On the bright side, I ran eight miles and feel really good about doing 13 in early May. I lost another couple pounds and feel good about that. I also got to see Hamilton. Unreal. How beautiful. If you have not see it, I hope you get the chance someday.
So, what about work?
Well, the month started off well enough with a couple conference presentations. I got to do the “What Happened to My Community” thing at Transforming the Teaching & Learning Environment and then, along with Nathalie Tassler, we shared the story of a collaboration between UW Bothell faculty and faculty at the University of Scotland.
Later in the month, a very nice faculty who had asked me to come into her class and share some ideas around giving presentation accidentally forwarded an email to me, to herself, and I never knew she had cancelled the event till the night before…
I had my Captain Kirk shirt, a bunch of fun handouts, gifts for the students, and I made this site that looked at some things I have done. I was pretty sad. I did have fun putting some things together on a damn Google Site. It is just too easy. And crap, you know how I feel about that….
In the wonderful Teaching and Learning on the Open Web, we had a couple of podcasters from Ireland join us. It was so wonderful to hear them and hear the stories they have around podcasting in academic settings.
I received a card in the mail from Giulia Forsythe. I had met with her via Zoom on March 5th. That made my whole week.
For the February Pacific Northwest Instricutional Designers Co-op, I had one wonderful person. Skye Nyugen, from Lane Community College in Oregon. We had a great shat for an hour and later she sent me some of the content she has been building using a tool I had never heard of called, Genially. Here is one of them. Very webby.
I had another POD old timers meeting that ended up being cancelled cuz everyone had other things to do…
I met with the COIL faculty again. I visited some wonderful faculty in their offices while wandering around the campus like a lost ghost. It is so amazing to me how hard it is to just stand up, walk out of the office and wander through all the faculty office spaces. And, how rewarding it is EVERY DAMN time I do it.
In February, we had an amazing student panel on neurodiversity in the classroom. Students always tell us what students need so much better than adults.
Our “part-time” faculty are getting a new office space. It cost a bazillion bucks and had two really awful looking pods to keep others out. Or something in? Anyway, my one suggestion was to add a nice plant, a few books, our contact info on a placard, and maybe some useful handouts on the shelf on the left of the image below. That is what I do these days. Add plants….
The more brutal element of the month was really disheartening. Like it pretty much killed what little energy I had going from a good January. We had the opening of a former colleague get posted. He was an academic technologist. It is a great and valuable role. That is true.
However, the posted position had a minimum requirement of a bachelor’s degree and three years experience. I would say that is fine at the low end. What was really difficult to see was that the pay went from just under what I make to more than I make as an instructional designer with 18 years of experience.
Devastating. Completely humiliating.
So…. That was that. Goodbye February.
Addendum
I received some beautiful small notebooks from the wonderful people in Glasgow. After our brilliant collaboration we had in November of last year, it is soooo wonderful to have a small gift of appreciation. It is one of the things we had not really planned for and I am excited to see how we improve on this next year.
At the end of the month, I also had the opportunity to spend some time with a couple colleagues chatting with some faculty developers from Waseda University in Japan. I have met with others from the university a couple times before and it is always wonderful to hear about the work they do.
Also had a wonderful end of the month meeting with a former colleague. It is alway so wonderful to keep relationships after someone has “left the silo.” While I do enjoy working with the people here on this little raft, it is meet and keeping in touch with all the others that makes me feel rich.
