Two Feet In | Writing and the Institution

According to Marshall there are three components of backbone: competence, the ability to take purposeful risks, and confidence. Each component interacts with the other. 1. Competence. Be open to growing your ability in every aspect of your academic career, and not just knowledge of your field. Seek out help in improving your writing abilities, time management skills, and ability to deal with others, for example. Cultivate experiences that will help your competence grow. List all your talents and abilities and be aware of how much you've accomplished in the past few years. 2. The ability to take purposeful risks. As Marshall says, this is "the ability to engage in intelligent, purposeful ventures on behalf of your career." By taking on appropriate challenges, you will not only succeed some of the time, but you will get practice in learning how to cope with setbacks, criticism and disappointment. 3. Confidence. This is a natural outgrowth of the first two components, ...

More group activities; more group assignments for responsibilities. Paragraph structure. More examples of papers.

Tech didn't work any place Poor planning for Wed activities

Willow Chase facilities for adjuncts are fine, and their administration are prepared -- all my keys, codes, etc., were ready. Only technical problem was the very poor PC monitor resolution, which made all my graphics look lousy. Have sent a msg to someone there who I hope can change that. Class went well enough, but it's only a 50 minute class. Got what we needed to accomplished. Some of the students seem to be slackers, but they'll be weeded out soon, or my perceptions are incorrect. Tomball was different -- IDs not ready, no copy codes, no keys ready. Adjunct office apparently has no printer (though a copy room seems to be nearby and possibly I can print there). Classroom equipment better, but chalkboards instead of whiteboards, and I don't do as well with chalk. These are two longer classes, 80 minutes. Some more mature (read:older) students, and usually the older students are more confident and committed. Used the same ice-breaker "most embarrassing moment" st...

1. Write more: 2008 was the best year for writing for me since the move to Duke. They say that it takes a couple of years to get stuck into a new job, a new home, a new culture, a new country, and the distractions of applying for the Green card, and other related things, were over. Even so, I think I should have written more. 2. Publish more: although I wrote quite a lot, I did not publish a lot in 2008, and I need to be more strategic about the ratio of writing to publication. It's high time my next book was out, and it is full steam ahead to get it finished. 3. Focus on the book: I am easily distracted with a range of research interests, and I tend to nibble at a topic here and a topic there, making gradual progress on each of them instead of radical progress on just one of them. I need to stop trying to juggle so many research projects and writing commitments and focus on the book. 4. Be less nice : I need to be much less nice. I notice that other academics focus on their own ca...

See this chart from PerrotCharts where US teens chart 10th (!) among industrialized nations and far below world average. PISA 2003 found that just under 20% of 15-year-olds in OECD countries are “reflective, communicative problem solvers” able to tackle difficult tasks. The students who score in the top category (Level 3) are not only able to analyze a situation and make decisions, they are also capable of managing multiple conditions simultaneously. They can think about the underlying relationships in a problem, solve it systematically, check their work and communicate the results. In Japan and Hong Kong over a third of students place within the top level.