10 Tips to Help You Fail at Monetizing Your Blog

[Abstract: This post provides tips to help you fail at monetizing your blog. It could also be seen as a list of things for you not to do if you want to succeed at blogging, but I have very little experience with that, so I'm sticking to what I know.) I really wish I had [...]

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Picking the Song You Want to Learn to Play

[Abstract: This post continues the "Learning to Play a Song Series." It discusses three different things to consider when picking your first song to play.] So, you’ve picked what instrument you want to play. You may not realize it but you’ve made a major step towards learning to play your first song, since, by choosing [...]

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The Three Different Types of Digital Residents

(Abstract: This post discusses the three different types of digital residents and how the way we orient ourselves to the digital world has a dramatic impact on how we interact with each other and how we live our lives.) I was at a military ball last weekend and MG Robert Bailey was the guest speaker. [...]

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Buying and Choosing an Instrument

In his latest post on Ground Hog Day Resolutions, Dave wrote: “Personally, there are some personal creative goals I’d like to pursue: Play an instrument / Play one song well Compose a song with an interesting arrangement” I recently had an experience with this arena and would like to share it. Background: I love playing [...]

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Why I Quit Blogging

I’ve fallen off of blogging for a long (long) time for primary reason that I spent way too much time in front of the computer and not enough time doing things that I enjoy much more. Reasons I stopped blogging: Too much time in front of computer Not enough time to write about what I [...]

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Negotiating Your Starting Salary: The Importance of That Extra Few Grand

One thing that many academics hitting the job market overlook is the importance of negotiating the initial offer made by the interested institutions. (Historically, women and people of color are much less likely to negotiate for that few extra grand.) What I want to stress is how important this becomes in the long run. Let’s [...]

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The Value of Not Accepting Late Work

I had an amazing thing happen this semester: every student turned in every assignment on time. I don’t think that happened due to the caliber of students or the time I was teaching the course, for those things didn’t make that big of a change in other dimensions of the course. The reason why it [...]

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Teaching Students to Write: Dealing with the Perennial Problem of the Pile of Crap

I’m currently designing my next course and I am faced with a problem that gets me every semester: what’s the best way to teach students how to write well while balancing that objective with many others? Many people in my department subscribe to the “look-Ma-no-hands” pedagogical principle, which asserts that the best way to learn [...]

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