Long Posts
- Elaborate on places where I cited multiple sources and be more explicit about what they say and how theyāre in conversation with one another. (This is a very reasonable suggestion, and the one Iāve been working on this whole time.)
- Completely re-organize the literature review based on insights hinted at in the conclusion.
- VAGUELY CONTRADICTORY SUGGESTIONS FROM THE SAME REVIEWER: broaden the scope to include more scholarly research; narrow the scope to focus on only one of three areas addressed in the lit review.
- Find criticism that contrasted with the positive sources cited and described in the paper. (There wasnāt enough literature for that to really be a thing.)
- Completely restructure the paper based on one of the developmental frameworks I drew on.
- Teen library programming should support teensā identity development.
- Teen library programming around TRPGs should go beyond the idea of engagement and actually reach a level of impact where teens get to try on new personas, take imaginary risks, and figure out their own moral beliefs through pretending to be other people.
- Use it as the foundation for some public writing. If you know of an outlet where a paper about how TRPGs support identity development would be a good fit, please let me know.
- Iām going to pocket it to support some original research, if I end up in a situation to actually collect data on the relationship between TRPGs and identity development.
- Document impetus of thought (often after the fact)
- Collect initial bookmarks
- Ask in networks, bookmark your queries
- Collect research, and block quotes or use social annotations
- Begin to formulate thoughts in random blog posts
- Start to draft the long form thought
- Publish an article on my Domain.
- Open the VTT file in my advanced text editor.
- Use the find and replace feature.
- For the thing to be replaced I use the regular expression
^[(\d|\n)].*$. You don’t need to know what a regular expression is. Just copy and paste that little code bit into the “Find” box. - Make sure either “Regular expression” or “GREP” is selected.
- Click “Replace” to test it once and be sure if it works.
- If it works, click “Replace all.”
- Paste
^\s*?\rin the “Find” box. - Make sure the replace box is empty.
- Repeat steps 5 and 6.
- The meticulous attention to detail with respect to all the mystical artifacts
- Callieās supreme nerdiness
- Detailed Escape Room stuff
- Pop culture references aplenty (Wondering if you share Callieās opinion on Season 4 of Veronica Mars? Read THE DATE FROM HELL to find out!)
- The love that radiates from Luke whenever Callie Callies all over the place - seriously, I havenāt read this much warmth in a romance novel since I donāt know when (because warmth is different than heat)
- Lilith. I just love her, okay?
- Porsoth, a polite Owl Pig Demon who is a bit stuffy but can get scary when necessary
- The affection Callie has from her mom, her brother Jared, and her bff Mag (who uses they/them pronouns and nobody ever makes it a thing)
- What Gwenda does with Arthur and Guinevere, canāt say more or itāll spoil you but big ONCE AND FUTURE graphic novel vibes
- Systematically eliminate other location possibilities for T and E.
- Include as many of the remaining letters from the 12 most frequently uses letters as possible (i shrdlu).
My Notes from #CLS2022: OPENING PLENARY - Staying Connected, Fueling Innovation, Affirming Core Values: Three Learning Organizations Carrying Lessons Forward from the Twin Pandemics
Getting today's plenary started - Staying Connected, Fueling Innovation, Affirming Core Values: Three Learning Organizations Carrying Lessons Forward from the Twin Pandemics
is moderator, beginning the panel. Talking about carrying forward lessons from pandemic crisis into "neverending pandemic."
invites attendees to share something good that came out of the pandemic for them. There are too many to share all here! But big themes are family time, taking breaks, conversations about accessibility.
Jessica, let's start with you. We think of a library as a physical space where people go. What happened with your library during the pandemic? What can other people, in a library or otherwise, learn from your experiences?
works with Cloud901, a teen learning lab in Memphis Public Libraries, work with STEM/STEAM, project-based learning, and connected learning.
Closed for about a month, partnered with other city divisions & community organizations. Metropolitan Interfaith Association - library staff boxed food, were drivers, were able to get into community with access to library materials, worked with p
Worked with Parks & Rec and other divisions to disseminate information about social services. A great opportunity to get out and reach out to communities who were underserved or couldn't readily come to the library.
Previously divisions were siloed but now they can connect to serve the community.
Shifted to online programming. With that program, they touched people in communities across the country, not just Memphis.
Able to work with people who wouldn't normally come to the library for a myriad of reasons - anxiety in social settings, other reasons - able to access library programming at a comfort level that worked best for them.
A lot more families at online programming. A lot of parents working alongside kids during camps. Opportunity for family to get together & bond and parents became library advocates.
Understanding & seeing that library staff need to recognize in every aspect where barriers are, even when we don't readily see them.
Online programming was wonderful, but what about people without home internet? What about requiring supplies for a program?
What barriers are out there? How can we break those down? Wifi hot spots, takeaway supplies. Producing programs that only use things readily available at home or brick & mortar store.
With population 30-40% below the poverty line, people have to choose - do they send their kids to an enrichment opportunity, or do they feed them?
Really promising: holistic vision of youth & families & what they need. Intersection of innovation and equity. "We can't do this for everybody, so we're not going to do it at all." So iterate to make it accessible for more people.
runs a clubhouse that had to move online. It was a challenge. Hearing some commonalities between ListoAmerica, an afterschool program that serves primarily Mexican community, and library already.
ListoAmerica is part of The Computer Clubhouse, a network. Had to shut down physical space, but within about 2 - 3 weeks, UCI PhDs were able to support creating the clubhouse online for the same hours online.
Tried to replicate as much as possible the pre-pandemic experience but had to be innovative. Started member-to-member meetups because new members would be isolated.
Members are youth. Usually middle school & high school. Connected new members with mentors.
Created hybrid programs. Created pick-up point for materials to pick up at one time and conduct sessions later on.
People would make themselves available in online community at specific time so other people could come discuss with them.
Temptation is to just learn the technology and gain skills, but goal of ListoAmerica is to support creation, not just skill building. Connect people with interests - for example music-interested youth and video-interested youth collaborate on music video.
Mexican culture is important. Mentors were almost all Mexican. Mexican American members often had parents who were undocumented and thus didn't want to come in. Mentor created entire Discord channel in Spanish and invite family members in.
works in Tacoma school district in Washington State. Fortunate to have a school board and superintendent who embraced pandemic as a community with grace and empathy.
In March 2020 decided to be as pro-active as possible. Set up design around an online school that they expected to have about 400 kids, ended up with about 5000 out of 30000 who wanted an online experience.
over 250 staff members, community eager to keep students safe in the online world. Quickly shifted gears into evolving into high quality. It was difficult because staff hadn't been trained in online teaching.
Grace for staff and students formed a community. While other districts are sprinting back to "normal," Tacoma has moved toward redefining and reimagining new normal.
Online school is now a fully-functional school with about 2000 students. Tacoma is also introducing a flex program to allow students to experience both face-to-face and online learning, which allows flexibility in their schedules.
Tacoma's been working on a whole student initiative and this moved them toward a whole community perspective.
When is an online environment better than an in-person environment? When is it a weak facsimile of a personal environment?
Didn't think online clubhouse would work, for example "creative collision" in small space where people would bump into each other and notice each others' work and ask about it.
Somehow, with the hybrid model, it worked. Occasionally, we would get together in very careful (socially distanced, masked) groups, and were able to go global. Connected with clubhouse in Mexico City. Never were able to do that before.
That enhanced the cultural background, that it's okay to be Mexican in the United States, it's something to be proud of. Opened Mexican American citizens' eyes to what it's like to be in Mexico and what technology is like there.
Able to connect online with people from all over. Were able to ask colleges to send virtual tours for them to share with people who couldn't travel to visit.
This summer, they started back in person with summer camp. Every camp this year people have come back with people they met in camp and they've continued to work together. This didn't happen before.
It's a "Yes, and." Redefined understanding of connected. Multitiered opportunities to connect with adult learners, assessing online experiences combined with occasional face-to-face meetings led to some simple tech innovation.
Kindergarteners took a field trip to the zoo, some in person, but many remotely who were working in teams and engaging during chat because the schools had taught that school. Recorded the session and now it can be reused with different groups.
Online learning is not the best path for every kid, but it very well could be for some.
Teachers were not only livecasting, but were interacting with students online. Students could see their own teacher.
Was the number of participants the same, larger, smaller, different people in online programs versus face to face?
Old members already had established connections. New members would introduce themselves and old members would connect with them.
Scale expanded going remotely. The question now is should we go back to some form of physical?
It depended on the program. Camps were larger than we anticipated. Some other programs like college virtual tours were huge numbers. Some programs just had 2 to 3 people in them. We counted it as a win whatever it was.
Club and extended learning opportunities tended to grow online.
Transitioning to online was already a struggle, so any number of kids we counted as a win.
We've gone back to in-person but there will always be some kind of hybrid component to a good bit of our programs.
We didn't have multiple-hour programs. They were very short, intensive. We would talk, but the staff made a lot of video work that youth could not only watch, but reference.
Having videos to reference helped kids who fell behind or missed sessions. We shared it with other library systems in Tennessee.
Have there been opportunities to connect and collaborate with parents and other community organizations?
We had existing partnerships and it was exciting to see those partners pivot with us.
One thing that's worked for us is other non-profit engagement. We got a call from an organization in another county that wants to open up a clubhouse and a remote clubhouse working with us.
Final thoughts?
What we have found is that for us, there's no "getting back to normal." There's working to address the shift in our youth. We've seen a number of youth ask for programming and services around mental health, being engaged with social & economic issues.
We're shifting and rebuilding in some areas with how we continue to service our youth. What we did before for branding & strategic planning can stay in place but we recognize that the way we were doing it needs to shift.
A young lady who started with us in middle school and is now at Cal State University Fullerton, whose world was a 2-mile radius when she started with us, now has a global perspective and spent a semester in South Korea.
It's a vulnerable celebration of acknowledging that we don't know what we don't know. Adam Grant: "We live in a rapidly changing world where we need to spend as much time rethinking as we do thinking."
Deciding when to drop a paper: Rethinking my lit review about tabletop RPGs and identity development
I’ve been sitting on a paper that was “accepted with revisions” for more than 3 years. I have poked at it sometimes and worked hard on it others, sometimes hated the revision process and sometimes enjoyed it.
The purpose of submitting this paper was not actually to get it published. It was to get it submitted so I met the requirement of having submitted 2 items for peer review before my comps. Also, itās not original research. Itās a literature review.
My assistantships in my first 4 years of the PhD put me in a situation where my colleagues and I weren’t publishing much in scholarly journals. The first year, I helped with a lit review that I think was for a popular publication. The next three years, I worked on an immense professional development project. I’m very proud of the curriculum we created and did get some trade publication out of that but again, not scholarly publication.
So it wasn’t until my last 2 years of my PhD that I was working with other scholars on papers, most of which are currently in submission or revision. All my work for scholarly publication before that had to be solo-authored and, quite frankly, what I wrote was Not Good. It wasn’t BAD but it needed so much revision.
By the time this accepted-with-revisions lit review came back to me from the journal (it had gone to a third reviewer because one reviewer was like “Accept! Minimal revisions!” and one was like “R&R… Maybe.” Reviewer 3 basically said “Accept but with heavy revision”), I was 3 years out from the original class paper it was based on. I had barely rewritten it from that for submission because, again, I just needed to move past a PhD milestone.
I was very excited when it came back accepted with revisions, but I was also in the middle of a very stressful house-buying process, writing my comps, and only had half-time childcare, so I couldnāt make it a priority.
Also I was, understandably, hurt by some of Reviewer 2ās pointed and accurate statements, so I set it aside for a while.
I picked it back up and made a revision plan, drawing on Wendy Belcher and Raul Pacheco-Vegaās advice on how to deal with revisions but as I sorted through these changes, I began to realize that NONE of them were small. They were all large changes. Hereās the kind of thing I mean:
This is daunting as all get out, especially alone, especially when dissertating AND working (because I didnāt have a dissertation fellowship, I was also conducting research and writing as part of an assistantship my final year), and thereās a pandemic on (that wasnāt until a year after the paper was āacceptedā but still) and youāre a parent of a young child and you have limited childcare.
But yāall, the shame I placed on myself for not revising this paper.
Iām absolutely still excited by the central ideas of this paper:
But oh my goodness I do not want to work on this paper anymore. This iteration of this set of ideas does not bring me joy.
And after yesterdayās Connected Learning Summit panel on post-pandemic burnout with multiple panelists talking about the importance of centering work that feeds and serves you, I am ready to let go of tinkering with this six-year-old literature review for publication in a journal that honestly deserves a more insightful set of arguments around these ideas.
On the other hand, Iāve worked hard on this thing for a few years and donāt want it to sit in my Google Drive collecting dust and being of no use to other people. And my colleague Maria Alberto said it was āabsolutely interesting and useful.ā
So Iām going to read through it one more time and make sure it makes sense, and then Iām going to publish it effectively as a pre-print/author paper here on my website and in a couple of pre-print archives as well, so it can get out there as it is.
THEN Iām going to do two more things with it:
Huge thanks to Sandra Hughes-Hassell for her feedback on this, the folks at JRLYA who gave me feedback, and Maria for validating me. Also to Katy Rose Guest Pryal for her advice on how to deal with research in The Freelance Academic, and yesterdayās panelists for talking about doing research that resonates with your soul.
My Notes from #CLS2022: Rising Scholars - Post-Pandemic Life: Recovering From Burnout and Finding Motivation
Introducing the next Rising Scholars session: Post-Pandemic Life: Recovering From Burnout and Finding Motivation
About to start as Asst Prof of learning sciences @ Univ of Buffalo, working on the ways crafting/art-making/design activities can interact with & enhance learning equity in both formal & informal spaces.
Spending a few weeks with family moving into the new position has been a good boost at this point in the pandemic.
Dr. Mackey is a postdoc scholar w/Equitable Futures Innovation Network @ Rutgers but is based in Colorado (hello fellow remote postdoc), co-founder & ED of Young Aspiring Americans for Social and Political Action. Mother & partner.
Whatever I'm engaging in & whoever I'm engaging with must honor that my soul has to be connected to the work.
My wellness matters, especially for me to be a mom, which is my legacy, my most important work. (Dr. Mackey is speaking to my heart.) Putting transition time in between meetings. Doing phone calls instead of Zoom in order to b
Doing phone calls instead of Zoom in order to move away from the desk. Quoting Toni Morrison: "The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work." Dr. Mackey is refuting whiteness and focusing on Black fine
Dr. Tanksley is an Asst Prof at UC Boulder & also faculty fellow at UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, working on critical race in education, sociotechnical infrastructure impacting youth.
Dr. Tanksley lives in LA and works digitally, always working with Youth of Color in urban settings.
Dr. Tanksley builds a schedule based on healing: sleeping in, daily getting an "overpriced, decadent-ass coffee" at a BIPOC, queer coffee shop and writing there. Nap, administrative work in the evening.
This is how Dr. Tanksley deals with the multiple pandemics and "the constant fuckery of the US." Asks: what can I do to make my life joyful?
Working with Black youth laughing and cutting up is healing, too.
BTW if you're near me in Durham, NC check out Rofhiwa Book CafƩ for your own decadent-ass BIPOC queer coffee shop coffee. (I have bought books from them but haven't been in yet.)
What are some other things the panelists are doing like Dr. Tanksley talked about?
Reading for pleasure.
Being careful about who I work with, what contracts I take.
Eased into reading for pleasure with audiobooks.
Returning to things I loved.
It doesn't seem like there's an end in sight but we'll make it.
Mentor said "You're not going to be able to read for pleasure in grad school" but I do it just to prove her wrong. Peloton has gotten me through a lot of this.
How have you maintained community during the pandemic?
My group chats flourished.
Virtual game nights didn't work for me - we were using the same platform I was using for work. Some of my friends have developed a really helpful way of saying what we need in a moment. "I need to vent. I'm not looking for solutions."
I have so many chats. Also Netflix. We were watching shows together and would pause and reflect on certain episodes, epiphanies, hot messes that happened. Collaborative healing sessions. Created in a digital space for youth after the killing of George Floy
Collaborative healing sessions. Created in a digital space for youth after the killing of George Floyd. Not for consumption; anyone in the space, including adults, had to be there for healing, not observing.
Building community for the purpose of connecting and healing.
It sounds like we're engaging in a lot of the same healing practices and communal practices.
Extraverted friends adopt me. These two colleagues with me at Boulder, we FaceTime almost every night. We'll call because something devastating happened and within ten minutes we'll be cracking up.
There's the healing you do in therapy, the healing you do on your own, and the healing you do with your friends. Sharing memes, talking shit.
Re: a paper that grew out of racism: "We're here because of sisterhood."
Laughing is a strategy we can use to get us centered.
I joined a virtual writing group specifically for Black women and that has been my saving grace.
How do you maintain motivation to push through your work during the pandemic?
I'm on leave right now. It's my second year on the tenure track. There was a lot of talk like "You don't need to take a break right now. You just started." In order for me to continue this abolitionist project, because it is a lifelong project, I
In order for me to continue this abolitionist project, because it is a lifelong project, I needed to take a break from the institution.
It's actually very common for people to take breaks in those first six years before tenure. They won't tell you that, but you're well within your rights to do that.
My work is soul work. It is tied to my community. It is tied to my deep-set dreams for emancipation. There's always motivation to do the work. It's about finding time to do the different pieces of the work. Every day is not. writing day.
Sometimes I read Twitter threads and that's my contribution for the day. There are pieces that we don't consider the work that are very important.
You have to think through "What am I motivated to do today?" even if it's taking a nap. That's part of the work, too. We're already talking about rest is resistance.
The faculty & institution are often going to make you feel like you don't have time for breaks, it's not possible, but it's important to stand firm in what you need.
It's okay to reconsider, make sure you see a path forward. Sometimes it's finish this dissertation and then figure out what's after that. Sometimes it's take a break from this dissertation.
I defended on March 12, 2020. I was anxious about the world and I had revisions. I took a break. I took a couple months.
The feeling is valid and whatever ways you need to manage that are also valid.
When I came into grad school, it was already a lot of unhealthy hustle culture. I'm going into tech. I don't have to hustle during a pandemic to write all these papers. I don't have the energy to think beyond this coursework and my research.
My energy tanks at certain parts, have some things that are research tasks, even if they're small, where I'm moving this thing forward even if it doesn't feel like a huge chunk of work.
If any of the panelists want to share how therapy have helped them manage anxiety, stress, all the things that have come up during the pandemic.
I have a life coach. He is always like, "What is going to make Janiece well?"
My life coach walks me through the saboteur voice, because I have assumptions. I'll say, "So and so might think this," and he'll say, "Okay, well even if they think that, why do YOU think that?" Being able to identify, name, & pivot away from that voice.
Also to delegate, because I tend to hold on to things that I shouldn't.
Mindfulness and yoga have helped me be mindful of what I'm holding onto physically.
I have been to therapy and I thought that it was helpful. In all kinds of communities, we don't talk about mental health.
Sometimes we get these messages that something has to be terribly wrong to go to therapy, and that might be true, but it also might not be.
Sometimes it takes time to find the right kind of therapy or the right kind of therapist.
There are resources online for folks who have had trouble finding a therapist. Finding a good therapist is hard.
If you feel at the end of the day you didn't do enough writing, rethink what writing looks like.
How do you all deal with pushback when taking breaks and doing things to help with burnout?
I tell people I can't pour from an empty cup. Either way the work isn't gonna get done, so I might as well pour into myself.
I go to therapy. I'm the caretaker of my family. I financially support multiple people, I caretake for my father who has a mental disability, I'm constantly the Strong Black Woman and I feel very uncomfortable unloading onto other folks who I caretake for s
I'm constantly the Strong Black Woman and I feel very uncomfortable unloading onto other folks who I caretake for because then I end up caretaking again. It's good to have somebody who it's low risk for me to give everything to.
I check my therapist sometimes because sometimes she'll say stuff and I'll say "What you're saying is wild and here's how you need to be caretaking for me."
When I say I need a break, I'm telling you. I'm not asking for a break. "You can tell me all the reasons it's not poppin', and I'm gonna say that sounds like a personal problem. Respectfully, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna take this motherfuckin' break."
It's not a common practice for them to just fire you because you want to take a break.
If I don't break, I'm going to break.
Any last thoughts or pieces of advice you have for people who are trying to recover from and/or manage their pandemic burnout?
Where is pushback coming from? Make sure it's not yourself. Find spaces and sources that replenish you. For me it was the water. I play my cello. Just to replenish my soul.
Say no a lot.
Not "No, because x, y, and z" but "No. Because I said so." We hear it all the time, but then it's really hard to do.
I haven't had repercussions for saying no beyond the awkwardness of saying no.
If you want to say yes but you don't have the capacity, find another way or delegate to someone who does. Be unapologetic. You know your limitations.
A helpful podcast for sleep: https://www.nothingmuchhappens.com/
Self-care has been commercialized, but I really Dr. Tanksley's approach around finding little moments of joy. I want to echo that. My last apartment had a beautiful tub and I started taking baths, I was like, "This is a mood."
We have to rethink these norms that we've put around things around taking care of ourselves and finding joy.
Don't overthink self-care.
Not feeling pressured to answer a text or a message if you're up and on your phone.
My Notes from #CLS2022: Rising Scholars - Exploring Pathways: Finding Your Place of Impact
introducing the panel Exploring Pathways: Finding Your Place of Impact
is a UX researcher at Google, place of impact with users in studies at work
UX researcher at Duolingo with ABC app focused on kids' reading in their native language, impact is with learners, kids, families, parents, teachers, and the product itself
works for Utah State University but lives in Long Beach, CA, does curriculum design, teacher education, and research, always exploring new pathways for impact
based in Bogota, Colombia, Associate Professor at Universidad Javeriana, research center in Colombia, and Berkman at Harvard. Impact follows a winding and networked pathway. Part of the Digital Media & Learning Initiative since the beginning.
I (Kimberly) love hearing how varied Andres's pathway has been! Focuses on projects & collaborations as much as positions/institutions. <3!
UX Researcher at YouTube working on fan-funding, also instructor and affiliated researcher at universities
What strategies/values/criteria did you use to navigate your own process of finding your place of impact? What helped ground you? What did you prioritize?
Find the heart of who you are and what you want to do and keep it at the center as you try a bunch of different things.
is knitting right now. I'm (Kimberly) crocheting right now!
goal was to support youth across their lives & now does so through curriculum design, teacher education, research.
Be open to relationships and opportunities. Sometimes you feel like you're pushing against a wall. Take a break from pushing against the wall and look for what's already open.
Making connections across spaces (eg families & institutions, communities & workspace) is the heart of Debbie's work. Allowing parts of life outside research to come through in research life.
Impact is a moving target in the face of change. Be attuned to your context. Grasp opportunities as they appear.
Pay attention to communities and mentors who give you space to join your interests.
It takes energy to keep finding projects, grow, connect, build communities.
Searching for the intersections where your impact will be takes time and work. Think about the types of impact you want your work to have, what outcomes do you want your work to have? Who do you want to be affected? In what ways?
YouTube team leveraged specific work from Jen's dissertation to impact product development and that was really exciting.
tried a lot of things out in grad school. Academic research, contributing to academic community & body of knowledge, direct impact on kids in classrooms, volunteered at conferences, TAed, volunteered in early childhood classroom, internships.
Applied to lots of different jobs, teaching postdocs at liberal arts, faculty at R1, UX at big tech company, research scientist at non-profit. Paid attention to what held a draw.
Started @ Joan Ganz Cooney Center impacting policy from 30,000 feet view, wanted next to get experience working on a specific project. Important to recognize that whatever you're trying now isn't something your locked into forever.
Any standout moments that led to the work you're doing now?
The interview process gave specific signal into whether community was energizing.
Unsuccessful job search led to postdoc with mentor Yasmin Kafai on e-textiles grants. Didn't get job at Cooney Center that Kiley did but DID get work from them doing a lit review with a colleague from a different grad school.
Sometimes saying NO is what leads you to your impact.
Echoes Wendy's point. Saying no clarifies priorities: I want to live in a particular place, I don't want to live away from my partner. Also echoes Kiley's point about gut checks.
How would you suggest going about finding opportunities to explore places of potential impact?
Try & apply to different things. Doing an internship during PhD program in a crisis led to connecting with a community of mentors and peers encouraging a networked, omnivorous mindset.
You need a lot of luck. The more that you try, the more opportunities you'll be able to grasp.
Sometimes the closed doors are powerful in opening up new opportunities.
Apply to jobs in places you might not have thought you would end up.
You might need to be more assertive than you would normally be, introduce yourself to people whose work you admire.
Relationships are important even if you have to foster them yourself.
Academic mentors are good at academia but you might have to look outside academia for people who can mentor you in other areas.
If you're following up on a connection, you may need to remind them how you connected before. You don't know where relationships will lead.
It might not be someone who is already in a position more advanced than yours. Might be another student or someone you met when you were both students.
How important were relationships to finding your opportunities? How did you navigate the awkwardness of asking for referrals or help finding positions? How did someone else extend an opportunity for you in a way that felt graceful?
Make connections BEFORE the exact opportunity is available. Don't wait until you see a particular job. Build relationships with people who are making the kind of impact you want. That feels more genuine.
Relationships start early and you don't know where they will lead.
Maintain connections with people mentors introduce you to.
Sometimes you connect over hobbies - people just approach me because I knit publicly.
Approach people with deep respect.
For Andres: How do you make an impact in the diverse Colombian context? How do you meet the expectations of your boss and your own expectations?
There is a shortage of resources in Colombia. It can be difficult to find research funding. At universities you need to start negotiating your agenda as a researcher and balance it with the teaching aspects. The emphasis here is more on teaching.
If you can create your own non-profit/institution, you will have more control over your own priorities because there's not a boss to tell you no.
What last thoughts or pieces of advice do you have for people wanting to find their place of impact?
Be open to new opportunities. Find ways to blend and combine your multiple interests. Carve out space to have more exploratory or informational conversations with people.
Reaching out early sets you up for having relationships and networks later.
Find the heart that keeps you going. You will have to do things that aren't part of your passion. You will find places where your passion stretches out beyond your job. You can't predict where things will happen.
Protect that heart. Find ways that feel authentic to you. Be open to places that will connect with it that you didn't expect.
Find communities whose interests and heart resonate with yours. As you join them and exchange ideas, you may find the pathway that connects your personal interests with the places that you can have an impact.
Be open to learning through the experience. Through the experience of getting somewhere you might find what fulfills you in an unexpected way.
Things will change and that's okay.
What's one thing you're looking forward to continuing or trying new as you navigate your path?
Supporting and studying K-12 computer science teachers without having prior experience in K-12. Advocating for them through publications and academia. Find ways to support them, their creativity & impact on students.
My Notes from #CLS2022: Rising Scholars - Sharing Work Beyond Academic Publishing
Alexis worked on hackathons including the Make the Breast Pump Not Suck hackathon (love it!) and others to bring people together to hack policy, services, & norms related to postpartum experience.
loves Alexis's work. Breast pumps are awful! Jean is director of CompSci equity project at UCLA. Jean taught high school & middle school English and social studies and got excited about critical pedagogy & addressing systemic issues.
Jean's research focuses on equity issues in computer science education.
Jean's recent research tries to elevate the voices of youth who have been pushed out of the world of computing and are experiencing their first computing class in high school.
How can we push the tech industry to recognize that they are responsible for the ethical implications of what they create? How can we get involved in changing this? Jean wrote a graphic novel called Power On about teens + CS & CS heroes addressing inequity.
Cliff works in teacher education and the same project as Jean, also with YR Media where youth produce and create media.
Cliff's work is at the intersection of computational thinking, critical pedagogy, and creative arts expression.
Marisa shares about porous authorship structures as opposed to the black box model of academic publishing.
Co-design process is reciprocal, traditional publishing is extractive.
Takeaways: Who are you trying to reach? Why now? Who is the right person to distribute the info? What kind of media does your audience consume? When?
Santiago asks what resources were helpful to panelists in beginning sharing beyond academia.
All the work from YR media is meant to be shared with the public. Research focuses on pedagogy, curriculum, and process.
Cliff makes it a point to present to educators, publish op eds, trade pubs.
It's important to consider the writing style in trade publishing & for non-academic audiences to make it readable, break the mold grad school may have pushed you into.
Have conversations about your work with people outside of your work and relationships and partnerships can develop. "Academia's not necessarily meant to get you to be a public intellectual." Read more journalistic writing, academics who write trade books
"Academia's not necessarily meant to get you to be a public intellectual." Read more journalistic writing, academics who write trade books.
Think about who surrounds you. Are you only talking to other academics? Don't drop your non-academic friends & family. Meet people outside academia.
Jean was an avid reader of graphic novels & manga but hadn't written one before and had to learn to write a comic script instead of description.
"Graphic Novel Writing for Dummies"-type resources can be helpful to learn how experts in the medium work (like Neil Gaiman or Superman writers).
Academic publishers often do a small run like 400 copies. Other outlets have wider reach.
Popular media is a lot of eyes if the people who you're trying to reach consume that outlet. "Where are people's eyeballs?"
There's value in directly impacting fewer people, too.
There's the question of impact and the question of scale and how you should negotiate that depends on the project and your goals.
For the Breast Pump hackathon, the goal was to change the narrative of breastfeeding from personal choice to structural one (importance of employment policies, healthcare) and prepped for communicating with the media.
https://makethebreastpumpnotsuck.com/research
Another goal was to change the culture of the media lab because the breastpump project wasn't future-focused enough or was too weird; deliberately targeted academic publishing as well to push back against that perception.
How do you balance the output demands & needs of academia/academic publishing with these non-traditional forms of sharing your work? How do you communicate the impact and value of this work within the academic context? How do we move past the h-index?
Why should I spend so much time on the peer review process? How deep is that impact? It can feel hard to justify but toggling or balancing and using academic vocabulary with peers can sharpen our thinking about those issues.
You can increase citations to underrepresented scholars and include voices from outside academia when you author academic work.
"Balance doesn't exist in my life right now... COVID has made things work."
Jean has an academic position as a researcher but steps of advancement aren't tied to tenure because the work is grant-based. Getting academic AND non-academic audiences excited about a graphic novel because it's based on research & translating research is important.
Getting academic AND non-academic audiences excited about a graphic novel because it's based on research & translating research is important.
I'm excited that my first, maybe only book, is a graphic novel because the kids in my family are reading it.
It's a graphic novel published by an academic publisher (MIT press).
We need to speak to academic audiences AND other audiences. Be intentional and strategic.
Being at a liberal arts institution is different than being at an R1. What department, school, or college you're in will affect what kind of output is considered as impact.
Some institutions will value podcasts and other media.
published an academic paper about the breastpump hackathon and followed that with a toolkit for people who want to host hackathons. It can be helpful to think through things as you write academic work and then leverage that thought process when writing popular work.
It can be helpful to think through things as you write academic work and then leverage that thought process when writing popular work.
What advice would you give to early career scholars who want to pursue academic careers and also sharpen their skills for creating art/writing outside academia?
You panelists are inspiring. Who inspired you?
Mike Rose from UCLA. Both Cliff & Jean had him as a professor. He translated academic knowledge to a mainstream audience. Cliff learned about the writing process from him.
How do I convey through storytelling the same message as research, but in a powerful, motivating, engaging way?
Mike was always practicing the art of beautiful writing. Every day he was writing on a yellow notepad with a pencil. It wasn't an egotistical, egocentric practice. He was thinking deeply about the people he had met & trying to convey their stories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Rose_(educator)
Artists we enjoy like David Bowie, Yayoi Kusama. Re-read books like you want to write - Jean re-read the March trilogy. Be inspired by the different ways a story can be told.
Catherine D'Ignazio (<3 Data Feminism)
Mitch Resnick & Natalie Rusk
Get in the habit of doing primary ethnography, engage with real people in real life that you're accountable to, transcribe your conversations with them, it's transformative for you as a speaker & them as a listener.
The Shakers thought about rendering their own religious views through arts, which is close to the practice of making public scholarship.
Ethan Zuckerman had students practice non-academic writing
Sarah Pink's Sensory Ethnography
Dealing with SDCC envy
About 7 years ago, Geek and Sundry (RIP) published a post titled HOW TO HAVE A GREAT, GEEKY WEEKEND WHEN YOUāRE NOT GOING TO SDCC.
As a chronically ill person with an immunocompromised mom, I have no idea when I’ll feel safe going to cons again. G&S’s advice was for a PRE-COVID world. Here’s my updated set of tips, inspired by their original article.
Get into some trivia with the Dorky, Geeky, Nerdy Podcast. This podcast shares their trivia questions as playable text pages online and on YouTube if you want to share with friends and play together over Zoom or something. They cover tons of different topics and have three difficulty levels. They even have rules and scoring advice. I enjoyed the Star Trek: The Next Generation trivia, of course.
Catch up on comics with your local comic shop, library, or favorite online service. I’ve got some unread books left over from Free Comic Book Day. My local shop does online ordering and curbside pickup. My library offers comics both in physical form and digitally via Hoopla and Libby. And of course there are your bigger operations like Marvel Unlimited and DC Universe Infinite. I’m going to try some of the Eisner Award nominees in the Early Readers category to share with my kid.
Work on a cosplay project. I’m putting together a vaguely genderbent (in that I’m a woman and won’t be making any effort to crossplay) Eddie Munson (BEWARE OF SPOILERS AT THAT LINK!) from Stranger Things 4. I’ve got a jacket and vest. I’m waiting for my Hellfire Club shirt to arrive. Next, I want to dig out my black jeans and try distressing them.
Do some gaming. I’ll probably play some Metroid: Zero Mission myself, but I’m also going to go prep the first Magical Kitties Save the Day adventure to play with my family as soon as I’m done writing this post.
Watch something geeky. For me, it’ll probably be Star Trek: The Next Generation, but I might also rock the 1976 Carrie. If you want to stay home but not watch alone, you can try a virtual watch party tool. I like Scener.
I hope you have some fun this weekend, wherever you are!
It's my birthday! Here's who I want to be and how we should celebrate.
I’m 41 today and it’s a big deal because every day that I live is a day I chose to be in the world and a whole year of sticking around is huge.
40 has been by turns amazing and rough. But mostly I’ve loved how it feels like the perfect age to really go all in on unapologetically being myself and to completely bail on caring about any superficial opinion anyone has of me. It’s also a great age to realize mostly people aren’t silently criticizing me, because they’re too focused on themselves to pay attention to me.
Who I wanted to be at 40 is also who I want to be at 41. I’m doing a good job on all of those. 41 will be a year of maintaining that and having new adventures.
If you want to be part of the virtual celebration of Kimbertide, I offered some good suggestions in 2020 and 2021. I’ll probably do some of those.
Thanks for hanging out with me on the Internet this year, y’all. You bring a lot of love and connection into my life.
Thinking through disability on Star Trek šš»šŗ
I wrote this a week ago to sort through my thoughts on disability on Star Trek. It is essentially a freewrite, not a carefully structured essay.
Some context: I write this as my mom has recently changed from being a person with variable and invisible disabilities to someone with consistent and visible disabilities. She has lost the use of her legs and must ride a wheelchair if she wants to move around independently. But for years, she has had problems with sometimes falling down, for decades she has had chronic illness with debilitating fatigue as a symptom. Disability is not new to her but her recently developed disability is quite different from her disability in the past.
I myself have lived with chronic illness as my primary disability for a long time, though I did not conceive of myself as disabled until the COVID-19 pandemic. My disabilities are variable and invisible, like my momās earlier ones. I sometimes have debilitating fatigue or brain fog. I struggle with activities of daily living due to challenges of executive function, rather than physical limitation.
And on top of all of this is my experience as an autism sibling - while this hasnāt impacted me much because Micahās diagnosis came when I was away at college, Iām still keenly aware of it. I also am perpetually working on foregrounding the voices of autistic people themselves rather than trumpeting my thoughts on it. But it is work, not something that comes to me naturally. Iām too keen on talking about my own thoughts and ideas for that to be my default state.
With all of this in mind, Iām thinking lately about two depictions of disability on Star Trek: Christopher Pikeās experience as a quadriplegic who can communicate only using assistive technology and, for whatever reason, that assistive technology is limited. (Maybe in the 60s it was the best they could imagine? Maybe his cognitive damage is so strong that he can only formulate yes or no as thoughts?) And Geordi Laforge, whose disability is mitigated by assistive technology that not only gives him sight, but allows him to use his sight in ways that people who are born sighted cannot do.
And then there are others as well who I would love more details about. On Discovery in particular, Airiam and Detmer. What about on Lower Decks? Is the character with an implant there using it as assistive technology? Or is it an augmentation? I should look at these characters more closely and look for others as well.
What about Sarek as he nears the end of his life?
There are plenty of possible examples for me to look at.
Today, though, Iāll focus on Pike and Laforge.
Pikeās plight is presented as a kind of death or āthe death of the man I am now,ā as Pike tells Spock in SNW 1x01. In TOS (Iāll admit I have yet to watch this episode and have only read about it on Wikipedia), Spock kidnaps Pike and takes him to Talos IV where he can live with the illusion of his body as it was before his disabling event. What does this mean about disability in Star Trek? How does the illusion on Talos IV work? Is he actually lying in a bed somewhere? Rolling around in his chair? He gets to live out his days with Veena and thatās nice but what is the nature of this āsolutionā? And what does it tell us about disability in the world of Star Trek? I need to watch āThe Cageā before I can know at all. And also perhaps to revisit Pikeās experience of the future on Discovery and take notes on his mentions of it in SNW.
(Also who else is writing about Star Trek and disability?)
Now Laforge. This is someone whose assistive technology effectively eliminates his disability but who 1. is once again disabled if his VISOR falls off and 2. if Iām remembering correctly, is always in pain and thatās the tradeoff for using the visor.
(I feel like there is somebody else on Trek whoās always in pain but I wonder if Iām actually thinking of Miriam from Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.)
Geordi Laforgeās disability isnāt a thing until it is. Iāve been falling asleep to the TNG episode, āThe Masterpiece Society,ā in which a colony has systematically bred its citizens for optimum living, including eliminating disability. Laforge reads this (and I do too) as a suggestion that as a disabled person, he has no contribution to make to a society. And then thereās delicious irony that the technology from his VISOR is just the technology they need to save the colony from being essentially doomed by tectonic activity responsive to a star core fragment. (Still not sure what that is, though I can guess from the words. Maybe Iāll look it up.)
I talked to W about this last night, and he suggested that itās not that Geordi wouldnāt have been born, but that he would have been born sighted. I think this is a set of hypotheticals that itās hard to think through. To what extent do our disabilities make us who we are? Are we the same person if weāre born without them? This is something that weāve thought about a lot in our family with my brother and whether being able to isolate an autism gene would change his life. We wouldnāt have wanted to terminate Mommyās pregnancy with him but it might have allowed us to prepare better. But if it were possible to manipulate the autism out of him, would he then be himself? I know he doesnāt think so.
Neurodivergence is a different sort of disability, I think, than physical limitation. (Iām keenly aware of this deficit-based language and know that I need to change it before I write anything for wider publication on it.) We want autism acceptance, neurodivergent acceptance.
But there is a real tension between the social model of disability and the medical model of disability. Is the world what disables you, or your body? I think itās both. Star Trek sort of shows us with Geordi that it can be both. The Enterprise is a pretty accessible place, as long as the turbolifts are working, and Geordi has technology he needs to live and work. By the social model of disability, as long as heās wearing his VISOR, heās not disabled.
But he is sometimes in circumstances where heās not wearing the VISOR, especially in environments that are NOT DESIGNED. And that limits his potential activity, and so in those cases, it is his body that disables him.
I need to be careful not to feel like I have to do a complete literature review on critical disability studies before writing about this any further.
This Is How I Do It (TL;DR: Piecemeal and Flexibly)
Katy Peplin has a great Twitter thread on the difference between sharing your process with āThis is how I do itā and āThis is how you should do it.ā
one thing i think about a lot as a coach and person:
— Katy Peplin (@ThrivePhD) June 15, 2022
there's a BIG difference between "this is how i did it" and "this is how it works best / this is how you should do it"
I try to write with the former attitude. Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega does this and itās one of the things I most appreciate his writing.
I thought today Iād share one thing that address how I do it, wherein it = almost anything in life at all.
Piecemeal. In teeny, tiny fragments. Iāve written before about parenthood and kintsugi.
Yesterday, I was thinking about how I want to write more, and I had a thought about writing that was so good, I wanted to capture it. This happened in literally the one minute before Mās swim lesson started, so there I was on a deck chair by the pool with M basically in my lap (and heās big, yāall, I love having him in my lap but itās very different now), and took out my phone and typed out these words:
There will never be time to write. This is my life now. Prismatic. Fragmented. The bits inside a kaleidoscope. They make beautiful patterns and they can be arranged in new ways but they aren’t large. So how do I write in the fragments?
āHow do I _______ in the fragments?ā is the guiding question of my life. There is perpetually a giant pile of laundry at the foot of my bed. I do put the laundry away, but I put it away one item at a time, while Iām getting dressed and in between finding the things I want to wear on a given day.
Iām working on binding a little pamphlet-bound notebook for M. I fold a page here and there when I can.
This is how I get things done. Itās necessitated by two things: parenthood, which carries with it the eternal threat of interruption, and chronic illness, which means that while my mind loves and craves routine, my body disrupts my ability to stick to it.
So I live by this mantra: what I can, when I can.
And thatās how I get stuff done.
On sweetweird and hopepunk šļø ššŗšæ
Transcript:
Hello friends. I wanted to write a blog post about sweetweird and its relationship to hopepunk and other narrative aesthetics, we’ll call them, because they’re not exactly genres. But I am having some peripheral neuropathy today. And so I’m giving my wrists a break, and I’m gonna just record a podcast and then I’m going to upload the transcript with it so it’ll be effectively a blog post.
So sweetweird. Sweetweird, in case you are not constantly on the science fiction and fantasy internet as some of us are, is a term coined by Charlie Jane Anders. She first coined it in her book. I think it’s called Never Say You Can’t Survive and it’s like half-memoir, half-writing craft book, and she proposed it as an alternative to grimdark. So in case you’re not familiar with grimdark, it is fantasy or science fiction that’s set in a really hopeless, gritty world, and the most commonly thrown around examples are the are the Game of Thrones TV series/the Song of Ice and Fire books, or what I think is an even better example, The Blade Itself. So there’s really no one redeemable in those stories.They are fantasy stories without real heroes. When there are people who seem to be heroic like Jon Snow, things go badly for them. The general sense is that the world is terrible, and it’s just gonna stay terrible, but let’s read about some interesting happenings. Grimdark was fine.
Until 2016, when a lot of people started to feel that things went very badly, myself included. And so from 2016 to 2019, there was a bit of a shift that author Alexandra Rowland noticed and they called this shift hopepunk. Hopepunk is stories, especially fantasy and science fiction, but a lot of people have offered other examples, where the world is terrible, and it’s not going to ever be fixed 100% but it is worth fighting to do what we can to improve it anyway.
So in addition to being opposed to grimdark, this is also opposed to the idea of noblebright, which is where you get things like Lord of the Rings, where you have some foreordained hero who is guaranteed to save us all and they have a birthright. My easiest go-to example of noblebright is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Some people would say it’s something else. But Buffy has a destiny. There is an evil. She’s the one girl in all the world chosen to fight it and she consistently defeats it. New evil springs up, but it’s not the sort of ongoing, miserable world that she’s in. It’s that sometimes new evil pops up and that’s just when we happen to be watching her show because it’s probably not as fascinating to some people to watch she and her friends hang out. I would watch that, but not everyone would. And so Buffy is a great example of noblebright.
Angel, which is technically a spin off of Buffy, is a great example of hopepunk and it’s one of the examples Alexandra Rowland gave and it’s one of my favorite examples not just because I love it very much, but also because it sort of is quintessentially about this. In season two of Angel there’s an episode called “Epiphany.” And there’s a great quote from it, written by Tim Minear who is one of my favorite writers and himself, I would argue, a pretty hopepunk kind of guy, based on what we know about him from his writing, which is all we can know really. He also wrote the show Terriers, which I would argue is also hopepunk. So check that out. But the quote is,
“I guess if there’s no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.”
That is as mission statementy for Angel as you can get. And it is the most hopepunk arrangement of words I think you can have and you see it going on through season two of Angel all the way up to the very last moments of season five when it’s very clear that these heroes are fighting a war that they cannot win. And they do it anyway. And there’s a great moment and a great quote there that I don’t want to spoil in case you’re a person who hasn’t watched Angel, but the world around them is horrid. It’s never going to get 100% better. The forces they face are not readily defeated. They keep coming back. They’re not like Buffy where new evil comes. It’s the same old thing coming back over and over again. And so that’s hopepunk, in a nutshell basically, I think is Angel.
So sweetweird. Charlie Jane Anders offers as a different response to grimdark and alternative to noblebright and a lot of people myself included at first were like, “Wait, don’t we already have hopepunk for this?” but then as I learned more about it, I saw that they are related, sweetweird and hopepunk. I call them cousins, but they’re not identical. And the quick way I like to say this is that hopepunk is global. And sweetweird is local. So in hopepun,k you live in a hellscape and every day you muster your energy and you go out and you fight the bad of the world. And you just keep doing it because it’s worth doing. And I think from 2016 to 2019, that was a storytelling mode that we really needed. Because it felt like all right, we can do this. We’re going to have to fight it every step of the way. And it will keep coming back. But we can do that we can improve the world at least a little bit by doing that. And even into 2020 hopepunk was really something that seemed good.
But now it’s 2022 and I would say I don’t know about y’all, but I do know about y’all. We’re all exhausted. We live in the hellscape and it’s hard and it doesn’t always feel like we can make a difference. It feels like the places where we can make a difference are small. Sweetweird is an alternate way of approaching the hellscape. So the little phrase that I’m very pleased with myself for coming up with in the comments on Gwenda Bond’s newsletter about sweetweird, is that sweetweird is about the idea that even within a hellscape you can create a haven.
I think the best example of this is The Owl House and I’m gonna go to that in a minute. But just a quick shout out to The Book of Mormon which posited this in its big finale way back in 2011 with the idea that we can make this our paradise planet. And you know, that does sound bigger than sweetweird, but the idea I think is still there. So The Owl House is not the only example Charlie Jane Anders offers. She suggests many trends, especially in animation. I haven’t seen all of them. I am a little familiar with Steven Universe and Adventure Time and I’ve watched all of the Netflix She-Ra and I think those are sort of stepping stones on the path but that The Owl House, which I also have not seen all of but have seen enough of to have a sense of its vibe, is sort of the perfected sweetweird.
So in The Owl House, Luz, a middle-school-aged, I believe, girl longs to live in a fantasy world and just so happens to find herself in one instead of ending up at summer camp like her mom had planned for her. And immediately she’s very excited because she’s met a real witch and there’s this great moment in the pilot where they leave the witch’s house and Luz sees this fantasy world she’s ended up in for the first time and the place is called the Boiling Isles. And it is miserable. It is a literal visual hellscape. It looks like a terrible place to be. There are a lot of bad things happening there all the time. It’s a harsh and unfriendly world. But Luz and Eda the Owl Lady, the witch that she works with, and King the tiny, adorable ā it’s not actually cat but a lot of ways feels like a cat to me ā creature bent on world dominatio,n and then Luz’s school friends, and then over time Luz’s frenemy/love interest Amity, all build this sort of cocoon of love together. I would say that sounds more lurid than I meant it, but they create this group of people who all love and care for each other in the middle of the hellscape and they’re not trying to turn the Boiling Isles into not-a-hellscape. The Boiling Isles are a hellscape. It’s where they’re at. And so they are creating their own place here.
And so for me, the thing that makes the most sense with sweetweird in our current moment is that sweetweird is the story we need when we’re too exhausted for hopepunk. When we need time to recover and to remember that we are people who can do things. But we’re not ready to go out and be the people doing those things in the face of the horrible world we live in. Then we can retreat to these spaces of love that we have built for ourselves. And so that’s sort of the purpose in my mind of sweetweird and the distinction between sweetweird and hopepunk as a visual aesthetic.
A lot of the examples of sweetweird are a very specific vibe that is not one that resonates with me though I’m very happy so many people have found them resonant ā specifically, Adventure Time and Steven Universe and The Owl House. But I have lately been into woodland goth which is a whole other blog post but I think can be related. Except there’s you know ominous fairies and stuff. But but still this idea at least in the book I just read, War for the Oaks, which is basically one of the first books to ever be an urban fantasy, even in the face of a giant fairy war, the main character Eddi builds a little band of people who all play together, and their music is related to fairy and to magic, but it also is its own thing and the connections they build with one another stand independent of that big fairy war. So it’s a similar idea, though the book itself is not sweetweird.
All right. That was a lot more than I realized I had to say and I’m super glad I said it out loud instead of typing it. I will post the raw transcript with this with maybe a few corrections because it seems Otter.ai does really not understand hopepunk as a word but yeah, that’s that. I hope you have enjoyed listening to and/or reading this and I hope if sweetweird sounds like the story aesthetic for you that you go out and enjoy a lot of it. Bye
This transcript was generated by otter.ai
How to Make a Star Wars Reference
Hello, friends. I want to talk about something from Stranger Things 4 that is brilliantly done. And thatās a Star Wars reference.
There are a lot of iconic quotes from Star Wars (and I mean the whole shebang, not just A New Hope). āUse the force, Luke.ā āLuke, I am your father.ā āI love you.ā āI know.ā āDo or do not. There is no try.ā
People use these to varying effect, with varying degrees of acknowledgement. Sometimes itās hackneyed, though I canāt think of any examples right now.
Sometimes itās brilliantly used to reveal character, like in 30 Rock:
Liz says, āI love you,ā Criss says, āI know,ā Liz says, āYou Soloād me,ā and then youāre certain that this is a love that will last.
But in this case, not only is this a Star Wars reference, it is a Star Wars reference that is then diegetically marked as a Star Wars reference.
Star Wars is 45 years old. Itās hard to make a Star Wars reference feel fresh. But Stranger Things 4 does, and hereās how (spoilers!):
This beautifully mimics this scene from The Empire Strikes Back:
The 20-to-1 odds of rolling a 20 on a 20-sided die make it line up extra beautifully with Han Soloās odds of 3,720-to-1.
āNever tell me the oddsā is something that most Star Wars fans will recognize as a reference, but in Star Wars it isnāt said with the gravity of so many of those other commonly known phrases. Itās something that people who like Star Wars okay, or are dimly aware of it, arenāt super likely to recognize. And itās something that doesnāt take you out of the flow of the scene in Stranger Things. Weāre not stopping the action to make a Star Wars reference: weāre making a Star Wars reference in much the way actual D&D players do, in the context of the actions surrounding the game.
I think this is probably now my favorite use of a Star Wars reference. Sorry, 30 Rock.
Responses to the chat during my #FanLIS2022 presentation
The chat runs by much too quickly to scroll with it while presenting but I love the vibrance of #FanLIS2022 chat so I wanted to go through and respond to people’s comments from my presentation, in addition to answering direct questions. So here we go!
procrastination and indecision then instantaneous dissertation topic is such an adhd mood
I’m not diagnosed, but you’re not wrong.
embodied fannishness
YES. More studies on how fans express their fandom with their bodies, please.
I’m kind of curious to see how many Cosplayers base their information process on others'.
This is a great question. I only got at individual practices and how others' shared resources are an influence, not shared process, but I did have 2 participants collaborating on an epic Yuri On Ice wedding cosplay who used similar curation methods. I wonder if groups that frequently collaborate have more commonalities in their information practices.
I feel there is some modesty that comes with cosplayers and that would refrain them to define as creators
I think that’s right. They don’t necessarily identify as creators, though I did have 2 participants refer to themselves as “makers.” But whether they’d use the term or not, the position they put themselves in with both trial-and-error and documentation of their construction processes is information creators.
Some of my tweets from #FanLIS2022 Day 1
I was able to recover my Noter Live log, yay! I’ll go back and collect the tweets from after my reboot later.
has been joined by a cat. This is the most important thing to know about the FanLIS Symposium.
Every technology/platform seems to impose a taxonomy because you have to for organization.
sharing about visual/material design of fan-bound texts. I'm ([@KimberlyHirsh](https://micro.blog/KimberlyHirsh)) obsessed with the desire to make them look like books from a particular era (pulp, 80s or 90s mass market) and even distress them so they look used.
Fanbinders learn so many different skills related to design and craft.
šššŗ In reply to Star Trek: Discovery Has Problems (& How They Can Be Fixed)(Trek News) by Bill Smith
In reply to (Trek News) by Bill Smith:
I agree with Smith’s assessment of Discovery. Each season, the stakes are bigger. In Season 4, they were literally extragalactic. Once you’ve broken the galactic barrier and made first contact with a species living beyond it, where else is there to go?
The race to solve the puzzle box is exhausting. The hyperfocus on serialization leads to a lot of intriguing threads being introduced and tied off more quickly than I would like. For example, in Seasons 3 and 4 we saw what looked like they were going to be mental health crises for Detmer (PTSD from the jump into the future), Tilly (depression related to existential crisis), and Culber (burnout). In Detmer’s case, I don’t recall being shown the road to recovery at all. Tilly seemed to have two episodes of feeling bad that were magically fixed by deciding to become an instructor. And Culber I guess just really needed a vacation?
I really enjoy Discovery. In fact, I enjoy it so much that I wish there were more of it so we would have time to devote a whole episode to each of these characters.
I love Michael Burnham. But I also love so much of the rest of her crew. TNG started with a focus on the bridge crew and especially Picard, but opened up to give us time to get to know O’Brien, Barclay, and more. I wish Discovery had the breathing room to do the same.
I especially agree with Smith’s point here:
One of the things that Star Trek: Discovery did exceedingly well in Season 4 was First Contact with Species 10-C, the originators of the Dark Matter Anomaly.
It was its own challenge in unlocking the mystery of the DMA and I thought that aspect was something that the show did really well. It took this concept of seeking out new life and new civilizations and put a 32nd-century spin on it.
Discovery really leaned into that first contact situation hard and it worked. For 56 years, Star Trek has taught us that the unknown isnāt always something to be feared, but we should always strive to understand. There isnāt always a ābig bad villainā when the puzzle is assembled or, sometimes, we find out that we are the villain however unintentionally.
These are the types of stories that have always found their way into Star Trekāfrom Gene Roddenberryās first script right up to todayās iterations of the franchise. These are Trekās roots and when Discovery revisits them, it works brilliantly.
Watching everyone work together to make first contact with the 10-C was exhilarating. It had all the delight of Picard figuring out the speech patterns in “Darmok” with an added bonus of getting to see a bunch of different people work together, leveraging each of their specialties to shine. This is foundational Trek stuff and I love when Discovery puts a spin on it.
I hope the writers will go a little softer in Discovery Season 5, giving it room to breathe. I look forward to seeing what they do.
š Read How I Build My Common Place Book
š Read How I Build My Common Place Book (Greg McVerry)
McVerry generously summarizes his workflow:
How to remove timestamps and extra lines from a Zoom transcript using Notepad++ or BBEdit
In case it would help other people, here’s how I did it. I would have something that looked like this:
9
00:00:36.900 –> 00:00:40.560
Kimberly Hirsh (she/her): Do you agree to participate in the study and to have the interview audio recorded?
With the help of this guide from Drexel and replies to this Stack Overflow post I now can remove the number, the timestamp, and the two extra lines created when I remove those. Here’s how I do it.
For BBEdit:
For Notepad++:
7. Then switch so that “Extended” is selected instead of “Regular expression” or “GREP.”
8. Paste \r\n\r\n in the “Find” box.
9. Put a single space in the replace box.
10. Repeat steps 5 and 6.
I hope this is helpful!
š You should read Josh Radnor's Museletter.
Josh Radnor writes a beautiful newsletter. It always feels like a gift. Here are some gems from the latest issue - italics are emphasis from the original, bold are mine.
There are no unwounded people. Wounding and trauma are features and facts of being a human being.
Why is it that Iām convinced my life should be linear and predictable, devoid of obstacle, conflict, and challenge, the very elements that make a story engaging and worth telling? Donāt I want to live a great story?
Nothing is the heaven or hell I want to make it out to be.
On my first year as a doctor (of philosophy)
As I mentioned earlier, I defended my dissertation a year and a week ago. It was a joyous defense, with my committee cosplaying and my friends and family able to attend via Zoom. My BFFs were there, plus lots of people Iāve met online. It was amazing and fun and at the end of it I was WIPED OUT.
Exactly one year ago today, I spent about 10 hours formatting my dissertation so I could graduate. That was not my favorite part.
Some people leave their PhD with a job in hand, whether in academia or industry. Other people, people like me, have no idea what comes next.
What came next for me involved a lot of sleep.
But there was other stuff, too!
A lot of the past year has been focused on parenting stuff, as my kid switched from remote preschool to F2F preschool. A lot of it has involved managing my health, trying different interventions and seeing what felt doable.
Iāve done some work for Quirkos, including writing two blog posts. I really enjoyed that work. I like figuring out what to say, how to say it, and how to make it meet a clientās needs. Content writing/marketing is on the table as a bigger potential stream of income for me in the future, and I like that.
Iāve done a bit of sewing: I made napkins, a blanket, and a pillow. I have fabric ready for making a maxi skirt. I love sewing, but it always feels like a bit of a production to set up. Itās not! Itās actually fast and easy! But it feels like it is, which means I donāt do it as often as Iād like.
I completed Wās application for Public Service Loan Forgiveness and consolidated my loans so I can start that process, too.
I applied for some jobs, not a ton, but maybe close to 10? I wasnāt scattershot: I picked out particular organizations I wanted to work for (like NoveList) or industries I wanted to work in (ed tech, libraries). I had meetings about three potential freelancing gigs but none of them panned out and that was fine.
I spent all of last summer as a Pool Mom, which was amazing: I would take M to the pool first thing in the morning for swim lessons and then he and I would just hang in the water for an hour or two. I loved it.
I presented at MIRA, ALISE, World View, Micro Camp, and FSN NA.
I got caught up on Star Trek: Lower Decks and Discovery. (That reminds me, new Picard today, yay!)
I participated in Micro.blog writer and reader groups sometimes, as well as continuing my participation with the Creative Adventurers community via Discord video chats (something else to look forward to today!).
I got vaccinated.
I got consultations about our broken driveway and eventually went with the choice suggested by our arborist: having Will use a sledgehammer to smash up the parts that were sticking up. This saved us thousands of dollars in driveway refinishing. I had consultations and scheduled work with the arborist and the electrician.
I had lunch with friends.
I let a lot of things go in all different areas of my life.
And I got my dream postdoc, which is huge and made me feel that the not-having-a-plan thing was worth it because I wouldnāt have been available to apply to this postdoc otherwise.
I know thatās just a chronicling of what I did, but I needed that before I could really reflect.
Life isnāt super different aside from the not-working-on-a-dissertation part. I donāt feel different. I do get confused whenever someone calls me Dr. Hirsh.
My postdoc is for one year with the possibility (dare I say expectation?) of a one-year renewal. I have no idea what Iāll be up to come January 2024. Iām privileged to be able to say that thatās okay.
So whatās life like, having been a doctor for a year? The biggest difference is that because I hadnāt been immersed in research from last April through December, I have to go back now and review my notes on earlier processes more when I need to do a technique Iāve done before.
š Book Review: NOT YOUR AVERAGE HOT GUY and THE DATE FROM HELL by Gwenda Bond
If you make a purchase through a link in this post, I may earn a commission.
Do you wish Dan Brown books were sexy and full of pop culture references? Do you like your religious artifact stories with comedy and kissing? Have I got the books for you!
Gwenda Bondās books are always The Most Fun and her madcap fantasy romance duology is no exception.
First up, NOT YOUR AVERAGE HOT GUY:
Callie is a recentish college grad with no particular direction in life but a great love of books, learning, and creepy religious lore. She also works at her momās escape room. When Callie designs an immersive culty room and puts a book in it that is ACTUALLY an arcane artifact, cultists come to claim it and try to use it to release a demon on earth to bring about the end times. But instead they summon Luke, the super sexy prince of Hell. Wackiness ensues as Callie and Luke must team up to find the Holy Lance (thatās the Spear of Destiny for you The Librarian fans) and keep it from the cultists (who donāt actually know that Luke isnāt the demon they were trying to summon). To do so, they travel through painful demon magic, bopping around the world in a way that would make an Indiana Jones map look like Charlie Kellyās conspiracy board:
Because you know how romance works, you know that they figure it out and get a Happy For Now. Itās important that itās a HFN because a Happily Ever After wouldnāt leave room for the sequel:
Callie and Luke are happily dating now and they have an amazing date planned. But they also have a bit of a revolution planned: Callie wants to petition Lucifer to reconsider the damnation of people like Agnes, a 12-year-old girl who really probably should not have been sent to hell and certainly isnāt an adult by modern standards. Lucifer agrees to a meeting ā on the day Callie and Luke are scheduled to have their big date. Which also happens to be the same day Callie is supposed to be helping her mom with a big escape room event to raise the money to make repairs after the mess she and Luke got into in NOT YOUR AVERAGE HOT GUY. Lucifer says that Callie and Luke have 72 hours to prove that they can redeem someone who deserves to be released from hell. The person he chooses is Sean, a lost-Hemsworth-brother-type/international art thief who oh, by the way, is a Grail seeker. More wacky hijinks ensue, more traveling by map, and more Arthuriana than you can shake Excalibur at. (Excalibur isnāt in the book to my recollection, by the way.) I briefly found myself thinking for a moment, āHow wild is all this Arthuriana just happening in Callieās real life?ā before remembering that OH YEAH HER BOYFRIEND IS THE PRINCE OF HELL.
Because itās a romance, it ends with a tidy Happily Ever After (leaving Gwenda free to work on other romances like MR. & MRS. WITCH). Callie figures a lot of stuff out, so does Luke, and they get to be together, yay. (And if you consider that a spoiler, romance probably isnāt the genre for you.)
What I loved
So many things! But hereās a partial list:
I canāt think of them all. If this isnāt a ringing endorsement, I donāt know what is: My whole family is going through a rough time right now and it makes it hard for me to immerse myself in a book. I would often read a chunk of THE DATE FROM HELL and then step away from it for a few days, but I ALWAYS CAME BACK. There are a lot of non-mandatory things Iām abandoning in life right now, but this book kept me returning.
What I need to warn you about
I really canāt think of much. I guess if you donāt like people being playful in stories about holy artifacts maybe skip these?
What I wanted more of
I canāt think of anything here either. Everything was exactly what it needed to be.
Who should read this
People who like Indiana Jones AND Sabrina (the Harrison Ford version). People who donāt know what to do with themselves and want to see somebody who also doesnāt know what to do with themself succeed at stuff. People who want a romance that is hot but not explicit. People who wished their were more badasses who were badass for reasons other than their ability to engage in combat (Callie is a badass and no one will convince me otherwise). People who need more fun in their lives.
Highly recommend.
Book: Not Your Average Hot Guy
Author: Gwenda Bond
Publisher: St. Martinās Press
Publication Date: October 5, 2021
Pages: 320
Age Range: Adult
Source of Book: Library Book
Book: The Date from Hell
Author: Gwenda Bond
Publisher: St. Martinās Press
Publication Date: April 5, 2022
Pages: 336
Age Range: Adult
Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley
Notes from the LX2017 magazine
As you may have noticed, I’m reading up on Learning Experience Design. LXCON 2017 resulted in a beautiful magazine. I highlighted this bit:
To reach a desired learning outcome you want to focus on four different types of learning objectives: insight, knowledge, skill and behavior. These learning objectives are about who you are, what your views are, what you know and what you choose to do.
My Current Productivity Stack (including scholarly tools)
I am a productivity hobbyist and have a bad habit of chucking my whole system every once in a while to try and adopt somebody elseās from scratch. This never works, though, and I inevitably end up rebuilding my own Frankensteinās monster of tools. I started feeling this itch again recently, and after briefly flirting with Tiago Forteās PARA method, decided to go back to basics and look at what I already know works for me before spending a lot of time switching things up.
Personal Productivity
Hereās what Iām using right now. I based the list on what kind of things are in a productivity stack on this Pleexy blog post.
Personal Task Management
I donāt like using software for this. Thereās something about the feeling of pen on paper that makes me prefer it intensely. It does mean that my tasks are not linked to relevant email messages, as Tiago Forte suggests they should be, but I can use email labels to hold things for later in a sort of David Alleny method with folders like Waiting For, Read/Review, and Reference.
So because I prefer to do task management on paper, I use the Bullet Journal method and its companion app. I do a pretty vanilla implementation of the core collections and add custom collections as appropriate.
The notebook I prefer is a large hardcover squared Moleskine/. Iām experimenting right now with the expanded edition, since I usually go through a couple notebooks a year. At first I didnāt like the added weight or feeling of it in my hand, but now Iām used to it and it doesnāt seem that different from the regular one.
The pen I prefer is the Pilot G2 07 in black.
I also use tabs with my notebook: 1ā ones across the top to mark the future log, this month, this week, and today, and 2ā ones down the side for collections.
Calendar
The Bullet Journal Method includes a way to calendar, and I do use it some. But I mostly use Google Calendar for this. Itās useful for collaboration - my colleagues and my husband all use Google Calendar, so itās easy to schedule things with/for them this way. I also schedule a lot of recurring tasks and appreciate being able to search to see when something happened in the past.
Note taking
The Bullet Journal is great for note-taking, too, but I have a tendency to ignore notes once I get them on paper. For short notes that I want to be easily accessible, I use Google Keep. I use recurring reminders with these. For example, I have a list of all my meds and a recurring reminder to fill my cases with them, and a list that pops up every day of stuff M. needs to be ready to go to school.
Longer notes end up in my blog, which I host on Micro.blog, or in Google Docs. This is an area where I could grow. If I decide to really get into personal knowledge management, Iāll probably experiment with some other tools. Iāve tried Evernote and Notion in the past and neither of them is quite right for what Iād imagine doing.
Focus
I use Forest, but I use it pretty inconsistently. When Iām in flow, I donāt really need this kind of app. As I do more writing, though, I might use it more.
Time management
I could use Forest for this, too, and I might. So far I donāt do a lot of time tracking.
Habit tracker
These never work for me, so I donāt bother with one.
Automation
I donāt do this much, either. I like a bit of friction in my workflow. As I keep refining it, I may discover areas that could benefit from automation, though.
Scholarly Productivity
Scholarly productivity requires its own specialized set of tools. Hereās what I use.
Citation management and reading
I use Paperpile for both citation management and scholarly reading. It integrates seamlessly with Google Docs for writing. It has its own built-in reader interface available on web or mobile. It costs about $30/year and I love it. It has completely eliminated lots of document-syncing headaches I had in the past when I used Zotero.
Literature tracking and notes
I use the labels and folders in Paperpile, along with Raul Pacheco-Vegaās Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump method for this. I track a given body of literature using a Notion spreadsheet I created. You can get it (pay-what-you-can starting at $0) here.
Keeping up with literature
I use a combination of Google Scholar alerts and journal alerts for this.
Mind-mapping
I use bubbl.us.
Writing pipeline
I track my writing pipeline in Notion, with a database that lets me view it as a list or as a kanban-board according to stage in the publication process. I have a pay-what-you-can (again, starting at $0) template you can download for that.
Revisions
I have a revisions database in Notion for each paper, as well. I havenāt made this available as a template yet, but I plan to soon. Sign up for my Newsletter if you want to find out when it goes live. It will be pay-what-you-can like the others.
Permissions
If you are using images from othersā work in scholarly publishing, you will need to obtain and track permission to use that work. I do that in a Notion database. You can get my template. (As always, pay-what-you-can, $0.)
Areas for growth
There are two big gaps in my productivity stack right now. One is the difficulty in serendipitously serving up notes to myself. The kinds of connections that build creativity arenāt readily available using Google Docs or Keep. I started to build a personal wiki for this purpose but I think the amount of labor required to keep it up was too high. Iāll probably play with Notion for this some more, but I might just keep putting stuff on my website and occasionally scrolling through categories there to find connections.
The other big gap is REVIEW. I donāt have a solid review process. Iāve tried timers and time blocking and so far they havenāt worked for me. But I know all of this would work much better for me if I dedicated the time to review it, so I will keep working on figuring that out.
I hope itās been helpful for you to read about my productivity stack. Whatās in yours?
7 Things to Do Before You Start Your PhD
Itās the time of year when people are announcing their PhD acceptances. If you are psyched to be doing a PhD, yay you! I have some advice for things you can do to make it easier. If you are already into your program or even graduated and havenāt done these yet, itās never too late to do them. But I wish Iād done all of them before beginning my PhD, so if you can do them ahead of time, I think it will go better for you.
1. Choose a citation manager.
Youāre going to be reading a LOT of scholarship: articles, book chapters, conference proceedings. Youāll read some assigned by your professors and some you find for your own work. If you start out capturing all of them, itāll be easier to find them later when you reference them in your own work.
You have two options here: something that will grab references for you and build citations and reference lists, or doing it manually.
Software that will do it for you
There are a lot of options for the former. I personally use Paperpile. It integrates with Google Docs, which is where I do most of my writing. It has mobile apps and includes a reader that will save your highlights and annotations. It costs about $30 a year.
Iāve also tried Refworks, Zotero, and Mendeley. I recommend looking at the features for each option and choosing the one that looks like it will match best with your anticipated workflow. Paperpile is good for me because I like to read on a tablet and it requires no extra steps to set that up. Think about your plans for reading and your plans for writing.
Know that this is a pretty low stakes choice, as most of these have an export option that will let you move all of your references to a different manager easily.
Doing it manually
You can do this manually if you like, though it can get unwieldy if you start to build up a large collection of resources. (I currently have over 3500 in my Paperpile library.) To do it this way, I recommend setting up a spreadsheet according to Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vegaās Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump method. (If youāre a Notion user, Iāve got a pay-what-you-can template for doing this.)
To create the references to include in your bibliography, you can either build them manually or find them in Google Scholar and click āCiteā to get a list of formatted citations.
If you go this route, you should be meticulous about keeping track of which references you use. I would recommend building your reference list as you write rather than waiting until youāre done writing.
2. Choose a way of storing readings.
With Paperpile, Zotero, and Mendeley, this is handled for you. If you use Notion, you can use their web clipper to gather readings. You can also just download readings into a folder you manage yourself. If you do this, I recommend backing them up to the cloud using Dropbox or Google Drive and backing up to an external hard drive for extra security.
3. Figure out how you prefer to read.
Knowing this preference will save you time later and help you build a reading-writing-citation environment. You might like to print things on paper, read them on your computer screen, or read them on a tablet or phone. Try all of the options available to you to figure out what you like best.
4. Look for information on your university libraryās website about help with research.
Is there a specific librarian assigned to your department? Learn about them. Maybe even get to know them. You are not bothering the librarian. The librarianās job is to help scholars with research. You are a scholar. The librarian will work with you.
Does the library provide instruction in how to use databases? Sign up for a session. Do they offer topic guides? See if thereās one close to your research interest and get familiar with the resources included in it.
5. Learn to read and take notes.
This is the most important one. Donāt be like me and spend hours of your PhD reading every paper in excruciating detail. If you are in the social, natural, or applied sciences, check out Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vegaās Abstract-Introduction-Conclusion method as a starting point, then dig deeper into readings that feel especially important for your own work.
Track everything you read, keep notes on it, and later you wonāt have to work as hard to hunt it down. Again, I recommend setting up a spreadsheet according to Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vegaās Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump method. (If youāre a Notion user, Iāve got a pay-what-you-can template for doing this.) Dr. Pacheco-Vega also has a lot of wisdom to share on note-taking techniques, so look at those and see what might work for you.
6. Develop an elevator pitch for your research interests.
Youāre going to have to introduce yourself and your research interests to people, a lot. Try to get down a quick explanation of your research interests. This will change over time.
For example, in my application, I said I was interested in researching how connected learning could fit in school libraries. Then, I said I was interested in interest-driven learning in libraries. Now, I am interested in how connected learning as manifested through fan activity contributes to information literacy and practices. (Would I need to define some of those terms? You betcha. In that case, I could say Iām interested in how fans engaging in activities like cosplay and fanfiction learn through those activities, as well as how they find, evaluate, use, create, and share information.)
7. Get a hobby or two.
A hobby gives you something to do thatās not school, and thatās important. Ideally, itās something you will have begun learning before school starts so that youāre not, say, simultaneously trying to understand Marxist geography and the sociology of space while also learning to knit. If you can get more than one hobby, even better. I like having a solitary one and one that will lead you to interact with non-school people. In my MSLS days, my principal hobbies were baking cupcakes and being in the Durham Savoyards. During the PhD, they were tinkering on the IndieWeb and doing improv comedy.
There are a lot of other things you might do to make your experience go smoothly, but if youāve got these seven down, youāre going in with a strong foundation.
Fostering Information Literacy Through Autonomy and Guidance in the Inquiry and Maker Learning Environments - Koh et al, 2020
Koh, K., Ge, X., Lee, L., Lewis, K. R., Simmons, S., & Nelson, L. (2020). Fostering Information Literacy Through Autonomy and Guidance in the Inquiry and Maker Learning Environments. In J. H. Kalir & D. Filipiak (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2019 Connected Learning Summit (pp. 94ā101). ETC Press.
This is a quick note that I’m really excited about this conference paper I found that builds a bridge between connected learning (my broad research interest) and information literacy (my specific disciplinary interest). I’m going to explore it more and dig into the connection later, but I’m psyched to find a new paper on this.
Why I like St. Patrick's Day āļø
I originally posted this on Facebook on March 17, 2016.
I’m only 9% Irish, but I sure love Saint Patrick’s Day. I think most of my affection for it comes from St. Patrick’s Day 1991, when my sister, our mom, and I arrived at our Tallahassee church for the last round of the church’s progressive dinner, and my dad, who had been living in Durham for more than a year, surprised us by showing up. Will and I have a picture from that Saint Patrick’s Day hanging on the wall of our parlor.
Wordle Walkthrough - 03/14/2022
As promised, here’s a walkthrough of my thought process for playing Wordle. This is the game for 03/14/2022.
I begin most games with the word ATONE. This uses 5 of the 6 most frequent letters used in English (etaoin).
After this, I know that the word will have T and E in it. I have eliminated one possible position for each of those letters.
My next goal is to do two things:
So I try TIERS, which moves T to the beginning and brings in I, R, and S.
This locks E in the middle position, tells me that I chose the wrong position for T, and lets me know that S will be in there somewhere, but not in its current position.
I actually get a bit less strategic now. I only have two more possibilities for where T could go, so I figure I’ll try it at the end, as that seems more likely than the next-to-last place. That leaves me with 3 possibilities for S, so I start with the first of those. Now I’ve got to fill in two letters. So far I’ve got S_E_T. I try not to repeat letters this early on, which eliminates a lot of possibilities. I look at what’s remaining from letter frequency (HDLU). I consider and reject words with repeats like SHEET and SLEET. I think through other possibilities and settle on SLEPT.
Now I’ve got 4 out of 5 letters and know their positions, since L is in the word by not where I put it first. I’m looking to fill in the blank for S_ELT.
This is when I just start looking at the keyboard and plugging letters in. Swelt? Shelt? Skelt? Sbelt? Those aren’t words. What about SMELT?
At first I think that can’t be right, it’s just a joke word as in “He who smelt it dealt it.” But then I remember no, you can smelt iron, because smelt means “to melt or fuse (a substance, such as ore) often with an accompanying chemical change usually to separate the metal” (Merriam-Webster. (Also it’s a legitimate past participle of “smell” so " He who smelt it dealt it" is perfectly good English .)
So I try it.
Boom.
I hope this is helpful as you build your own Wordle workflow. Take care!