Friday morning notes: social constructs should be constructable by all.

Friday morning braindumps from my notebook -- some from as long ago as October's FIE conference, some scribbled down last night, this morning.

My distractomel brain loves immediate feedback, but one of the things I'm learning is how to continue persevering when I can't or shouldn't get that -- long-term scholarly pursuits, for instance. Short-term feedback isn't what drives me; if that were true, I should go hang out in casinos instead of university campuses. I want to work on the meaningful, regardless of whether or not it's immediate. So if short-term feedback does not drive me in my research, then what does?

My answer so far: the power of sharing stories and our many views of stories, with storytelling as both a connecting artifact and a connecting event. And the belief that everyone should have access to that -- that social constructs should be constructable by all. That's why I'm improvising towards my dissertation in this way.

On how teaching relates to letting go: "It's about lighting the fire, not carrying the flame."

The difference between "failsafe" and "safe-fail."

Work-life balance is a funny term. It assumes the two are separate, rather than the first being a subcomponent of the second. I no longer try to figure out "work-life balance" -- I'm just dancing in the unstable equilibrium of life balance, always shifting, always something to discover.

Wandering through the library stacks in search of a required reading for my Cultural Foundations class, I happened across a book whose title was "Work won't love you back." It won't -- but you can love the pursuit of your vocation, and the people you work with and serve and learn from, and those people can love you back, and the work can be an act of coming-together and a space in which you can build that love amongst yourselves and share that mutual chasing of your calling.

Ok -- excellent start to the morning, little Mel. You thought a while about things you wanted to think about, and then stopped -- good, good, the stopping is good! Now a last round of quick preparations for my research group meeting, during which I will present something I've got 25 minutes to finish getting together. Hooyah!