Hannah Alpert-Abrams

Hate that for you! It was also hard for me. I think it took me about seven years to recover if I'm being honest, but I can now say that there is hope on the other side.

Back to basics on grad ed reform Dear friends, Here in Brooklyn it's finally spring, kind of. The piles of filthy snow aren't completely gone, but the light is changing, the birds are waking...

I wrote about some VERY simple things that would make grad ed a lot better. Some of this is not that hard! Tl;dr: Make sure students have a clear sense of expectations, help them understand the institution, & put up some basic guardrails around advising.

buttondown.com/inkcap/archi...

I was gonna say something unkind about faculty but then I remembered so many of my friends are faculty now

I guess if I worked in a grad program where I got to reimagine what "comprehensive knowledge of the field" meant for a new generation of students, I would focus less on memorization and more on generative, generous, and collective engagement.

yes don't get me started on the dissertation.

This is also how we did our exams. And my committee was stellar! I still think the entire concept is like 50% nostalgia, 40% not having enough time to think about the pedagogical implications, and 10% "if I had to do it you should too"

See you got lucky! I just developed an anxiety disorder and wasn't able to read a book all the way through for like five years after that.

I think they are bad as scholarly apprenticeship tasks unless you are apprenticing to be extremely anxious and overwhelmed and afraid of failure.

I remember a great conversation once with someone on twitter about how comps could be reimagined as a multiyear process of developing disciplinary expertise in community while building a broad range of associated skills.

"read an impossible amount of text in a vacuum and then performatively demonstrate recall under extreme pressure" is not how we develop generous thinkers or creative intellectual communities sorry

idk why comps lists are going around but comprehensive exams are bad pedagogically.

Community Broadband Networks as Sites for Learning YouTube video by Benton Institute for Broadband & Society

Watch @alexwermercolan.bsky.social speak on how PCW and community broadband initiatives engage residents to help plan, build, and maintain digital infrastructure in their own neighborhoods. Check out the webinar with Benton Institute for Broadband and Society: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDwQ...

Trying to stay in academia has been so demoralizing even without [waves hands]. And yet every time I log onto this website I'm met by a diverse community of scholars working in a broad range of fields, all of whom believe in and fiercely advocate for a better academy. What could be more hopeful?

Well that is definitely part of the answer lol

we're basically experts.

omg ok that could be nice!

And, relatedly, if anyone has thoughts on the logistics of hosting a pop-up virtual workshop when you don't have an institutional platform.

As I doomscroll (again) I'm wondering whether there would be interest in pop-up virtual workshop on "How to get things done when the world is on fire"

Sometimes I forget how deeply sad this is

deleting every post because I really cannot keep it together today!

The New Scratch How is anyone who writes making any money right now?

“We are living through a moment where the labor of writers is being exploited to create rapacious technologies that make everything stupider, exponentially hasten the demise of the planet’s ecosystems, and prop up fascists and dictators worldwide.”

Enter SCRATCH www.talkscratch.com/the-new-scra...

to think, if you had just been a little more selfish it could've been $68.

(But also! College should be free.)

I keep reminding people that admins hate English departments because they are popular (read: inefficient), not because they aren’t. AI is in a long line of technologies that promise to solve that problem for them.

More 👏 money 👏 for 👏 meetings

Re upping this because I don't think my moms brilliance got enough traction.

👏👏👏👏

Quit Like a Woman | The Revolutionary New Book by Holly Whitaker Holly Whitaker shares her addiction recovery journey while revealing the insidious role alcohol plays in our society and in the lives of women.

www.quitlikeawoman.com

And when it comes to choosing a life without a substance or habit that actively hurts you, Whitaker writes that it's really hard and requires both commitment and the formation of new habits of resiliency. I'm really appreciating her perspective on how to make those changes.

When it comes to advertising the conspiracy theories are actually true, they are trying to kill you to make money! That's how cigarettes were, that's how alcohol is, and that's how social media is.