Showing Up at the Page

personal, writing 2020.12.21 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

This past July marked twenty years since I started The Artist’s Way for the first time. One of the tools of The Artist’s Way is what author/creator Julia Cameron calls Morning Pages: Three longhand pages of stuff written every morning, without fail, shortly after waking up. When I first read through the book before starting the programme, I was incredibly reluctant to even try doing Morning Pages, not just because of the time commitment involved but also because they felt like they’d be pointless to…

Fail Points

politics, teaching 2020.12.14 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

Electoral College in the 2020 presidential election (Ballotpedia) The more byzantine machinations of how America’s systems of governance work can be fascinating, if you’re into that sort of thing. Over the past twenty years, though, everything from the Florida recount after the 2000 presidential election, to the large numbers of faithless electors who cast votes they weren’t supposed to cast when the Electoral College met four years ago, has given many Americans far too much of an education about those mechanisms than they ever would…

No More Balls to the Face

politics, rhetoric, teaching 2020.12.07 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

[The following blog contains mentions of bullying and suicide.] Free college is a ‘socialist takeover of higher education’ and student debt cancellation is ‘wrong,’ Betsy DeVos says (MarketWatch via MSN) I’ve never been inside of a ball pit. By the time I first heard of ball pits, I was already outside of what most people would consider their target age group, and I don’t think I even knew the location of any ball pits in Toledo until after I turned eighteen. This used to make…

Behind the Curtain

politics, teaching 2020.11.30 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

About a decade ago, I taught a student in Michigan who was just enough of a clown to help the class get some good laughs when they were needed, but didn’t prevent me from teaching the learning units I needed to get to, so his comedy was a welcome addition to the class. It was a serious discussion with this student that became the most memorable moment I had with him, though. At the start of a class, as we were transitioning from pre-class banter…

Running On Empty

personal 2020.11.23 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

I won’t pretend that part of my interest in memes isn’t personal — on top of just desiring a quick laugh every now and then to let me temporarily unburden myself of all the things I’m trying to do, I prefer shorter breaks from my work to longer ones — but for the most part, studying memes is kind of part of my job. If I want to reach my students effectively, then I need to be able to be familiar with their languages and…