I’m back on a weekly schedule, and loving having a bit more consistency. The students at my university are on Fall Break for Columbus Day, but I am working through it. Don’t worry, I took my break on Friday. This is just the price I pay for taking my day off a little bit early.
Projects
The C-SPAN conference was amazing during the last week. I met Angela Garcia there, which was really cool. We were both presenting Conversation Analytic work that involved detailed analysis of data from the Archives. Her work using the Clinton Grand Jury testimony was really interesting. I spoke with her about putting together a panel for a future conference (possibly NCA 2016 in Philadelphia) which would be composed of similar work. There appeared to be a lot of enthusiasm for the work I was doing, and I got some really interesting feedback as well. It isn’t my main research focus, but it is what I call my “research affair.” At least if I am blowing off what I am “supposed” to be doing, I am blowing it off to engage in a different productive line of research.
Even though that is interesting, this is job application week, so that is my main area of focus.
Reading Focus this Week
This week I have been reading back over an older book on how educational organizations resist change, and how to implement change in spite of this resistance (Reigeluth & Garfinkle, 1994). I highly recommend it. Even though it is written with K-12 education as the primary subject, it has a lot of relevance to post-secondary (and even graduate & post-graduate) education as well.