367 days ago, I posted about my new school year resolutions and plans, something I’ve been doing fairly regularly (though not every year) forever. I can see this year’s resolutions are a sequel.
This is not to say that the “vibe” this school year is similar, at least I don’t think so. For one thing, I had some hope that Harris was going to win. But also, it’s a year later. Last November, Annette turned 60, and I will turn 60 in March 2026. When you turn 60, the company that handles our 401K-like retirement plan for folks in higher education and the like, TIAA, gets very excited and insists on meeting. I don’t think either of us are planning on retiring earlier than 65 (and probably 67), but just the fact that we met with the retirement plan people means it’s getting closer.
Plus, there’s the whole Trumpian-Fascistic government’s attack on higher education and anything involving DEI shitshow going on. As I wrote back in March, the nice thing about being at a place like EMU is we’re kind of “under the radar,” so to speak, and, unlike the big-time schools Trump is going after, we don’t get much money from the federal government. But the stink of it all still hangs in the air, and there are plenty of other worrying things happening at EMU. Rumor has it enrollment is down even more than administration has admitted. Rumor has it that buy-out offers to faculty might be getting better.
These things (combined with a summer where I travelled a lot and where I didn’t do too much school work) do make one think about exit strategies. That seems at odds with a resolution to do/improve in the coming year. But here we are.
So, how do this year’s resolutions match up with last year’s?
The first item was to wade deeper into AI in My Teaching–Much Deeper, and I did that. My first year writing classes research theme was “your career goals and AI,” and in fall 2024, I taught a class called “Digital Writing” where two of the assignments were all about AI. I thought it went okay to pretty good.
This semester, I’m back with the same themes in first year writing, and I think it’s more relevant than ever. As I said to my 121 students today, when I was their age in the mid-1980’s, there was this new thing called the “internet” that was starting to get some attention. But I don’t think a lot of folks my age now had any sense then how much of our lives would be altered by this weird internet thing. AI feels very much like that now, though more accelerated. I think my students got the comparison.
The other class I’m teaching is an advanced undergraduate/graduate level “special topics” course called Rhetoric, Writing, and AI. It’s an online class (taught behind a firewall in Canvas), and the website is mainly for one of the assignments where my students (and probably me too) will be building collaboratively an annotated bibliography of interesting “items” about AI to share– articles, websites, videos, podcasts, whatever. But I’ve also included copies of the assignments and links (so far) to the readings. I will probably be writing another post soon, specifically about this class.
Second was to try to be at least a little more “involved.” I think I’m going to pass on that for this coming year, though I remain the department rep on the “college advisory committee.” That group meets for 90 minutes a pop twice a month, so I think that’s enough.
The third thing was to put together my next (maybe last?) sabbatical/research release project proposal, and that was one of my bigger disappointments from last year. My proposal was about the connection between the discourse around AI now resembles a lot of the discourse around the introduction of computers and the internet in the 80s and 90s among writing instructors. I thought the idea I had was a good one, and I still think that’s true. Alas, I got turned down. But this is another year, and I still think this (or something like it) would be a good project. Some rewording and rethinking, try try try again, and all that.
The fourth item/resolution was to keep figuring out Substack, and compared to where I was last year this time, I feel like I’m further along. Back then, I was trying to shift all of my blogging-type writing to Substack. The reason why I moved back (and I’m now doing both) is that I don’t think the audiences are the same. I’m still trying to figure out Substack, and I’m still trying to figure out who/what to read over there.
Last but not least, keep losing weight with Zepbound. That’s kind of a “not good/not bad” news thing. I started taking Zepbound in January 2024, and by August 2024, I had lost about 35 pounds. Since August 2024, I’ve lost around 6 or 7 more pounds. For me, that’s “not good” because I would have liked to have lost more weight by now. On the other hand, it’s “not bad” because I’ve at least lost some weight and I haven’t gained it back.
So I guess I could add to this resolution to try to mix in a lot more “diet and exercise,” along with Zepbound. My ultimate goal would be to lose another 15-20 pounds because, based on the extremely problematic BMI scale, that would give me a score that is just on the edge of being merely “overweight.” That’s “not good” because I am terrible at dieting, and I also suppose it’s not entirely “good” that I’d have to lose a lot more than 20 pounds to be in the “normal” range on the BMI scale. But it’s also “not bad” because the main reason why I went on this stuff in the first place was to be healthier, and relative to where I was, I think that’s worked out well.