the month of June

I guess I am in what could be described as triage mode in terms of studying for exams. I’ve tossed the strict text/day study shedules and now keep referring to this map, which I keep playing with, altering, updating, etc. I am using it as a “kind of” outline to writing the second and third chapter sections of my prospectus–trying to ensure that I adequatetly provide the history of critical pedaogy and the connections between critical pedaogy and composition that will be crucial for my dissertation. I’m also using it as a guide to the texts that I need to quickly review, read through, harvest quotes from, etc.

For this revision/studying/review task I am also using a combination of what my friend Tara has dubbed “Tasks Not Time” and the use of an alarm/timer to take breaks that don’t extend into long projects. 43folders has suggested this life hack called (10+2)*5. It has seemingly worked for many folk, but for me it is a little too ADHD/manic for me…or at least for this particular task. I can’t possibly work on writing my prospectus in ten minutes increments and expect to produce break-through thoughts and any amount of sustained, serious inquiry, so instead I implement Tara’s “TNT.” I’m sure she could explain it better, but essentially it involves covering up the clock and focusing on the task at hand, getting in the “zone,” and spending a seemingly unknown amount of time working on that. As I start to get tired, I set a last minute goal for myself (this is my addition to TNT)–something like getting a particular thought down on paper or reading one more paragraph or page. Then I allow myself my “break.” This is where the ever-helpful timer comes in. In fact, I downloaded Pester, which has proved invaluable. My “breaks” involve still working, but not working on my prospectus–so I might deal with email for ten minutes or blog (as I’m doing now).

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Updated “map”:

Exercise in mapping and classifying:

Lineage of Cultural Studies: Hoggart – Williams – (rereadings of/with/through Gramsci and Althusser) – Hall (slightly more marginal figures: Grossberg, Cary Nelson, Angela McRobbie, Jorge Larrain, Stanley Aronowitz)

Compositionists working with Cultural Studies: James Berlin, Richard Ohmann (kinda), Michael Blitz and C. Mark Hurlbert, Alan France, Mas’ud Zavarzadeh, Donald Morton, Bruce Horner (?), John Trimbur

Lineage of critical pedagogy: Freire – Shor – Giroux – Ann E. Berthoff (compositionist) – McLaren – bell hooks

Compositionists in critical pedagogy: Amy Lee, William Thelin, Michael Blitz and C. Mark Hurlbert, Andrea Greenbaum, Joe Marshall Hardin, Mas’ud Zavarzadeh, Donald Morton, Richard Miller, Russell Durst

Texts to review/read through:

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 2003.
Fitts, Karen and Alan W. France. Left Margins: Cultural Studies and Composition Pedagogy. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995.
Giroux, Henry and Peter McLaren. “Radical Pedagogy as Cultural Politics: Beyond the Discourse of Critique and Anti-Utopianism.”

So I’ve been playing around with flock’s blogging option because I’m probably going to have my students utilize flock for both RSS reader and blogging. It feels strange to launch my posts from this unfamiliar text window–strangely, makes me feel like I’m going to forget something, but it is surprisingly clean and easy.

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Lately I’ve become obsessed with “life hacker” stuff, getting things done, etc., reading sites like 43 folders, but as I think often happens with these organizational techniques, I start to spend more time looking at options to become more efficient than I do actually doing things. I get on the computer and all I want to do is clean, sort, file, see how fast I can read through my RSS reads, download programs, interrupt myself by figuring out how to deal with interruptions, etc. It’s bad. Instead of streamlining my reading, I seem to be adding more and more sites that will “help” me get things done more quickly and efficiently. But is is working I wonder?

Still, as the fall semester rapidly approaches I find it important to get organized. So now I’m thinking about the kinds of folders I will need to purchase…maybe today?

So far I have yet to find any suggestions for what to do on those days when you just *cannot* concentrate. Those days when your mind wanders repeatedly, when you’ve been on the same line of text since for an hour. My approach is to generally set a very short period of time for myself. Yesterday it was fifteen minutes. I told myself that if I simply read for fifteen more minutes I could leave and take the rest of the day off!!! I ended up reading for about twenty-five minutes.

My BIG distraction is biking. I’ve become obsessed with biking…and…of course…thinking about biking. I’m in the market for a mountain bike, as I’m increasingly frustrated with riding in traffic and think that unless I’m commuting or doing a long ride somewhere without a lot of cars, I should be off-road.

So I’ve added some bike blogs to my reading as well, and oil is for sissies is my favorite so far.

I am busy experimenting–getting ready to finally use blogs as a part of the first-year writing courses that I’ll be teaching this Fall. I am trying to decide between hosting these blogs directly through wordpress or hosting them through edublogs, so I’ve set up two blogs to play with, experiment with:

expos-i-story

an exposition of writing

I will be documenting the experience–getting set-up, logistics, the pedagogy, etc.

After the bloodiest day for Israel in the Middle East Conflict, the Israeli death toll has topped 75. Twelve soldiers were killed Sunday in the town of Kfar Giladi and three civilians were killed in Haifa. As the world awaits an official comment from Tel Aviv on a long-awaited UN ceasefire proposal, we go to Haifa to speak to Erez Gellar of the Israeli relief service Magen David Adom. [includes rush transcript]

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