Getting Back Into The Swing Of Things

For the record, it's been exactly four months since my last blog post, so ... let's talk about that!

It's not that I haven't wanted to blog, I've done something I know a few bloggers do on occasion. For a stretch of time, you get into this cycle where you begin to sketch out ideas for blog posts ...

something just happens and you can't finish it. Maybe not for a lack of time, or motivation, or effort, or even creativity -- or, perhaps, it's a combination of all those reasons! Whatever the case may be, you end up in a loop where your great ideas don't come out, week after week, until you find yourself in my situation: four months and not a single published piece!

The weird part is that I really don't know what the cause of this has been. I've definitely been strained for time, but not any more than in my other semesters (or, at least not that I've felt). And it's not a fear of blogging, in fact in that time I started my own blog (and similarly struggled to keep posting).

So I can be accountable to something, I want to try a new way to keep myself on track to posting here on the Oberlin blogs again. I'm going to list a few ideas for blogs I've had for a while now, and promise to get them out before summer. Yeah, summer's a long way off, but this late into the semester I know that I'd just stress myself out if I promised to have anything done before this semester's end. I'll need to figure out time to carve into my schedule, but I'm planning on writing posts the rest of this year about:

• How We Use Calendars
  • I've noticed that even among digital calendar users, there are a lot of interesting but varied patterns and intentions behind the usage of calendars. Things get even more interesting when you consider the work that goes into keeping a physical calendar or even keeping both physical and digital versions! There's a lot to discuss here, and I'm still debating whether to do it with surveys, interviews, or some combination, but whatever I end up doing, I'm really excited about it, mainly because I rely on my own calendar so much.
• Reflections On Classroom Dynamics In Higher Education
  • I've had a few interesting, out-of-the-box classroom set ups this semester, and I had some unique experiences in my first few semesters as well. I want to take some time to look at the great work my professors have done in shaking up classroom models to really focus on engagement in class to hopefully let you know which professors to keep in mind when registering for classes, or simply if you're interested in hearing my personal narrative!
• On Eating And Getting Things Done
  • A while back I sent around a survey (feel free to fill out it out, it's only four questions!) asking people about how often they skip meals because of school work. I want to dig into visualizing data, and I think there are some interesting, simple correlations to be made here. There's no way this is representative, but I think it's an important discussion to have.
• Leaving The Oberlin Bubble
  • I went to a conference for computer science research at the end of October, and I think it's worth noting how Oberlin connected me with that opportunity, what my first academic conference was like, what getting out of the Oberlin "bubble" felt like, and -- perhaps most relevant -- what it was like getting ahead/catching up on a week's worth of missed class!

Note: This post will be updated and linked to the posts whenever I finish them! So if the above list has any links, then yay, future me stuck to something!

This is going to be rather strange for me, but I'm happy with the ideas I have floating around right now and I look forward to updating this post in the future! If you have any ideas on future post topics I've presented here, or want to suggest I write/ draw/ build something else for the blogs feel free to leave a comment below.