I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this. I’m thinking of when you have something important to do, to say, but become paralysed by your uncertainty about your ability — or your right — to do it, to even begin! What if what I have to say is not actually so important, if it is, in fact,... Continue Reading →
You Won’t Believe How These New Zealand Undergraduates Email Their Lecturers
My tongue-in-cheek clickbait title is meant to illustrate via awkward engagement how inappropriate the norms of social media are to academia. Nowhere is this more obvious than when students try to email me. Here's a recent example* I reproduce in full: Hi I missed my second lab and I think the Cencus data for completely assignment... Continue Reading →
Writing First Year Geography Lectures
I've been very quiet in the blogosphere recently. Mostly because I have been preparing new lectures for a section of a first year course I am teaching. I taught first year almost exclusively in my first academic job at Macquarie University, and since I was starting at scratch with topics I had never lectured on... Continue Reading →