Getting Messy with Personal Knowledge Management — Thinking is messy. I tell this to my first-year university students every semester, but they look back at me with glossy-eyed stares, thinking that I’m giving them another lecture on why they shouldn’t procrastinate on assignments. But that’s not true. I want them to procrastinate more effectively. It’s a hard…

The Illusion and Despair of Short Gains — The specter of self-loathing haunts my anxiety. Like a well-worn path through the park, I follow without conscious effort. It’s instinct. I’m horrible. I’m worthless. My existence is meaningless. These words float in my mind close to the surface of consciousness at all times. It’s the demon I can’t exorcise…

Personal knowledge management (PKM) is on the rise, with popular applications like Roam Research, [Obsidian MD](https://obsidian.md/), and [Notion](https://www.notion.so/) leading the charge into a new kind of note-taking. Except, it’s not exactly new. Well, not all of it, at least. If you’ve ever kept track of valuable information through a bullet…

Trackmania (2020) and the Zen of Racing Games — I press down on the accelerator, and the car rolls down the hill, gathering speed. I lose traction for a moment, the tires sliding on the dirt road, and a slight bump sends me into a drift. That’s okay. I’m still gathering speed as I crest the next hill. …

Anxiety, Privilege, and Hope during the Pandemic — The train ambles past a small graveyard in the middle of a field lined by pastures. Its half-crumbling stonework rises in a column at the center, a lonely fortress standing watch over the interred. With the return of a misty Irish rain, drought-browned grass is just a memory of the…

A guide for students on how to persuade people and accomplish goals — If you’ve ever struggled to share an idea with a friend, family member, or co-worker, then you know that effectively communicating with other people can be challenging. Whether you’re posting to social media or arguing in the comments section of an article, it’s important to understand how to effectively persuade…

Learning to podcast kept my remote students engaged and connected. Here’s how to bring podcasting to your classroom. — The Covid-19 crisis reshaped the landscape of education. While many schools and colleges are pushing for a return to in-person classes, online and hybrid teaching will remain part of the conversation for the foreseeable future. It’s hard to overstate the challenges this poses to creating an effective learning environment: many…

Tips and strategies for building a podcasting assignment that does more than embrace the trendy — By day, I’m a writing professor. At night, I’m a podcaster. Over the past few years, I’ve gone from making podcasts as a hobby to viewing them as an integral resource in my teaching toolbox. While there’s no single correct way to build a podcasting assignment into a class, this…