Year in Review: Goodbye, 2024

 It's time once again for the year in review! This'll be a short one, as this year was a fallow one for lessons spotted that were recorded in the blog (though certainly never short on lessons for me). 

Plug and Play Miniseries Lesson Spotting with AI: Designing Prompts (but not like that) Take My Advice: If You Have Trouble With Tech

What have I been doing other than (slowly, slowly) writing these posts? Well, it's hard to believe, but early last year, I got an eagerly sought but unanticipatedly early promotion, going from "Associate Director of Faculty Engagement" to "Associate Director of Faculty Engagement-- and also Faculty Engagement Principal," essentially taking on a leadership role for our small but mighty Faculty Engagement functional team at Everspring. Looking back from the turn of the year, it feels like an incredibly long amount of time to be accomplished in such a short time, if that makes any sense. I've gone from awaiting the chance to be certified in things to running the certification process, which is a cool thing to think about. 

It's also been a challenging year personally and politically. From where I sit right now, the coming year looks incredibly long, and full of uncertainty. So, I've been trying to find my way back to the small and helpful-- the small lessons that we can give and receive, and the small actions that may have ripple effects. If I spot any worth sharing, you'll hear it here first. 

Take My Advice: If You Have Trouble With Tech

Sometimes technology betrays us! It’s happened to us all, usually at a point when we are actively trying to seem competent. If you ALWAYS have problems, however, there might be something on your end you could change. There are some common problems I’ve identified from my time supporting faculty and graduate students with technical issues; these issues not only also affect students (and thus could be usefully passed on to them for their own tech needs) but also characterize a decent portion of my own issues when I stop to reflect. Some of the biggest below:

You’re going too fast. Technology can often allow us to go faster! But going too fast with a technology can not only lead you to make mistakes (guilty), it is also sometimes simply too fast for the tool to keep up. For example, Canvas often needs a refresh to show an updated grade when grading quizzes– it simply won’t update its view for you immediately upon the updating of a quiz grade. And, it’s of no use to start reviewing New Analytics in Canvas immediately; it takes time for it to analyze student activity and grade data and present it to you. It can help if you think of technology not as an instant communicator, but as a collaborator who might take a little time to get back to you. 

You’re using the wrong browser/old hardware. Imagine the software you’re trying to use is a gold-plated, top of the line refrigerator. It’s very nice, it functions perfectly, and it has a lot of features that you’re looking forward to using. Now imagine you give that refrigerator to a Pekingese and tell it to carry it up the stairs, install it, and get it functioning.

A Pekingese who would try really hard, though. Image by No-longer-here via Pixabay.

Not only is that Pekingese not going to be able to lift that refrigerator, it’s also not going to have any idea of what you’re talking about. Using incompatible hardware or software to get your tool working is similar– generally, it’s either not strong enough to carry the task, it doesn’t have the capacity to understand what it would need to understand to carry out the task, or both. 

You’re using a nonstandard tool for the job. Imagine that refrigerator again. It has a door, right? It plugs in. You put food in it. All these qualities are very similar to a microwave, but if you try to use the refrigerator as a microwave, you’re going to be disappointed. Similarly, looking at what a tool was designed for and evaluating if that is in line with your ambitions for the tool can be helpful. That’s not to say you can’t use a tool at sideways purposes– I would argue half of my discussions of Twine are sideways to its intent. (Incidentally, the medium of Interactive Fiction also has a lengthy history of using tech in ways contrary to its intention for creative purposes, so I feel I’m part of a rich tradition.) However, you’ll experience less frustration if you do so intentionally, rather than realizing that you’re trying to give feedback with a software that’s really only meant for file sharing, or facilitate group collaboration with a tool that only allows one or two users at a time. 

I’m in an interesting predicament at the moment where I’m trying to use AI tools to complete some data analysis. I am reading about good prompting strategies and trying to use them. I’m trying to build a foundation and then build on top of it. I’m trying multiple different strategies to see if I can come to some different results, even if only to give me some insight into how to better get the results I want in future. Yet, at the moment, it’s been more time checking and evaluating and figuring out where it’s getting its ideas than actual time saved in the analysis from the way I normally do it. 

I don’t think I’ve been going too fast, although I admit sometimes I see the demos of how quickly AI can pop together information and read reports of how it’s dramatically cutting time spent on certain tasks and I’m like “shouldn’t it just be able to do this for me already??” My hardware and software don’t seem to be the limiting issue– it’s not that it’s too slow, it’s that the conclusions are incorrect or partially correct or inventing some information that is not quite there. And the tool by all reports seems to be the tool for the job (see above demos), although perhaps a lesson I may end up learning is that some parts of the job are beyond it. I think the issue is actually a number 4, which is that the tool is more complicated to use than I am treating it as, and I don’t know enough yet about using it effectively. Straightforward and simple UX is powerful, but it can come at the expense of tailored, expert usages– think about what can be achieved by a pro using HTML to create a website versus a novice using Blogger or WordPress, or by a musician versus the prerecorded tracks on a child’s toy keyboard. The problem I’m trying to solve, then, may simply be one that is more “improvisational jazz” than “Old MacDonald.”

 

The strategy that's been most helpful to me so far is one that can be difficult for a lot of us to use: ask someone else to make an attempt at it, and learn from what they do. When in doubt, have someone else try! Either they have success, which you can learn from, or they don't, in which case you can at least feel a bit better that you are not alone.

Any of these tech issues plaguing you, or others? Let me know in the comments!

Enough About Me: Putting Your Source Analysis Template to Work

 So, you’ve created a source analysis activity using this template– congratulations! Now you’re ready to make it available to others so they can, you know, analyze the source. 

Regardless of which method you choose, the first step is the same: From the story view, you’ll click the title of your activity at the bottom left, then click “Publish to File” in the menu that appears. This will bring up a window where you can confirm what you’d like to name the file and where it should be saved; an HTML file will then be created.

The menu that appears when clicking the title of your Twine story. 

The nifty thing about an HTML file is that, if you open it in a browser like Google Chrome or Safari, it will open as your game, playable and looking just as you designed it to look. If you open it in Notepad or something similar, however, it will be code– code that you can use! 

This possibility gives us a lot of options for how we might wish to share our activity. I’ve talked about mechanisms for doing this a bit previously, but it’s worth revisiting here to address one of the spaces almost all teachers already have access to: an LMS space. If you don’t already have one, you can usually create one for free, and many receive these spaces from their institutions automatically.

Here is a quick walkthrough on how to incorporate a Twine activity into the Canvas LMS, with concept and code courtesy of Laura Gibbs:

1. Create your HTML file. 

2. Pop that file into the Files space. You could make that file visible to your class, but would probably rather hide it from students.

3. In a new tab, open the Edit view of the Assignment or Page you’d like to add an activity to. 

4. Click the </> button at the bottom right hand side of the Rich Content Editor in order to open the HTML view. 

5. Copy and paste this code into the text entry field:

<iframe src="https://___/courses/___/files/___/download" width="100%" height="600"></iframe>

6. Go back to the tab in which you have Files open. Right click on the HTML file you just uploaded and select “Copy Link Address” from the dropdown menu that appears. 

7. Go back to the tab in which you have the Edit view of your assignment open. Select the bold text, right click, and paste the link you’ve just copied. 

8. Save and publish. 

To see this in action, enroll in this demo Canvas space and experiment with the items available in the Source Analysis Activity module (feel free to use a pseudonym). Into this space, I’ve added some examples of what the Source Analysis Activity can look like incorporated into an LMS as a page or an assignment. In the process, I’ve taken the opportunity to update things that were or have broken (for example, the link to the Arbella Speech that I used in the first iteration of the Source Analysis Activity has since become defunct). More significantly, I edited some of the language to apply more clearly to the Canvas environment– students no longer need either so many or so vague instructions about how to turn in their answers if the activity is embedded within an assignment, for example; the activity also no longer needs to collect their name to associate with their answers, but it does still need to instruct students on how to collect and turn in their answers into a format that can be delivered to the instructor by Canvas. 

One of the beautiful things about distributing your activity via an iframe in an LMS is that it works well on mobile– even the process of copying and pasting my answers into the text box was relatively straightforward when testing this on my iPhone.

 

I hope this inspires you to try this out in your own courses, even if only on an unpublished demo page. If you need a Canvas space to experiment in, you can create a Free-for-Teacher account. 

If you have questions or get stuck at any of these steps, feel free to reach out in comments, or schedule a quick chat with me via my Calendly. 

Enough About Me: Source Analysis Template Walkthrough

As promised when I introduced the Source Analysis Template, I have also created a walkthrough to using it. If these steps seem like a lot, don’t worry! This is a pretty granular breakdown, and some of these steps are repeats from the download process in the first post.

Setting Up

1. Download the Twine desktop app from Twinery.org and the HTML file for the template. 
2. Once you reach the Story Listing in Twine, click “Import from File” on the Side Menu. Click “Choose File,” then select the template file. 
3. The template will appear as a story in the Story Listing view. 
4. This is a good point to do the following two actions: 
• Duplicate the file so that you have the template for safekeeping, and a work file for your new activity. That way, you can go back to the template if needed, or duplicate it for other uses in future.
• Click the Settings (gear) icon next to the duplicate and select “Rename Story.” Give your activity a descriptive title, as this will appear in the activity once it is complete.
5. Click on the template to open it.

Welcome

1. Double click on the “Welcome” passage to open it. 
2. Replace the all caps text in between the two sets of tildes, as well as the tildes themselves, with text relevant to your activity. (example: ~~ THIS ENTIRE THING ~~ would become Your Text)

Leaving the tildes will result in your text looking like "Title" and "Title of Text" in this 

image in the finished product-- which, if you like it, great! If not, take out the tildes.

3. You should also, of course, feel free to edit or omit other text that may not apply to your use of the activity-- for example, if you don't want your students to turn in the answers at all, or if you want them to complete the activity in one sitting, some of the instructions may not apply. 
4. If you’d like to link to a copy of the source or excerpt, edit the link text given in the Welcome passage in the paragraph beginning “If you’d like, you can pull up a copy of…” Put the URL link itself in the first set of quotation marks, and the text you’d like to link (usually the title of the source) in place of ~~LINK TEXT WITH TITLE OF SOURCE~~. 
• For example, this:
  <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp" target="_blank">Code of Hammurabi</a>
• Becomes this:
  Code of Hammurabi
5. This version of the story asks for the student’s name in the Welcome passage , so that their answers at the end will have a name associated with them. If you don’t need this feature, you can delete the question and the code for the input box ({text input: 'studentName'})
6. Close the passage by clicking the x at the top right. You’re done with this one! 

Source

Okay, this is the fiddliest bit, but I promise it’s not so bad. There’s even a nice visual walkthrough to help you out. Ready?

1. Replace “~~TITLE OF TEXT~~” with the title of your source or excerpt. 
2. Replace “~~ADD YOUR TEXT HERE. PUT TEXT YOU'D LIKE TO LINK INSIDE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:” with the full text of your source or excerpt. 
3. Identify the words within the source that you would like to link to another passage. Copy ‘em.
4. Go down to the link list. Replace “~~LINK TEXT 1~~” with the copied text. 
5. Highlight the entire line. Cut. 
6. Highlight the words you copied earlier in the passage. Paste. You’re done with the first one!
• Here's what that process looks like. Every little yellow flash in this clip is a CTRL+C (Copy) or a CTRL+V (Paste). 

7. Repeat this process with each selection of text you want to link. Delete any links you do not use.

Items

There’s lots of code-looking stuff here, but never fear! Each of these lines that begin with "{text input for:" simply creates an input box where students can write their answers, one input box per line. 

1. Add any questions or comments you’d like to the Item 1 box corresponding with the text you linked to this passage. 

2. If you’d like a text input option for students to respond to your questions:

• Cut and paste the first line of code from the list beneath the relevant question.
• Repeat for all questions in that Item. Delete any you do not use (or else you’ll have a list of extra input boxes in your passage).
• Each input option can each only be used once in your story. So, if you used ‘inputA’ and ‘inputB’ in the Item 1 passage, you’ll need to remove these two from the next slide and use 'inputC,' 'inputD,' etcetera. 
3. If you don't want a text input option, simply delete all text before {back link, label: 'Save and go back to excerpt'}.

Submission Instructions

Okay, home stretch! There’s so little you need to do here, it almost doesn’t seem fair. 

1. Choose one or both sets of instructions for submitting answers. Delete any irrelevant instructions. 
• If you did not use any text inputs in your activity, you can delete this passage entirely or replace everything before the {back link} with any concluding text you like. 
2. Replace “~~YOUR PREFERRED SUBMISSION INFO~~” in the instructions you choose with the email, LMS assignment submission link, or other details needed for students to submit any work they’ve created. 

That’s it! You’ve got a Source Analysis Activity of your own. If you have questions or get stuck at any of these steps, feel free to reach out in comments, or schedule a quick chat with me via my Calendly. 

P.S: Now that you’ve made this lovely thing, how do you put it out into the world? We’ll talk more about that in the next post. 

Flashback Post: Celebrating One Year at Everspring

I'm breaking into the midst of my series on the Source Analysis Template to celebrate one full year at Everspring as of today. This flashback post from June 2021 was my announcement of both my then-recent career move and my then-impending move to Chicago. Many things have changed since then, but two things remain the same: all the enthusiasm and the invitations it contains still hold! 

Photo by Chait Goli from Pexels.

I interrupt my usual programming for a brief life update: At the time of this post, I'm midway through my third week at Everspring. I've joined Everspring as a Faculty Engagement Specialist, working to support our university partners in their online teaching. You can read more about Everspring's work in the recently released impact report. I can't thank everyone I worked with at the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning enough for giving me the experience to pursue this work and sharing their wisdom throughout the process of finding my path here. I'm thrilled to be beginning this new opportunity and building upon my existing skills in working with faculty and technology, and I've received a truly warm welcome from everyone I'm working with. 

This is a life update, but it's also two invitations. I'll be moving to Chicago in early August, and I'm looking forward to connecting with old friends and new colleagues once I arrive, so if you're in the area, let me know! I'm also open to talk about my path so far with anyone interested in using their humanities degrees in ways they may not have expected when they began their training, so feel free to reach out to me if it might be useful to you. I'm always happy to chat, and talking to people doing things I thought I might like to do has been instrumental to my own trajectory. 

Plug and Play: Source Analysis Template

Ever since I created the Source Analysis I activity, I've been wondering if there was a way to reduce the friction of creating a close reading exercise like this even further than just providing an example. Twine is a fairly low investment technology to pick up, but to start from scratch can be intimidating, and there can be a high barrier to trying new things for teachers who simply don't have much time to argue with technology. 

To help with this goal, I've created a template for making a source analysis activity similar to Source Analysis I. I have tried to make it as self-explanatory as possible to use (at least, if you’ve read the previous posts and/or demoed the Source Analysis I Activity), so feel free to download it and jump right in yourself! However, if you’d like a more detailed walkthrough to using it, one is coming. 

Download Source Analysis Template! 

This template is good for activities like: 

• Close reading of a fiction or nonfiction text guided by questions
• Encouraging annotation of specific passages
• Creating notes about a source that will inform a paper or exam question

For the particularly imaginative, you could also use it for:

• Having students read and dissect the key requirements of a paper or project prompt
• Reflecting on the different formats of a text (what different things did students pick up reading the piece in its original format versus within Twine?)

To start working with the template:

1. Download the Twine desktop app from Twinery.org and the HTML file for the template.
2. Once you reach the Story Listing in Twine, click “Import from File” on the Side Menu. Click “Choose File,” then select the template file.
3. The template will appear as a story in the Story Listing view.
4. Optional: This is a good point to do the following two actions:
   • Click the gear icon and click “Duplicate Story.” This will make a copy of the file so that you have the template for safekeeping, and a work file for your new activity. That way, you can go back to the template if needed, or duplicate it for other uses in future.
   • Click the Settings (gear) icon next to the file you plan to work in and select “Rename Story.” Give your activity a descriptive title, as this will appear in the activity once it is complete.
5. Click on your work file to open it.

In creating the template, I worked out a couple of irritations of the original:

• If using a link to an external site, placing it into the template as provided will now automatically open it in a new tab, rather than either opening in the existing tab (thus navigating away from the activity) or requiring users to right click and select "Open in a new tab" manually (which is annoying to have to remember). This update is thanks to this question and answer in the Twinery forum!
• The original activity required players to make a slightly unnecessary choice between whether they were going to write down their answers separately or in the input boxes. Although this was useful for the purposes of demonstrating two different approaches, it really wasn’t necessary for a template– if not using the input boxes, the creator can delete them, or the players can ignore them.

You may have noticed it’s been a while since my last post, and that’s primarily because every time I sit down to publish this template post, I come up with a new way to make the template or the instructions better which requires an additional hour of Googling, fiddling, and fighting with Blogger. I then created a bunch of content which felt like too much for one post; I like to keep these somewhat bite-sized. So, I’ve created a lot and split it into smaller, time-released bits, like those pain reliever capsules with the little spheres inside. (Is that what those do? Not sure, but they look fancy, so I’m going with it.)

Now, finally, I’m releasing the template out into the world, with the promise of additional supportive content to come, including a walkthrough (with a helpful video demo or two) and some upgrades to this template that you may like to experiment with. I’m also offering some small-group or one-on-one meetings for anyone who wants support or ideas for using this template; feel free to schedule an open time on my Calendly. And, if you decide to use it to create your own resource, I’d love to see the final product or hear about how you used it!

Current Project: Taking, Talking, and Thinking Through Career Development

I made this graphic in Canva. 

Recently I had the pleasure of joining current and former graduate students from the UIUC Department of History to discuss my experiences with career diversity and my embrace of a non-tenure track career path. Teaching can play a critical role in that path, as teaching is often (though not always) the first chance that many graduate students get to apply their skills in a different way than their writing and research, and to something that often feels like a space more within their control and more akin to "paid employment" than other aspects of their lives and work. 

  

Because of this connection between teaching and career development, I wanted to reflect today on some takeaways of that session, particularly since teaching is instrumental to that story. I've divided these into three key topics (as you may have guessed from the graphic): mindsets that in hindsight I found to be the most helpful things I did without always knowing that's what I was doing. 

A note that most of these observations are for people thinking about their place on this path, not for the people who organize graduate programs, except insofar as those people might well take the idea from this to emphasize creating space and opportunity for these things to take place. The reason why is twofold; first, this was my experience, and I can speak to it better than just about anything else. Second, at the end of the day, I am fairly aware of who makes up my readership (friends, current and former graduate students, and some of my former students, hello!), and no one is more capable, more interested, or more qualified to make the kind of decisions I made, wish I made, wish I'd made more often and in more ways, than you are. 

 

Take

 

Lots of people talk about the "tenure-track academia" path and the "not that" path as two separate ones, but there was really never a "two roads diverged in the wood and I" moment for me.* During the course of our conversation, I concocted a somewhat tortured but nevertheless illustrative metaphor about the journey. For me, deciding to go to gradschool was a bit like going to the store for apples. I knew that I was going to go in and come out with apples-- or, as a professor. As I started moving through the aisles, though, I started grabbing some other things, and realized by the end that I had a basket filled with a lot of things, which I could use in service of a lot of different goals. And every time I grabbed an extra thing to put in that basket-- that is, developed a new interest, took on a job or volunteered to do a task-- I didn't do it with a perfect grand plan in mind. It came from following my interests, trying things that sounded interesting and that I wanted to know more about. In short, you don't have to make a large decision to pursue keeping your options open-- you just have to take things and put them in your basket, knowing they might give you options later.

Talk

 

Networking isn't schmoozing, it's reciprocal and thus is tied with knowing the value of your labor. Alison Green has pointed this out in many ways on Ask a Manager, and the topic came up in our conversation as well. When someone is in dire need of a job, it can be hard for them to see the other person as a person rather than as an opportunity-dispensing machine. But most folks I know are actually interested in other people! So, approach your talk with mutual gain in mind. Most people love to know that something from their experience helped you. And if you know the value of your labor, you'll know that it can incredibly helpful for someone to be able to say, soon or far in the future, "oh yes, I know someone who might be able to fill that position/consult on that work/ direct that project." But it probably isn't something they can do immediately-- networking in this way is setting yourself up for the potential future, just the way the opportunities you put into your grocery basket are. Most folks don't have the power to just pick you up and slot you into a job, and if it worked that way it would be even more unfair than the process often is currently. It's like any other relationship you build with another human: you can't rush trust, comfort, or intimacy. You have to build it with small bits of evidence about your interests, skills, and work style. 

That also means networking doesn't have to be overly complicated or awkward. For me, networking was volunteering a couple of hours of my life to keep time during the university's teaching assistant orientation's microteaching sessions. It was joining a professional organization in a field I was interested in and attending a virtual event. It was scheduling a meeting with a graduate career advisor who introduced me to someone in a field I was interested in. It was doing a couple of informational interviews with various people who were, uniformly, happy to talk to someone about what they do. Even the things that I didn’t want to do, ultimately, were helpful. Some of the useful information I got from informational interviews was "well, I don't want to do that!" So, talk-- to anyone and everyone who knows something about something you think you might like to know more about. 

 

Think

Teaching skills-- like all skills-- can stand you in good stead in many markets, but you have to actually think about how you are doing it and why. Unfortunately, many graduate students do not feel encouraged to do this reflective work, at least in my experience and my conversations with others. They are instead told to go and do what is necessary to keep their funding and get through the semester, but they are not encouraged to develop pedagogically beyond what is "always done." As unfair as this may be, this means that most have to use the opportunities they have to make this sort of experience count through their own initiative, as rarely will anyone scaffold this particularly well for you. Going into class and telling students "discuss the reading" will not provide useful experience for you; nor will putting lots of effort into things without reflection, like painstakingly writing the same three wordy comments on every essay. 

This doesn't mean you need to agonize over every lesson or reinvent the wheel every time you open your Zoom window/classroom door/Canvas course. Instead, I suggest finding one topic, idea, or objective you want to emphasize the next time you teach and really think about how best to do so: do some research on how others have taught similar ideas, create a novel activity or assessment, and talk to your most pedagogically-minded colleagues about what you're planning, how it went, and what they do in their own courses. In doing so, you'll have created an example that you can forever use as an indication of your teaching style and your work style.

I hope take, talk, and think are as useful to you as they have been to me. And of course, you're always welcome to take from (the archives of Activities and Materials are open for your perusal!), talk to (contact info is on the right sidebar!), and think along with me. 

Notes:

*Not especially a huge Robert Frost person, but I always find myself quoting him in writing; just like experiences, I often throw little bits of language that strike me into "my basket" for later. (My favorite which I slipped into my dissertation is "Home is the place where, when you have to go there,/They have to take you in.")

Current Project: A Post That Took Seven Years (Kinda)

Me with a very official diploma. Photo by Saniya Ghanoui. 

Just about the time that I was setting into the warm bathwater of life after the PhD this month, I received a notice from the Thesis Office at the University of Illinois that my dissertation is now available on IDEALS. It is an odd feeling which lots of people have reflected on before-- seeing something has become available in some sort of "finished" format which to you feels, looking back, like it was concluded both too soon and too late. 

Folks have asked me what I plan to do with it, and the truth is I'm not yet sure. At the moment, I am satisfied with the fact that I got the most significant (to me) portion of the dissertation into print (the first chapter, as “‘Every One of Them Are Worth It”:  Blanche Van Leuven Browne and the Education of the ‘Crippled Child’”).

It was also important to me to release the dissertation with the most access possible. As I've moved away from a career in which it is paramount to publish at all costs, I wanted people who were interested to be able to read about the things I've found if it could at all benefit their lives, interests, or activism. I could see publishing it as a monograph or sorting it into more articles someday, but I could also see it as many small pieces; portraits of the activists who fuel its arguments in shorter and more personal formats. 

However, although the dissertation's content does still feel important to me-- telling stories that lots of folks have never heard about people who they've never known of--the dissertation itself represents a lot of things beyond what's in it. Perhaps this is part of the difficulty of coming to terms with what it means. It's the thousands (literally, thousands) of pictures from archival and secondary research in my storage (the archival photos with lots of typescript and thumbs; the secondary research scribbled pencil notes in whatever tiny notebook with a dog on the front I was carrying at the time). It's the hours spent revising and recycling its contents not only into proposals, drafts, and conference papers but into endless permutations of fellowship applications to fund (or attempt to fund) its creation. And of course, its the hours and days and years of feeling that you are, potentially, doing every single thing in your personal and professional life entirely wrong. (The dissertation has a way of exaggerating; even now, just the phrase "the dissertation" gives me a frisson of dread.) 

It's also the personal impacts of the dissertation process on the person you are. For me, it made me humble in the classroom, as I saw my own writing having the same exact problems as that of the students I taught (move the last sentence of the paragraph to the beginning and you'll have a topic sentence!). It made me a competent and resilient traveler, as I had to go to over a dozen archives across the country and pivot around multiple catastrophies (a car crash, a bad Airbnb, a suitcase held together with tape) to get to the finished product. And honestly, it made me pretty miserable a lot of the time.

In short, at the moment, my plan is to let it breathe, and get some distance, and take some pride in what it is without moving straight to wrangling it into a new form after this one was so hard-won. So, if you'd like to read, skim, or search it, you're welcome to; just save your edit suggestions for... some future time when I'm more ready for them! 

Enough About Me: Deformalizing and Deformatting