested in my excuses. This needs to be online right now.

I usually write this part a bit tongue-in-cheek, of course, but this is not a joke. He will not shut up. I guess he knows it is Tuesday. And he’s somehow looking at the site and found that he’s not on the front page. Obviously he knows he’s a part of the most popular content on the site. He is, as we say, just trying to help.

Here he was earlier. Helping.

And here’s Phoebe, who would like you to know that they have a new shipment of food, and no one is feeding them from it yet. Not pictured, just off the left margin, is a bag of their food. And, around the corner, an entire stash of their treats. But this food, that box, in that sunlight, that’s where and why a statement must be made.

They don’t protest much, but they always make their point.

The kitties, as you can see, are doing just fine.

Today was our first day of classes for the spring term. Spring term, it is ridiculously cold outside. I get to park right behind the building I teach in, but I feel bad about that on days like today. Some people are walking great distances.

I walked into the office, did a few jots of last minute tittles, and then headed downstairs to my classroom for the term. Ran into a colleague, met a student in the hall, and then had the first meeting of the Rituals and Traditions class. I’m now calling the first day Syllabus and Expectations Day. Syllabus Day doesn’t cover it anymore. So we talked about the class. They all introduced themselves. (Everyone loves doing this.) I asked them to tell us all something they are good at. We discussed what the course will be about, which was new information for everyone, considering this is a brand new class. I told them that. I told them that, as far as I’ve been able to tell, this is a unique class you won’t find anywhere else. No pressure on me. We discussed what is to come and we discussed a bit of the syllabus. Now, I’ll wait to see how many of them come back on Thursday.

I went back tot he office and did a few more things, mostly a lot of walking up and down the hall to the community printer. It took three tries to get my printer act together.

It’s a long hall.

Eventually, it was time to go back downstairs, to have Syllabus and Expectation Day for the Criticism in Sport Media class. I have a few people in both classes, and so I had to apologize that today was a similar day in both classes. I also have, in both of these classes, a few people who have been in classes with me before. I take this as a good sign, overall. Criticism will be similar to the fall version. I am going to integrate social media a bit, we’ll talk about e-sports and gaming for a few days. I’m changing the criteria for story selection a bit. These are all changes designed to make the course better. I think it takes three tries with a class to get it right. This is the second time I’ve been able to offer this course. Maybe I’ll be able to do it again in the future to test that hypothesis.

My online class is also underway. I sent the students there the initial message last night. Two class notes a week, (usually) a lot of email correspondence from students, a bunch of grading and a time-intensive attention to detail on assignment feedback. This is a class about the philosophy and structure behind social media. It takes a lot of time, but there’s one week soon when I get to write about a particular German philosopher (not that one) and there’s always a new way to consider what he was working on (nope, not that).

And those will be my classes. Tuesday and Thursday. And working a bunch on that and everything else almost all of the time. I drove us home — my lovely bride had her first two classes of the term today, as well — thinking of the number of days I have in the term to help students accomplish what I ask of them. When I got home I started in on Thursday’s work.

It’s a day of expectations for me, too.

bluesky / Cozumel / cycling / Monday / photo / Rowan — Comments Off
19
Jan 26

Words everywhere today

It snowed a lot this weekend, but never amounted to much. Which is to say snow fell, and snow melted. Then more fell, and it, too, failed to cause much of a stir. Then more of its precipitory brethren swirled and twirled and danced and fell to the ground and made it just a little more soggy. Eventually, the ground started to catch on.

Oh, we’re supposed to let this stuff stay?

Those mounds beneath the trees held the snow first. I suppose it is always that way. So much mulch, so little insulation.

The second thing to catch the snow was this door mat. This is a mat with a warm greeting. But, just now, and since Saturday afternoon, it is neither warm, nor greeting.

By then, the snow was slowing.

When it stopped, or at least paused for a few hours, I thought I should get out and make use of the time. There was recycling to be done, earth to be save, habits to be fulfilled. So I loaded up the car. A big bin in the trunk, and a garbage can in the back seat. Both were filled with the mixed items, glass, aluminum, plastic. And in the front seat, and the rest of the back, cardboard.

The inconvenience center is on the other side of town, but late Saturday afternoon might be the time to make this trip. Two stop signs, and a red light. My memory of it is already unremarkable. But the inconvenience center was remarkable. The huge container for the cardboard sits in one spot, but the guy that runs the place had put some sort of netting over the top, which is their out of order signal. He was off down the hill in his loader, doing light machinery work, and, from that great distance, he read the confusion on my face. From inside the cab he gestured broadly — and he needed to, because he was far enough away I could barely see him. I had to walk all of this cardboard from over here to all the way over there.

We go to some lengths to save the earth around here.

This was the view from the road.

I went a town or two over and met an older couple. The man had some sort of light stroke, he said, so he had to move some of his tools that he can’t use well anymore. We were out in his oversized shed and I told him I was jealous. He has this whole place to work and if I want to turn wood into sawdust I have to rearrange the entire garage. I spend more time moving equipment around than cutting things up. He laughed, but didn’t offer me his whole shed.

He did sell me this wonderful little router table.

It’s obviously handmade, and done perfectly well for shop duty. There are a few joints in there that are more elaborate than necessary. I asked him if he made it. He said no. He named the man who did, as if I would know the name, but I do not. That man gave it to his friend, who gave it to this guy. And now he’s sold it to me. I’m the fourth owner of the table. Mounted to it is a Craftsman router.

I got it home, put the top back on the legs, tinkered with the router for a minute and put a piece of scrap wood through it, and it works. You can see the sawdust!

Pretty good deal, for $30.

And then, just as I said, I spent several minutes finding a way to fit it in the garage, and cleaning up a bit of sawdust. It was ridiculously cold, but when it warms up, some weeks from now, I’ll go out and experiment with it some more.

We were forecast for snow through the early afternoon on Sunday, and it snowed all day and into the night. When I took out the garbage last night, we had about two inches on the ground.

Or, as I put it on Bluesky …

I think I’m due a series of long hot steamy nights where the stars twinkle in time with the crickets and the bullfrogs. The sort of night that begins at about 10 p.m. and runs into the tomorrow after forever.

Anyway, I had to put on a coat and some light gloves and boots to take out the garbage.

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— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.bsky.social) January 18, 2026 at 11:28 PM

All day today I spent on the work stuff, wrapping up the pre-term emotional roller coaster. The creative process for course development is just about as intense as anything else you can make. There’s curious excitement, then some real enthusiasm and joy, and then the self-doubt sneaks in as you continue on. This is a weeks- and months-long process. But all of that is behind us, because class is before us.

This weekend, then, I prepared my first message for the online class, where I will be teaching about the structures of social media. Yesterday I locked down the changes I am making to my criticism in sports media class. I am working in a bit of e-sports and trying to find a place to slip in some social media. I am changing up some of the assignment structures. It was an easy series of changes, but I find myself staring at calendars and lists and counting weeks and items over and over and over. You want to get the small things right.

So you can imagine how many times I reworked the smallest things, trying to comb out every error today. And, somehow, the more of that the did, the more of the roller coaster changed direction. Today, as I locked up the brand new Rituals and Traditions course I found myself very intrigued again by what this class might become. I added the last details of the assignment structure last week. Today I spend a good chunk of the morning and pretty much all of the afternoon building the page where all of this will reside.

Which is where the worry comes back in. Will it land with students? Will it work? Is it enough if I like the class? Will they learn as much as I will? Will they like it if they do?

Can I get this in a regular rotation?

Anyway, I need one more important thing to click into place for that class, and then we’re set. Starting tomorrow, we’ll ease into all of these classes. They’ll be off and running next week. A few days after that, this little break will be forgotten, we’ll be in the regular rhythm, and focusing on all of this fun learning until May.

It’s a lot of fun, even when it is a lot.

And this evening I got in a little ride. I chose an 18-mile ride around part of the island of Cozumel. We’ve been there, in real life, three times. I know this road well.

But I’ve never been on that side of the island. Never been on a bike there, with the ocean off my shoulder. It is difficult to imagine the desert island air, the stiff breeze, and the crashing waves in my coolish little basement setup. At least I had a fan in my face. I wonder where I’ll ride tomorrow, after three hours of dancing in front of classes. It’s funny how simply being underway frees the mind and opportunity.

Friday / Rowan / television / video — Comments Off
9
Jan 26

The Coldplay song just gets in the way

This is the third time I’ve tried to write this. It goes like this. I’m trying a new pattern, where I catch up on some reading of a particular author I like, and think of that as a primer for what to put here, and what not to put here. I am well behind. Months behind. I am reading July of 2025. It is a five-day-a-week proposition over there, so you can see I’m well behind. The guy has just retired and we’re all wondering what comes next. Well, people that are behind are wondering. Many people know, because they aren’t behind. I am behind.

Anyway, read a week, and peck away. Only, as I read, one cat climbed up into my arms. Very well. I can enjoy a purr-filled cuddle and scroll to my heart’s content. That cat got down. But I was on, like, a Wednesday or something. So I must finish the week. This is when what we call call the shift change took place. Out of my office went one cat, and in came the second. This time it was a sit on the desktop and rest the head and neck across the forearm move. Well, let me just tell you, any domestic animal that uses me as a pillow has the right of way in every arrangement. As happens with cats, though, there was a sudden recollection of a meeting that must be attended to in another room, and down and off we go. Only I’m reading a Tuesday or what not. And wouldn’t you know it, before that week’s worth of catch up reading was done, the cat was back. When he finally got down, I was reading in August. Mid-August. The author has been retired for a month and is making lists to give structure to his day.

I am, sadly, a long way from retirement, but I find this interesting. Do I need structure in the event of my eventual retirement? Would that just be productivity for the sake of productivity? Will I read less? Putter about the house 15 percent less? I should go out more. I should go out more now. Maybe I’ll get to that this spring. Definitely by next fall. Who needs a productivity list when you’re already trying to envision the events of next fall in January?

I have completed the outline structure of my new class, Rituals and Traditions, or Rits and Trads as we’re calling it, to save 11 letters and to sound hip. Several of my friends are kind enough to think it sounds interesting. I have, this week, consulted with a few of them to see what I might be overlooking. I have talked with an architect professor friend to see what from his world would apply here. He sent along a reading. And I have consulted with my in-house colleague and on-campus office mate, who is really quite good at this professoring thing. She has helped me cinch up the last two or three days of ideas. So, if the syllabus is the brain, and the outline is the skeleton, we now have the outline and the skeleton in place. I’m guessing the classes and lectures are the hearts and blood and muscle in this metaphor some sort of way. The first, call it 10 classes are all in my head or notes, and ready to be put in slides. That gets us through the third week of February. I’d like to come up with one more working component for the students to do. And maybe that’ll come to mind soon. I’m sure they won’t mind if it doesn’t.

Today is the 15th anniversary of the day Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot, in Arizona. It seemed a good day to watch this again, a sequence which, for my money, is just about the best seven minutes of television ever produced about television. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this now, if I say half-a-dozen I’m low. I’m still finding little layers, both within this series of events, but also how it contributes to the show. This is four episodes in, and written with the privilege of hindsight, but still.

No matter how many times I’ve seen it, it still pulls at the emotions, every time. And this was no different.

So I had a little sob today. This, Minnesota, just a general lousy few days of other stuff besides.

For the best part of three seasons — I didn’t care for the way The Newsroom ended — they really brought something, but none of it, the fictional stuff, or the almost-this-reality stuff that Aaron Sorkin pulled from would bring it all together quite like that. And if I don’t watch it with the timer on the screen I — a person who, in his first career, made his living by the dispassionately cruel, unrelenting tick of a broadcast clock — am absolutely boggled that that is seven minutes.

Here was the former congresswoman today, talking of those she was with on that horrible day in the desert.

Today marks 15 years since a gunman tried to assassinate me. He shot 19 people and killed six.

I almost died, and think of those who did every day.

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— Gabby Giffords (@gabbygiffords.bsky.social) January 8, 2026 at 7:11 AM

Well, the cat has come back in. He’s looking for a little ziploc bag that he was chewing on. Inside of it was a small bottle of hand sanitizer. Both had been in my backpack. Since he is not allowed plastic, I hid the bag. He is looking for it. He’s getting quite close.

Let me go hide it again.

Have a great weekend. Until Monday!

Rowan / Wednesday — Comments Off
31
Dec 25

My class prep begins to shudder back to life

Doing work was a bad idea. It made my head hurt.

The first two times I wrote the previous sentence I wrote “It made my hurt.” It took three tries to get “head” into the thing. You know, the critical part … both of me, and the point I was trying to make.

Anyway.

Maybe, for the new year, I’ll re-name the blog “Anyway.”

Anyway, I wrote my old English teacher. Or the woman my keen world wide web research skills convinced me was her. Maybe we’ll find out one of these days. By the way, nothing takes you right back to grade school quite like writing someone who used to meticulously assessed your grammar. I spent some time on that letter, is what I’m saying. It was probably too light and breezy by the time I was done. Also, it was edited to within an inch of it’s life. Usually those two things are at odds with my process. I’ve no idea what this means. Maybe my former teacher can explain it to me. I wrote a few other people, too.

Then I did some more work. I did some more wrangling of my inboxes. This, I’ve learned, is best done in doses. Otherwise I just might delete everything in a fit of delight. Some things need to be kept. Some things need to be filed. I tend to use the inbox itself as a To Do list, so I try to keep it under 30 items. Somewhere between 20 and 30 is where my mind switches from “Can do!” to paralysis by volume. And that’s a good speed for an academic, otherwise you might get ideas.

Currently my work inbox has 30 emails, but eight of them are from me, and one other one will be dealt with on Monday. That’s a good number, for now. I’d like to keep my personal inbox, also a To Do list, under 20, but it is presently sitting at 33. There are a lot of articles in there to read. This, too, will be done in stages.

I also opened, I dunno, roughly 30 new tabs for a side project I’m considering. I am considering too many side projects. But I’ll have a lot of time for them when the semester begins! (I will never learn.)

I had a look at my course evaluations from the fall. Generally quite good. One student complained about their commute. If that’s as bad as it gets, I had a good term. Here are a few thoughtful answers. We request the feedback, I do not insist it is all positive.

“I really loved taking this class and learned so much from Professor Smith. He uplifted me in moments where I didn’t know I needed it. Professor Smith gave me academic advice on numerous occasions and was very gracious with our entire class. Overall, this class was a 12/10!”

“Professor Smith is one of the best professors I’ve have had at Rowan University. He is a great professor, and I will be taking more of his classes next semester.”

“This class was always one I was excited to attend due to the fact of Professor Smith’s way of communicating to his students.”

“I could not have imagined any other professor for this class. I will be taking one of his classes next semester, and the only reason I decided to take it is because he is the one teaching. I’m looking forward to having another class where he is the man in charge.”

“He’s legitimately a once in a lifetime professor take this man’s class whenever he offers.”

“Professor Smith made it a very comfortable setting that has allowed me to thrive. It is clear he cares for this subject matter, and cares about his students more. He is a vital part of this program.”

Maybe some of these classes are pretty good. I can tell in the evaluations which comment comes from which class, but I can’t tell which person. One of the two classes represented here, Criticism in Sport Media, will be taught again in the spring. The other, Organizational Communication in Sport, I’ll teach again next fall.

I made calendars for the spring term. I started scribbling on the new calendars. This will be handy for about three weeks. Most importantly, I managed to lay out roughly half of the new Rituals and Traditions course in outline form today. There’s a lot of prepping to be done beneath that, but I know what half the units will be like, and when. I’ll give it a few days and then come back and look it over, for quality control.

So it was a solid afternoon. Let’s see what this builds into.

One work day down. I’ll take off tomorrow to watch too much football. And then, on Friday, I’ll set a timer to see how much I can do before I throw my hands up in disgust.

memories / photo / Rowan / Tuesday — Comments Off
30
Dec 25

Back to … wurk … Wurk? What is wurk? Why is wurk?

It was not my best idea, but it was a good idea. I spent most of the day in front of a computer, beginning the class prep for the spring term. (Just twenty-two days away, but let’s never bring that up again.)

Cleaned off the desktop of my work machine. Moved the subdirectories filled with material from last term’s classes into a larger Fall 2025 directory, which I will open less. I started working on some syllabi. Here’s how that is going.

Sometime in junior high I learned that the plural of “syllabus” is “syllabi” and that’s always just be a fun word to say. Thank you, Mrs. Newman, for that. Here she is, in a quick shot from my high school yearbook, which is full of soft focus shots like this.

(I did not shoot for my high school yearbook. But I worry that I might have inadvertently taken on its soft focus style.)

I had Mrs. Newman for English in the 7th grade, and she did not care for that. She taught high school, but she wanted to be at our school. That was her first year there, 7th grade English was her foot in the door, and she made sure we knew it. She didn’t like us much that first year, was our impression. But, by quirk of scheduling, and her progression to where she belonged, I had an English or literature class with Mrs. Newman in 7th, 9th, 11th, and 12th grades. By the time we made it into honors English as juniors and seniors, my cohort was much more her speed. We’d earned a bit of respect. And she’d shaped us into something.

She was a demanding teacher, and she was excellent at what she did. We had to write, daily, on a random topic of her choosing. I wish I still had those notebooks — I am glad I do not. On Fridays we had to write a précis (her class, in the 7th grade, was where I learned the word “précis”) on a magazine article of her choosing. There we all were, 7th graders subscribing to Newsweek. (It was still a terrific magazine back then.) We did this in every class, for four years across junior high and high school. For whatever reason, she graded these things on a scale of one to nine. I recall I once got a six or a seven on a paper and she wrote in the margin that she expected better out of me. In terms of writing, she made me expect better out of myself, too.

She bragged on her Lexus. Bragged on her son, the actor. Bragged about the writers she’d met. She told a story about randomly knocking on an aging William Faulkner’s door, and every time I think of it, now, I’d really like to know if that story was true.

I credit her often, mentally, but that amount could never be enough. Whatever writer I could become, she did the most formal shaping of it. Oh, I had wonderful training in college, and there’s nothing like reading and writing to up your game, but Mrs. Newman was the one that made me try. She smoothed the firmament and laid the foundation for me. She taught me how to be comfortable with volume, made me learn how to synthesize complex and nuanced works, made me write every day, opened the door that allowed me to expect more from what I’m reading, All of this has served me well. All of it was in her classroom in what was, then, called The New Building.

I talked to her once when I was in college. Called her out of the blue, made her tried to guess who I was. She figured it out. I had a question about a paper I was writing and knew she was the person to ask. That was the last time we spoke. She retired soon after that. Presumably she realized she couldn’t improve upon the good work she’d done on us. Her husband, a prominent attorney for decades, died a few years ago. She still lives in the area, I think.

I’m going to write her a letter later this week.

Anyway, I’m working toward three classes for the spring term. One is an online course, Digital Media Processes, I have taught twice before. This might be the first class in the history of me that I’ve taught three times. My hypothesis is that it takes three times to get a class right, but I’ve never been able to try it. If nothing else, I am excited to have a class that’s already prepared.

I’m also teaching my new Criticism in Sport Media again. This will be my second time with that class. The first experience, in the fall, was positive. I saw ways I could make it better. A few weeks ago I started sketching out how that will look. The student feedback was encouraging. They also professed enthusiasm for the point of the class. (High school teachers and librarians are seeing the same thing: kids know they need to be more literate in the world they are growing into.) Will I get to teach it a third time, applying polish from that second effort? No one knows.

But, for now, it’s another syllabus I don’t have to start from scratch. There are a few key changes to make, but it only took a few minutes on this first pass.

I’m also teaching another brand new class, Communicating Rituals and Tradition in Sports. So this syllabus, the lessons, the outline, everything is … well, not a blank slate … I have many scribbled notes and an outline on my phone and a dozen or so open tabs and things I’ve emailed to myself.

Whereas last semester I had three new preps — my 9th, 10th, and 11th since — fall off 2023 — I only have the one new prep this term. It won’t feel leisurely, but in comparison …

Today I started putting it all in the right order. I got about half of the semester situated in some kind of way. The idea here is that we’ll study individual rituals and team and organizational traditions and try to figure out why they are so important to us as fans. And we’ll also work with the athletic department at the university to try to help them come up with some new ideas for cultivating their campus fan base. This class could be really fun. I have it on the books for the spring and again next year. Whatever I learn this time out, then, I’ll be able to improve upon for fall 2026. Will I get to teach it a third time, applying polish from that second effort? No one knows.

Ah. Well. The same worries as every day are now the worries for a different day.

Now, it is back to finding interesting ways to talk about a variety of theories to make this class interesting and useful.