Stories Matter, So Make Yours Better
My Long Journey to Student-Centered Learning
By John Warner. When I first tried my hand at writing fiction, I was working under the spell of writers like Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, Bobbie Ann Mason, Richard Ford. Read more...
Lowering your Hackles for Presentation-Based Feedback
By Anjali Gopal. One of the more common dilemmas I see in research groups is when team members who are required to make a presentation at a conference request advice from their team, and then spend the majority of that advice session justifying their slide design rather than actually accepting feedback. Read more...
Combating Cynicism in Graduate School
By Katie Shives. Almost every department has that person who has elevated cynicism to an art. You know the one. That person who is always unhappy with and verbally tearing down her project, his program, her advisor, journal club presentations, or pretty much any part of the graduate school experience. Usually this is a senior student or postdoc, but these personalities can be found in any corner of academia if you look hard enough. Read more...
Shoring Up Weaknesses
Ask the Administrator: Smuggling in Improvements
Sex on Campus
By Billie Wright Dziech. Campus sexual assault remained in the forefront of higher education’s concerns last week when a St. Paul’s School graduate, Owen Labrie, was tried for, as a senior, raping a 15-year old classmate who accompanied him to an unoccupied building amid rumors of a school tradition requiring graduating seniors to take the virginity of younger female students. Read more...
Three Cheers!
By Scott McLemee. On Aug. 10, the City Council of Cambridge, Mass., passed, by unanimous vote, a resolution to which even the local media gave scant notice. But the document merits attention throughout the Republic of Letters. Read more...
First Lesson, Best Lesson
By Will Hochman. “Correct writing is no one’s mother tongue.”
Peter Elbow
Imagine your starfish hands reaching
For ocean floors, tapping attention alive
You discover and reveal yourself in sentences
That only perpetual error can provide. Read more...