Final Portfolio Revisions: BDS 7-26-13

Becoming mindful of the body. Find the breath. Anchor my feet to the ground. Separate my jaw. Move my tongue to the bottom of my mouth. Focus eyes on something distant, then close. Stretch fingers and wrists.

Begin.

Planning Writing: I have the final-ish draft of my portfolio done and I shall use this time to revise/edit for submission. I wanted to do it last night, but I realized I had been near-binging and wanted to practice stopping before I was ready. Today I will pick it up in the state it was in and continue the progress towards completion.

Work.

As I finished up the revision/editing of my final, I created a page on the Wiki so people could easily upload their final portfolios. I wrote out instructions to hopefully avoid similar confusion from the first submission. I re-posted the one final portfolio that had already been submitted to the original portfolios page.

Comfort Check: Refocused eyes. Moved feet and legs out from underneath my desk. Stretched back fingers and hands. Sipped coffee.

Return to work.

More of the same: tidying up my portfolio. Checking links on the wiki. Making cutsey comments to my classmates thanking them for a great class. Placing a bow on the work I've done thus far in the semester.

Online Curriculum Development: BDS 7-25-13

I worked on the online curriculum project for about four hours today after class. Even though I had a bunch of stuff to do (on a deadline because of a meeting with the ET@MO developer), I still tried to approach it with a sense of mindfulness. How do you navigate those situations where you are tip-toeing a fine line towards binging? I chunked it out and made sure I took care of my physical and mental comfort. Here's (sort of what I did)

1. After class: went to office. Met partner. Chatted. Wrote a bit on the syllabus. I stopped 10 minutes before we needed to leave for the meeting so I could check in to my body and maintain comfort.

2. After the (hour long) meeting, we walked back to the car together. Even though we were talking about what happened at the meeting, I tried to stay with my breath and concentrate at the same time.

3. Went home. Ate dinner. Chillaxed.

4. Started creating content once again. This was the most traditional writing time of the day, and I made sure to stay mindful of as many of the mindfulness practices as possible, including: comfort checks (every 20 mins), mindful of posture, longer breaks on the hours, time spent making notes to myself in the margins of my curriculum plan.

Comprehensive Exams: BDS 7-24-13

Planning Writing: Today I will do some work at re-gathering sources that will be important for the first push of my next phase of the comps. I am going to stick with the 'TNS' portion of my list, so I'm going to immerse myself in those conversations so as to have a strong grasp about how my work will contribute to the TN conversation as well as the RC conversation.

Comfort Check: Stretched. Flexed muscles. straightened legs and feet. Separated teeth. Lowered tongue. Re-focused on the task at hand after terrible paper-ripping distraction.

Comfort Check 2: Paused, checked for comfort. Stretched. Un curled legs. Focused eyes out the window at a near and distant focal point.

I worked during this time to begin to make connections between Latour's ANT and the methods that TN scholars employ (particularly Dingo's network methodology as she traces TN concepts across times.

Online Curriculum Development: BDS 7-23-13

Today I spent an hour writing the syllabus for my online course this spring. It was an interesting writing moment because I was using Google Docs so I could collaborate with my co-developer. We started our session by planning and brainstorming and then we went about our task individually.

I was mindful of my posture and the positioning of my tongue throughout. Before I started I took a moment to gather my breath and come back into the body.

Comfort break about 30 mins in. Walked about the room. Grabbed a pop (because of thirst) and a veggie boat.

30 more minutes. Finished my sections. Waiting for co-developer to respond.

Success!

Online Curriculum Development: BDS 7-22-13

Planning: Continue working on Unit 3. Make as much progress as time allows. Make notes as to where I am when time runs out. Continue there during my next BDS later today, 

Comfort Check: My jaw was clenched (blegh) and my legs were curled back under me putting unnecessary pressure on my right knee and ankle. 

Negative Energy from class discussion has carried over. I want to apologize, and I'm planning it for the end of class, but it's taking away the focus during this BDS. Get it back Max. 

More negative energy during this comfort break. I'm having serious doubts about the project as a whole. Not that it shouldn't/won't get done, but of the efficacy, pedagogical soundness, and student-centered-ness of the whole thing. Attempting to return to comfort and fluency in 3...2...1....

Notes for whence to begin again: FIgure out Journal numbering. Decide on Beatles sources. Find library exercise. Stay calm. 

Comprehensive Exams: BDS 7-19-13

Pre-writing: Making connections between lists of texts by looking at others' lists and finding the overlaps in my list and then seeing which of my works could support/augment/supplement/etc those works to bring a transnational reading to RhetComp:

I noticed the lists online are mostly from European universities. I wonder what this says about the state of academics in America?

Comfort Check: Accidentally did the Macarena (while stretching my arms and back).

Finding many connections between food and transnationalism, but that's not exactly what I'm after. I wonder why more scholars are not interested in the way these two streams run together?

Next session I shall be more conscious of connecting the works I see on the web with my own and interjecting my own opinions/thoughts/ideas/ reactions therein.

Online Curriculum Development: BDS 7-15-13

Mindfulness Practices: Being aware of the body. Feeling myself sitting. Taking stock of the sensations in my writing body parts. Brief focusing on my breathing. 

Short Planning: Begin working on Unit 3. Begin writing overviews. Be as descriptive and helpful as possible. Anticipate the obstacles/problems/confusions/dis-clarities that could arise in my students in this unit. 

15 mins:

Comfort Check: HUGE back crack. Where did that tension come from (after all the chair yoga at the beginning)? Rolled wrists. Un-focused eyes. Straightened back. Separated teeth. Tongue to lower-dental palate. 

10 mins:

Not much progress, but I think I got some good pre-writing-type stuff done. Made some connections between the different weeks that I probably wouldn't have been able to before. 

Mindful Reading: Boice pp 59-64

I'm going to play into Boice's hand here, by expressing the same reservations about his 'Shaping Ideas into Imagination' section as his writers did. It might just be that I'm a little tired today, which makes me more skeptical and confrontational, but I shared in these two points:

1. How am I ever going to get any work done if I keep setting aside more time for Brief Daily Sessions?
2. Public scrutiny is NOT what I need right now in my process. 

As always, Boice has plenty of advice for those of us with these reservations. But what I think makes his program so workable, is that he addresses these reservations simply by going back to the advice he's been giving all along. This can be frustrating at first (I've been in class where the students were vitriolically opposed to Boice and found this to be more of an annoyance than anything. My perception was that these students weren't going to try anything aside of what had worked for them in the past, and if they had lowered their walls just a bit they could have appreciated Boice's program and maybe it could have helped them. But I digress), because it might seem like he's just repeating himself. However, there's some comfort in knowing that these practical suggestions can be augmented by simply remembering a few of Boice's key strategies: Wait, BDS, Community, Start. 

Anyway. Boice addresses these reservations with comments his writers have made. The examples he brings up of people skeptical of an additional BDS mostly show that as writing becomes more regular and fluent, it takes less time to do some of the 'warm up' activities that bog down many-a writing session. Instead of warming up for those 10-15 mins, with regular practice you're able to spend those on more imagination-supporting activities. I can see how this is true, but I still wonder how many hours are in a normal Boice-day. 

I am less resistant to the 'make your imagination phase public' advice. Advice I've gotten from a number of people of the years has to do with creating a community around yourself that you can interact with at all stages of the process. Reading groups, writing groups, coauthored pieces, etc. All of these things, I think, are useful for bringing those imagination exercises to the front, bouncing ideas off of others' ideas and seeing what makes sense together and what new realms you can enter by creating an open dialogue of imagination. 

***Listening Notes****

Yesterday I found out that my favorite radio station from back home streams live on the net. 89.3 The Current is a Minnesota Public Radio station that is unlike any of the popular radio choices out there now. They specialize in more Indy, Rock, College-type music. And the best part: No Commercials!

You can check out their live stream here: http://www.thecurrent.org/listen

Application for Funding for Food Studies Conference: BDS (in-class) 7-10-13

Brief report on today's In-Class BDS:

I had an agenda for finishing the work that I started last time during our in-class BDS. I didn't have much left to do, but I had also stopped in the middle of a sentence from last time, so it was easy to pick up this time. 

At the beginning I tried to be very mindful of my body and how I was sitting in my desk. However, when Donna stopped us for a comfort check, I realized that I had sacrificed a lot of the comfort I started out with because I lost track of my mindfulness. When we stopped for our comfort check, here's what I noticed:

• My jaw was clenched and I was holding my tongue low in my mouth
• I had pulled my legs back behind me under my desk placing additional stress on my knees, ankles, and feet.
• My back was slightly hunched but in a comfortable position
• My eyes were good
• My wrists, hands, and fingers felt good (it was only a brief BDS (monotonous much))

When we began the last part of the BDS, I did my best to acknowledge and reposition the problem areas of my body. I was mindful to the end of the session, then, of the discomfort that had arisen and I was able to mitigate those problems. 

Best of all, I sent off my application!

Online Curriculum Development: BDS, 7-6-2013

I only have about 15 minutes to write today, and usually I would just write this off as a lost cause and do something else. However, I'm trying real hard to get in the habit of daily writing, so I'm going to fight my better instincts and do a little somethin somethin,.

One of the mindfulness practices will be really helpful here: having a clear, attainable goal. I left one thing simmering from my session last night, and I'm going to use this time to finalize the section I started last night. All that's left is to create a Peer Review guide for the second formal paper of my online class. Peer Review is an important element of my pedagogy, and keeping it central in my online class is absolutely a priority. It's challenging, but important. 

Okay, here we go. 15 minutes. One peer review guide. Case closed. 

RESULTS:

Okay, so that was more like 35 mins. My focused went away from my work a couple of times, but I was able to bring it back quickly and keep working. I didn't take a comfort break because I was surprised by the fact that it took me longer than I thought it would. If I had planned for 35 minutes, I certainly would have stopped for a break. Now I find that my back hurts a little bit and my eyes are harder to focus. Hunched and staring is no way to be. Also, I think this took longer than expected because I didn't account for the extra steps that were required to actually publish the Peer Review sheet that I wrote. I had to log onto BB. I had to create this, edit that, rearrange the other thing, etc, etc, etc. It might have been a better estimate of my work time if I had SIMPLY completed the PR sheet and then posted it later or tomorrow. Oh well, I guess it takes practice to make and achieve goals for a BDS. Something more to work on I guess. 

Online Curriculum Development: BDS, 7-5-13

For today's BDS, I plan to continue working through the 'overview' portions of online curriculum I'm developing. I think this is a good task for my BDSs, because it takes a lot of critical thinking. However, it's not reinventing the wheel or anything like that. I've already put a lot of thought and planning into these weeks, so I definitely have a guide to go by. I'm finding myself having more fun with this type of writing, something I'll have to keep in mind in the future: if I started previously, it's easier to stay positive about the work I'm doing.

15 minutes in, I took a comfort check. I reminded myself to keep my tounge down to relive the pressure in my face. I also had to move my legs (which were propped up on the table) because one was starting to go to sleep. My laptop is warm, and my lap is warm because of it. I'm going to stand up and do some comfort walking to make the most of this break while I think about what comes next.

Got some good writing done. I wrote for about an hour. Took the one comfort check. And made mental notes of any times I felt discomfort (some in my fingers, my leg./foot started hurting again because of how I had them on the coffee table, eyes strained a bit but not bad, thirsty, ready for music, bed will be nice).

I was especially mindful of my breathing during this BDS (thanks to the UCLA breathing meditation I did earlier). It was interesting being so focused on my breathing, while still trying to use my brain to compose. It was a tricky tug of war, but I kind of like the idea of being open to a variety of senses while still having an anchor point to the here and now.

More tomorrow.

Online Curriculum Development: BDS, 7-2-13

I have a development meeting tomorrow (fancy way of saying going over to my friend M's house, chatting about the online course, and laughing for a while), so I decided to work on my online course development for my Brief Daily Session today. 

For each of our units, we have overview documents that explain what our activities, goals, and expectations are for that unit of work. We already have most of the content organized and shared, but there are many of these overview documents left to create. 

These are interesting yet difficult to write up. There's a lot of information we need to convey to students, and how to do that in a purely textual environment is a completely different experience for me. I found myself constantly deciding what would be important for students to know, and what we could expect them to learn/figure out for themselves. It's fun to keep my pedagogy hat on, but it also takes time because there's so much to think about. 

Luckily these aren't long, and I got through about 5 overview statements in the 60 minute BDS I did tonight. 

I think the fact that I have a meeting tomorrow (albeit with my friend) has contributed a little bit of stress to the process. We have very different methods for getting things done, as well as a very different methods for interpersonal communication. I'm sure it will be fine, but when my mind trailed off of the task, it was usually because I was thinking about the meeting. 

I also have the MN Twins game playing on the radio in my ear buds. There's probably something there as to why I'm distracted, but oh well. There're some sacrifices I'm not willing to make (even though they're bums).

 

Mindful Reading: Boice pp 1-5

When Professor Strickland asked us to carry our mindful practices into our reading, I was a bit apprehensive at first. I thought it would be limiting and constricting to only take up five pages at a time of a reading. If there's anything I've learned in my time in school, it's that there is always something else that you could read (and profs. usually seem to assign limitless amounts of reading). But as I read the first pages of Boice, I found it to be comforting to know I was only responsible for a few pages. It allowed me to take it really slow, to consider what he was saying, and (most importantly) to weigh his ideas against my own experiences.

To illustrate his catalog of obstacles to regular, mindful writing, Boice may just as well have been watching me try and write over the past year. I was able to relate to almost all of his examples of counter-productive writing: passivity, binging, elation (followed by depression), and not approaching writing as a social act. I, like the people he quotes in this chapter, was able to produce some material in this time. But I certainly didn't set myself up to be able to sustain any type of writing program (which is something I am excited to practice in this class).

For me, I think there are two main ways I will be able to journey to comfort and fluency. The first is already built into the class: Brief Daily Sessions. I want to unyoke myself from the waiting/binging cycle and make writing more a part of my daily life. Second, I want to make writing a more social act (something Boice points to as a way to shed light on some of these problems writers have). The image on page 5 of Proust naked in his chamber, feverishly scribbling away was one that I could (sadly) relate to. The woman quoted on page 4 who forsook her entire social life to binge on writing her novel is also one that I could relate to, along with the subsequent feelings of despair at forgetting how to be a person. Practicing these two things will hopefully bring me closer to being the type of writer I want to be. I am truly a social person, and I take time out of my day (everyday) to be social with different people. Combining that with a regular, unhurried, moderately emotional writing experience, I think I will be able to move further towards a productive writing practice which I can sustain over my career.

******** Author's Note *******

I am usually listening to music as I write. I will usually include what I'm listening to in my posts. Today I went back in time for some easy-listening singer-songwriter stuff. If you haven't before, I would highly recommend listening to Jack Johnson for concentrating, for dozing off, or for putting yourself in a good mood. Enjoy!