Lessons Learned from #CSUSCOMS114

May 10, 2012 in Education with 1 Comment

Well, another semester has come to an end.

Today I gave the final exam for my Communications and American Culture course and said farewell to a great group of students.

I spent a lot of time this semester thinking about what and how to teach my students: Which canonical cultural studies readings should I assign? How deep should we dive into Goffman’s dramaturgical metaphor? Are five-year-old books about new media outdated? All this planning and prepping is finished and now I’d like to step back and share some of the lessons I learned this spring:

  • The projector always fails on a day when I plan to show a movie clip! I should bring an audio file on my laptop, just in case.
  • Nothing gets a classroom of young adults talking like a debate about music sampling and copyright law.
  • Impression management and online identities are popular topics that I should dedicate more time for next time around.
  • Some students love using Twitter in the classroom; other students get freaked out by the idea of their professor seeing their twitter feed. What could they be up to? ;)
  • Always bring an extra dry erase marker, especially to a review session.
  • Contrary to popular belief, students who sit in the back row can be really engaged and contribute a great deal to discussion.
  • “Hyphy” is not an abbreviation for hyphen.
  • Teaching Marx and Engels for the fourth time is just as hard as teaching them for the first. When does it get easier to sum up “The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas“?
  • Nothing builds bonds between peers like a student-led donut party!

I’m sure the list could go on and on, but those are the highlights.

Thanks for the tidbits, #CSUSCOMS114!

What I Learned about Decision Making from a Break In

May 1, 2012 in Education with 0 Comments

Last week someone broke into our house and stole some of our stuff.  Bummer.

I’ve had time to process this invasion of privacy and am ready now to share what I learned from the experience, which is this:

Intuition plays a crucial role in decision making.

First I’ll share the break in story and then some psychological insights to explain why.

When I first came home to the robbery, I sensed that something was different — that someone might have been in our house. I wasn’t sure why, but I went to my neighbors’ to recruit someone to come check things out with me. When I tried to explain why I was concerned, all I could say was, “I just have this feeling, an intuition, that someone was here.” Continue Reading…

The Power of the Pomodoro

April 27, 2012 in Education, Purposeful Living with 0 Comments

If you’re anything like me, you’re a perpetual multitasker.  This quality can be helpful, but it can also be a handicap — like when you’re trying to write a dissertation (!), or a book, or slowly complete a large creative project.  These kinds of tasks require single-mindedness, focus, and diligence.

When I first started my dissertation work, anytime I sat down to write I ended up working on something other than my thesis.  The undertaking felt so big and so I preferred to work on other little tasks that I knew I could finish quickly.  I needed to find a way to make myself concentrate on writing and not get sidetracked by smaller projects.

When I told a graduate student friend of mine about the difficulty I was experiencing, she recommended I check out Phinished — a dissertation and theses writing forum and support group.  It was here that I first learned about the power of the Pomodoro Technique for focusing on and finishing small chunks of writing. Continue Reading…

Infographic: How Scholars are Using Twitter

April 18, 2012 in Education with 0 Comments

To enlarge • Source: Jason Priem • Thanks to ReadWriteWeb

Why is The Hunger Games so Gripping?

April 15, 2012 in Culture, Relationships with 2 Comments

A couple weeks ago I went to see The Hunger Games with my husband and our friends, Ashlee and Brett Gadd.  I didn’t know much about the storyline before entering the theater, but my brother — who teaches high school math — told me that it was all the rage with his students and I needed to find out more about it.

I had heard Hunger Games compared to “Lord of the Flies with a love story” and I knew that it involved kids killing kids, yet I wasn’t quite prepared for what I saw on the big screen.

When I exited the theater, I felt flustered.  I found the movie, with its graphic slayings and relational roller coasters, to be pretty enervating.  Yet I really wanted to know what happened next, particularly whether or not Katniss would take on the Capitol.  I felt drawn to the story, yet put-off by it and recognized that this was a strange mix of feelings.

In an attempt to understand what it is about The Hunger Games that is so gripping, I sought out critics’ analyses of the franchise’s wild popularity.  The most intriguing account I read on this topic was by Mark Roberts for Patheos.

Roberts argues that The Hunger Games popularity, especially with American teens, cannot be explained solely by the typical features of young adult fiction favorites: a page-turning plot and romantic side-story.  Instead, he proposes that the Hunger Games’ fame is due to the fact that young Americans relate to a tale about youth alienation in an oppressive adult society.  Yikes.

Here is the gist of his argument: Continue Reading…

Weekend Reading – Easter Edition

April 7, 2012 in Faith with 0 Comments

The cross — a symbol of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ — is simultaneously a horrible and exuberant image. I love the way this design by Jim LePage captures this synthesis. See the rest of his Easter collection here.

Why Easter Sunday makes Good Friday good.

Natural Easter egg dyes.

An Easter message for those who have been hurt by the church.

Are you alone for the holidays? Make the most of this time of solitude.

Still deciding what to eat for Easter? Try something off of this vegan Easter menu.

He is risen!

Anxiety and Faith: A Book Review of Anxious Christian

March 28, 2012 in Faith, Health, Purposeful Living with 0 Comments

Today I am honored to guest post a book review of Rhett Smith‘s The Anxious Christian: Can God Use Your Anxiety for Good? on Barefoot on 45th.  Lesley Miller, the blogger behind Barefoot on 45th, is a freelance writer, marketing consultant, doting mother, caring wife, and dear friend of mine.
 
If you’re visiting this blog for the first time, welcome!  You can read about me here.  I write about higher education, health, faith, culture, relationships, service, and purposeful living.  I hope you’ll subscribe and join me here again.
 
To read my guest post and join the conversation about anxiety and faith, please visit Barefoot on 45th.

Don’t Surrender Your Voice

March 27, 2012 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

Earlier this morning I met with some of the members of my research team in San Diego via Skype.  We get together every week — whether we are co-present or tele-present — for discussion and to read each other’s work.

Today, while we were critiquing a section from one of my fellow grad student’s dissertation-in-progress, another group member — an alumnus who finished his dissertation two years ago — offered some writing advice that I think every author should hear.

The alumnus, who sensed that the graduate student felt he needed to talk about a particular theory in the same way as its originator, encouraged his friend with something similar to the following:

Don’t surrender your voice to talk about other people’s ideas on their terms.  Tell your story and use it to illuminate the ideas of others.

I’m going to take this nugget with me, and I hope you will too!

Today’s Goal

March 18, 2012 in Faith, Purposeful Living with 0 Comments

Lizzy Stewart

#CSUSCOMS114

March 8, 2012 in Culture, Education, Purposeful Living with 0 Comments

I am currently teaching a course titled Communication and American Culture at California State University, Sacramento. In this course, my students and I examine the tension between the exploitative and progressive possibilities of mass media on and for American culture.

The first half of the course is designed to look critically at the relationship between consumerism and American media and how this has led to what some scholars characterize as a “dissolution of public discourse” in America.

The second half of the course is aimed to encourage students to rethink the public sphere and consider how new media open up novel possibilities for civic debate, news sharing, community building, social activism, and more.

Today marked the halfway point of the course and we are now transitioning from our critical to constructive analysis of American media and culture. To begin, I’ve invited my students to join me on Twitter and to use #CSUSCOMS114 to organize our discussion.

If you want to see what my brilliant students have to say, follow our conversation here!

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