I have no idea what I am doing...

The humanities have a hard time conducting "research" in the scientific, controlled study sense. Every so often, these sorts of proddings of the universe seem like they would be really useful. Take, for instance, measuring improvements in student writing. You would think that knowing what worked would be useful. So, how do people in the humanities tackle that question? Require everyone teaching freshmen to, regardless of the class he/she is teaching to force students to write 5 short reflective essays (under 500 words) about what they learned, one for each type of paper/project/project that they did during the semester. No standardization ahead of time, none afterward. I have no idea how...whoever is going to use this "data"...is going to make something useful out of it. I really don't know. Now, this would not be so bad if I had enough time to break it to my students that this was going to be a required, extra thing and we only have a few weeks left to get everything else done. They are going to hate me.

Oh, well.

At some point last week, after a bottle of vino, I apparently agreed to go play with homeless cats at the shelter tomorrow. I mean, it's not a bad gig, I suppose. I mean, I could have volunteered to go out and chop wood or pave a driveway or something, but I get hives. I'm very delicate. So I have that to look forward to. I'm just not sure how I am going to be able to devote 2+ hours to it. 15 minutes of play time, and usually both the cat and I are happy to go our own ways with the knowledge of time well spent. But two hours? I'm afraid that I'll never want to see another cat again!

I am almost done reading my book about Bigfoot. Bigfoot: that's some stupid shit, folks. Apparently the cryptolosers who take him very seriously, even though every sighting is clearly another in a string of hoaxes, fakes and frauds. And clearly no small number of stupids. Maybe I'll do a book review here.

HJ