I've compared this summer to last summer so many times that I should probably just let it all die, but it's wild what better mental health and physical health can do for a human!? Last summer, around this time, I found out I had a nugget of skin cancer - basal cell - near my left nostril. I spent most of the summer driving to Fargo for radiation treatments. I had 20+ of them. Short bursts of something you can't see, plowing into my dermis to kill something else off. My body started to equate driving anywhere with "cancer anxiety." Luckily, that has finally faded, too. Unluckily, we lost Gma Maxine last summer, too. Gpa, her hubby, had left her less than a year before, and I knew she would deteriorate quickly. That was the peak of grief, really. She was gone, my body was screwed up, and I just wanted everything to feel normal. Cut to this summer, and I have put myself on generic Zoloft (last fall wasn't fun weaning off and on meds), and my major lady bit was ta...

✅ ✅ ✅ Recently, I officially wrapped up my third health hurdle: ditching an angry uterus. 😅 Earlier (May - Nov) it was skin cancer, then navigating a chaotic anxiety medication switch (Sept - Dec). Grateful to be on the other side of it all and ready to focus on brighter days ahead. Here’s to resilience and taking life one step at a time. 💪✨ #MentalHealth #SoreButHappy #TrifectaOfFun  What did I actually accomplish in 2024, besides a trio of health struggles? NOT that I needed to be productive at all, but I did distract myself from my health stuff with the creation of two OER textbooks. They are shown in the banner below, at the far right - The Quest for Meaning (HUM 101) and From Ink to Link (ENGL 220). I've spent most of winter break resting and healing; periodically, I've been checking in on my Intersession students (HUM 101!), as well as prepping my Spring 2025 courses. I'll have a new lineup that I don't think I've ever had before: ENGL 110 at 10am TR as we...

Well, hello there, little bloggie. I haven't been on here for months, but I think I have rather good reasons... the most unfortunate reason is my health.  Towards the middle of May, the day after our last contract day, I had a biopsy done on my face (a weird bump near my left nostril that had not healed over since fall!), and the dermatologist was pretty sure it was basal cell carcinoma. Skin cancer, although not the total evil kind. Within weeks, I was "signed up" for 21 radiation treatments in Fargo, and that sucked up my summer. The radiation itself was 30 seconds worth of nothing, even if halfway through (treatment 10-ish) my skin did freak out a bit, which threw me into a spin of anxiety. {The same thing happened with my breast reduction; at some point, your brain wonders why you are doing what you are doing, and you question all of your decisions.} I was able to get away to two cabins to attempt to recalibrate my soul and body, and those little trips did help, even ...

I hadn't popped into a CCCOER (Community College Consortium for OER) webinar in months, so I gathered links like a cave woman today. The Open Faculty Patchbook is one resource I would like to dive into; one participant said when he was getting into Open Educational Pedagogy/Resources, he read one story from that site per day to help him prep for that sort of work. https://wicked.liberatedlearner.ca/ https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/learner/front-matter/beats-to-study-to/ https://openfacultypatchbook.org/ https://awards.oeglobal.org/awards/2022/oer/liberated-learners/ https://awards.oeglobal.org/awards/2023/open-reuse-remix-adaptation/modern-humanities-on-manifold/ I don't think I'll move to a "site" for my OER, beyond Google. I like having a folder of all the stuff, backed up on my computer, and I like that anyone has access to that folder and they can download my stuff at will and tweak/revise to their hearts' content. Right now, I like the "less cl...

Easter 2024. As much as I detest the Easter holiday (insert traumatic childhood story about my pet bunny), this “date” marks five years since I decided against a Ph.D. program and fell into a rabbit hole (ooh, a pun!) on Twitter that led me to #OER webinars and #ungrading posts (that freaked me out), among other learning opportunities.  The summer of 2019 is when I took a MOOC class on Open Pedagogy and spent $500 of my own money to enroll in the Creative Commons Certification Course for Educators. That summer marks the turning point in my pedagogical journey. And it was a path set out by the universe after Sadie passed away in October of 2018. I wanted to distract myself, so I applied - sent in the application on Christmas - to the School of Ed at my alma mater. Yes, they eventually, sometime after Easter that spring, informed me that I didn’t make it into the program, and I believe that was the second time I applied to NDSU (first time might’ve been to the earn a Ph.D. in English...

*reading through the draft of what might be my next book* I found this nugget from when I was brainstorming for the Great Plains Alliance in Computers and Writing conference (2007):  This presentation comes out of frustration.  It finally occurred to me after reading Kinsey’s piece (and other pieces online regarding recording/reflecting one’s thoughts somewhere) that it was okay to have a teaching blog, to be a teacher who put her thoughts OUT THERE for public display. I knew it was okay, to a certain extent, before I found these articles and online postings by others, yet I didn’t have any evidence beyond the fact that it was working for me, so bugger off type of excuse/answer/reason.  Sure, some colleagues thought I was showing students how “human” I was which was detrimental, according to “them,” but, um, who cares? Aren’t all teachers human, really? And aren’t the best teachers those who bring a part of themselves into the classroom?  [If you are a teacher of wri...

I just sent out this announcement to students: “ My apologies for the delay in updating the gradebook; I’m out sick right now. I’ll assess things asap. Thank you for your patience.” For some reason, just this brief note lessens my stress over not “keeping up” with things, and I hope it’s a gentle reminder to students that I will extend grace to them, too.