The Writer's Poke

My wife and I are leaving for Hawaii on Monday, if the weather cooperates. When my wife and I go on cruises, which is what we're doing on this trip, we often times invite family or friends to go with us. To this point, no one has ever taken us up on the invitation. We went through the motions of inviting my parents, and to our pleasant surprise, they decided to go. :0) And, they've already spent a week in Hawaii thus far. Cross your fingers that we are able to join up with them on Monday as scheduled. On the way back, we'll be stopping in San Francisco for a few days. This is my first time, and quite honestly, I'm starting to get more excited about San Fran than Hawaii. After all, I've been to Hawaii once *yawn* I'm crazy enough to keep the blog going on vacation, so check back in, and I promise to provide regular updates. Taking time off is important, and it's amazing how many people don't take the time (or save the money) to go on a much-needed vacatio...

I promised my top ten, and here it is. This is my Top 10 in the fiction category. 1. Don Quixote – Cervantes 2. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 3. The Canterbury Tales – Chaucer 4. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 5. Crime and Punishment – Dostoyevsky 6. Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain 7. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller 8. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 9. 1984 – George Orwell 10. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe Honorable Mention: Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert Cathedral – Raymond Carver Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston Care to share yours? Send it to me: fish1861@aol.com Don't forget that you can post and compare here, too: http://www.toptenbooks.net/

I don't fear much, but I do fear the dentist. The last time I visited one was in 1998, and I like to tell myself that I have good teeth and don't need regular maintenance . Well, one of my teeth chipped yesterday. Just a little, but it was quite unexpected. It didn't chip to the nerve, but now my tongue won't leave it alone. Will it chip again? What happens if I go on vacation next week and I don't have easy access to a dentist? Be sure to take care of yourself. My wife finally convinced me that we needed to take our cars in every 5,000 miles for preventative maintenance, so why have I been so loathe to taking myself in for my own 5,000 mile check-ups?

"Worrying is not thinking." This is a line that really stood out to me in Jacob Needleman's Time and the Soul . Why do we allow ourselves to get so stressed out? Often times, perhaps we spend more time worrying than we do actually thinking. Worrying focuses on the negative of what might happen. Thinking, however, can lead to an action which will avoid a negative outcome. This isn't necessarily what Needleman's point is in his book, but that's the "truth" I took from it. The book also suggested one "trick" to try. Assume that the event has already occured. Whatever it is you're worried about, just assume it has already happened. As you go through a stressful time, don't worry about it. Just tell yourself that it is happening as it must, and work your way through it. http://www.jacobneedleman.com/Books/timesoul.htm

Everyone loves lists, don't they? What if you had to come up with a list of the top ten books that have affected you the most? How would you develop such a list? Peder Zane edited a book called The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books . Actually, I just started thinking about the top ten concept, and then while at Barnes and Noble, I stumbled across this book. As far as I can tell, and I only had a chance to flip through it, this is a book of fiction writers listing fiction, though. As an English major, all I cared about was fiction. But these days, I find myself reading everything. My list would be more inclusive than just fiction, and I would also be more concerned with how the book affected my life rather than just how "good" the book was, if you catch my meaning. Anyway, if you care to share your top ten, I'd love to see it. Post a comment here, or email me at fish1861@aol.com . And if anyone is interested, I'll post my Top 10 list next week. http://www....

Why do we get so caught up in our day-to-day lives? Why are we so concerned about our ego? On Friday, I had the opportunity to listen to former RCTC President Charles Hill (1953-1982) share his experiences. He's 92 years old now, and it was interesting to hear him talk from the perspective of wisdom. What does he remember? It's not the stupid little day-to-day things that stress so many of us out. Instead, he remembers people. He remembers the fun he had along the way. At no time, though, did he merely list his life's accomplishments. Ego wasn't involved in his stories at all. And that, I think, is how it should be. How many of us remember and acknowledge that on a regular basis? There's a big difference between making a difference and being self-important.

Anna died. Why do we care? What did she ever do to make us care? Every death is tragic, I suppose, but when the famous die, are their deaths any more tragic than anyone else's?

I've been using Netflix since 2003, and the service is great. Every so often, I ask my friends and colleagues if they use it, and over the years, only a handful have indicated that they have. If you like movies, this is one of the best ways I know to keep up with everything that gets released on DVD. Keeping track of all the new releases can feel like a full-time job, and it's easy to let that movie you were meaning to watch on DVD slip though to the dark pit of your memory. Anyway, if you don't watch that many movies, Netflix still has a plan that would fit your needs. At one point, I was on the eight movies out at a time plan, and that was a lot. Right now I'm at four out at a time, and that's about right for me. If any of you are Netflix members, I'd love to add you to my Friends list. Just let me know. :)

How absurd is this? I heard on the radio this week that politicians in the Cities are interested in banning replica guns. They can, after all, be used to "intimidate" people. Real guns, on the other hand, are just fine I guess. I did some more digging, and apparently these toy guns do fire bullets, just plastic little pellets -- non-lethal. So, we're banning non-lethal "toys" and allowing the lethal weapons to remain legal? I wish I was a stand-up comic, because here would be the place for the punch line. http://www.startribune.com/462/story/975995.html

I have worn a size 12 shoe since high school. No matter how snug the shoe was, if I liked it, and if it was a size 12, that's what I bought. Then, about a year ago, I had my first experience with gout. Boy is that painful. Even then, it never dawned on me that moving up in shoe size might be a good idea. Last week I went to a shoe store that still uses salespeople -- ones that still measure your feet. And I learned sometime. In length, my foot is indeed a 12. But other parts of my foot measure out to 13. The salesperson said I might be binding my feet. That image stuck with me, and I decided to buy a size 13 as a test. So far, so good. I'm now in the process of throwing out all of my "snug" size 12's. Don't ever get too attached to a number.

Below are notes from the Student Motivation Workshop I facilitated today. I can't post the Powerpoints, but if you're interested in them, just send me an email, and I'll be happy to shoot them your way. 10. Limit/Manage Stress This is the topic of the 2/22 workshop. Please attend! :) 9. Promote Active Learning • Use in-class activities to reinforce newly presented material. After a new concept or subject has been presented via text reading, lecture, or class discussion, allow the students to put the concept into action by completing an in-class assignment. These assignments can be short, but they must be developed to ensure that the students understand the critical concepts underlying the new material. • Typically, the most learning takes place when the students are permitted to work in small groups, to refer to their text and notes, and to ask questions of the instructor while completing the assignment. If these in-class assignments are part of the course grading scheme, c...

Tomorrow I'm running a workshop on How to Motivate Students, and I'm creating a top ten list. What do you think is the most important? Respect Communication Listening Focus Assessment Others? If you have any thoughts, feel free to email them my way: fish1861@aol.com

Attention: Fun-lovers Not all of my blog will be work-related, unless you believe in the philosophy of Tao Te Ching, which states that all things are related (I kind of like that). I finished off the 3rd series of "Arrested Development" last night. If you've never seen the show, you're not alone. Only 4-6 million people tuned in each week when it was on. Let me tell you, though, it was simply too good for a mass audience. I believe MSN is starting to show the series for free on the Internet, but I would encourage you to go out and buy the DVD sets. You're going to want them, I promise. :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrested_Development_%28TV_series%29

To follow up from Friday's posting, I did watch 49-Up over the weekend, and it might be the best in the series. Actually, I think each one is better than the last, and it's probably just because each one provides more information. Following the lives of these people is addictive. This is, in essence, real "reality TV." My wife said, "I feel like such a voyeur when I watch," but she can't help herself. She wants to watch, and you will, too. The tone in this one is different, too. Most of the people are happy and content with their lots in life. This wasn't the case in 35-Up, for example. Now, some of their children are grown -- and some have grandchildren, and their lives, for better or worse, are established.

Attention Psychology Instructors and "Nature vs. Nurture" Lovers Have your heard of the 7-Up documentary series? About 42 years ago, some British psychologists began to follow the lives of a group of children -- male, female, rich, poor, black, white. Every seven years, then, they do a follow-up interview to see what's going on in their lives. This, year, the 5th follow-up documentary was released, entitled 49-Up. I'll be watching it over the weekend, but I have previously viewed the other documentaries in the series -- 7-Up, 14-Up, 21-Up, 28-Up, and 35-Up. Good stuff. Do you need to watch all of them? Probably not. They repeat some of the same footage in each of the follow-up documentaries, so I wouldn't recommend watching them all at once... However, it's good to watch the earlier ones to see how the documentary style has changed over the past 40 years. Also, some of the people in the study have dropped out, and you need to watch the early ones to see who th...

What motivates you? How do you make sure that your students are motivated? I'll be leading a workshop on motivation in a couple of weeks, but I'd love to incorporate your ideas, too. Drop me an email -- fish1861@aol.com Bret

Attention: Philosophy Instructors and Armchair Philosophers I don't know if you've heard of this book -- The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher -- but I'm currently reading it, and it's pretty darn good. I'm thinking it might be a cool way to introduce students to some of the most important philosophical and ethical questions ever analyzed by Western philosophical minds. There are 100 questions, if you will, and the book is only 300 pages. So it's good for those with ADHD, but it would also be a cool way to start a class discussion on a topic. Each "question" or section is also cross-listed, so you can easily refer to related questions/sections. Bret

CATs for All Occasions (Note: CATs that require more time and/or energy for 1) faculty to prepare, 2) students to respond to the assessment, or 3) faculty to analyze the data collected are in red italics.) Techniques for Assessing Course-Related Knowledge and Skills Assessing Prior Knowledge, Recall, and Understanding Minute Paper - Instructor asks students to respond in two or three minutes to either of the following questions: "What was the most important thing you learned during this class?" or "What important questions remains unanswered?" Used to provide a quick and extremely simple way to collect written feedback on student learning. Muddiest Point - Technique consists of asking students to jot down a quick response to one question: "What was the muddiest point in (fill in the blank)?" with the focus on the lecture, a discussion, a homework assignment, a play, or a film. Used to provide information on what students find least clear or most confusing...