Manifesto

Lately, I've been reading blogs, mostly medical blogs. I got there accidentally, but once I got started, I got fascinated and read and read. The best of these blogs (from my limited point of view) try to give non-medical folks a sense of the practice of medicine, the frustrations and joys of practicioners, and even a little education by the way.

Medicine, of course, is one of those things that pretty much concerns most people to some extent at some point or another, and it's opaque to most of us. Who KNOWS what our doctor is thinking, as we sit there terrified hearing some words we have no clue about. But the way the doctor or nurse handles that situation makes a huge difference in our lives.

Teaching and academic research has fewer life and death decisions, especially when the research involves Shakespeare, who, after all, has been dead lo these many years. But I thought it might be interesting to challenge myself to try to write a blog as good in its own way as some of the medical blogs I've been reading. So, here goes. I'm going to try to de-mystify the practice of teaching and research in my own little world and field, and in the process, I'll probably learn something. If not, this little experiment will quickly disappear into the white noise of the internet.

Note: I teach at a mid-sized public teaching university in the midwest. I'll call it NorthWoods U. I'm going to disguise my students names and details, of course.