Historians and paleontologists talk about “eras” and “periods.” Today, driven by marketers and psychologist, we focus on “generations.” The chronology is a bit contested but for all of us 21st century blogging American it runs as follows: Tom Brokaw’s “greatest generation” was followed by the Baby Boomers, who gave way to Generation X, followed by…
Category: Reviews
Reviews of books, articles, and the like
A Thorough Look Under the Learning Hood
Many of us have read more than our fair share of books about teaching, and I would wager that the general themes are familiar. We have first person accounts, which often fall into one of two categories: the successful exhorting or the pedagogically challenged who, through some journey and development, have become successful exhorting. There…
But What About Me?
Christine Hassler wants to be the go-to author for the twenty-year-old generation. Her latest, the 20 Something Manifesto: Quarter-Lifers Speak Out about Who They Are, What They Want, and How to Get It builds off an earlier work, 20 Something, 20 Everything and is probably found in your local bookstore’s self-help section. “You are not…
The Appointment
Herta Muller’s The Appointment (Picador, 1997) is a short novel told in the first person by a woman living in Ceausescu’s Romania. The narrator tells of her life, her history and her crime while riding the bus to her appointment with the police, an interrogator. The language is not so much stream of consciousness as…
Emerging Adulthood
The cover of Jeffrey Jensen Arnett’s Emerging Adulthood has the title superimposed on a L train entrance. The L train runs between the Meatpacking District of lower Manhattan (14th Street & 8th Avenue), through Union Square and across Manhattan into Williamsburg and Bushwick, the heart of hipster Brooklyn. It is hard to imagine an area with…
Binging and Moderation
Barrett Seaman, a longstanding journalist for Time Magazine with a fantastic name for the press, became a trustee of Hamilton College, his alma mater, in 1989. Hamilton College is a strong liberal arts institution with a storied history in upstate New York. When Time Warner merged, Seaman took an early retirement and started investigating college…
Credit Hours – The Tie That Binds
The ubiquitous credit hour figures largely in higher education. From our first orientations sessions when sincere advisors explain the reasons that we needed nine credits of this or fifteen credits of that, to counting credits when planning for graduation, to looking at jobs and institutional practice – academic credit is the currency in the realm…