Making preparations for the fall, I have posted the
syllabus
and in-progress schedule for the course I will start teaching later this
month. Most of what is posted
comes from the shared syllabus for new
TAs. I decided to use the shared syllabus because it connects with a lot
of the extracurricular programming throughout the fall, it synchs up in
explicit ways (demanding very little justification) with the program’s goals for
this particular course, and it will mean for me just the second time in seven
semesters (since Fall ’04) that I don’t have to prep a course I haven’t taught
once before (the two WRT205s I taught two years apart were very
different).

Yesterday I fused two del.icio.us accounts into one. I set up
dnmexams last summer so that I would
have a dedicated space for tagging and exploring linkages among my notes entries
related to qualifying exams. At a much slower pace, I have continued to
post notes to the Dissarray blog
(formerly "Exam Sitting"), but the separate del.icio.us account no longer made
sense. Reading for exams was relatively contained; reading and notes for the
diss–at this stage–feel somewhat more sprawling and dispersed. Plus,
it’s more convenient to keep just one del.icio.us account and, with it, just one
login. I’ve also switched from subscribing to individual del.icio.us accounts to
subscribing to one feed for my
entire
network. With this switch there has been a marked improvement in the
steady flow of materials into the aggregator over the past few weeks.

Finally, in anticipation of a narrow job search in the year ahead, I have been
mulling over my web site at the
behest of our job seekers group. I’m fairly satisfied with the site and all that
it includes, but I would be tremendously appreciative of thoughts anyone is willing to share–recommendations, critical asides, feedback about design,
presentation, navigability, and so on. At the next job seekers meeting we will be
taking a look at
teaching philosophy statements, but I won’t be able to attend, so I’d love
to hear your reactions to what I say there, too (either in the comments or via
email).